William the Taciturn's right hand, Marnix, Sieur de Ste. Aldegonde, is best known for his religious satire La Ruche, which is the author's own translation of De Bienkorf, wherein Catholics are mercilessly satirized for their superstition and rapacity. Considerably less well known is his educational treatise for princelings, written in 1584, but published only in 1615 by Sixtus Arcerius, a lecturer at the University of Franeker in Friesland. There are only three known copies extant, one of which is at the University Library of Leyden, one in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and one in the Royal Library in Brussels. The work first became available to the public when Marnix's collected works were published in 1857–1860 by Van Meenen and Lacroix, whose translation in French is not always accurate, although it gives us enough of an idea what Marnix's intentions were.

Seventeenth-Century England was a “one-class society,” characterized by a tiny minority of men—at best four or five percent of the population—who “owned most of the wealth, wielded the power and made all the decisions, political, economic and social for the national whole.” Admission to this charmed circle was open to those who could “live without manual labour” and could “bear the port, charge and countenance of a gentleman.” This included not only those of noble blood and ancient riches, but “whosoever studieth the laws of this realm, who so abideth in the university giving his mind to his books, or professeth physic and the liberal sciences.” The physician, as a student of the liberal sciences and a member of an ancient and venerable profession, was accorded gentle status, unlike the great majority of gentlemen, because of his intellectual qualifications, his mastery of the art and science of healing the sick—and much else. If we would begin to understand this somewhat unusual relationship between education and social status, a question that still engages the sociologist and historian of modern society, the practitioners of London, especially the fellows, candidates, and licentiates of the Royal College of Physicians, provide a valuable focus, for it was from these men that the most fruitful medical advances of the century came and it was they who served as models for the physicians of the English towns and countryside for many years to come.

“For the great dramatists of the late nineteenth century,” writes the critic, Eric Bentley, “a play was a bomb to drop on the respectable middle classses.” In the winter of 1890–1891, the young playwright Frank Wedekind created his bomb, the explosive drama, Spring's Awakening (Frühlingserwachen), in which he bitterly attacked the moral hypocrisy of his day. In dealing with the sexual problems of adolescence, Wedekind harshly condemned middle-class prudery and an education that taught German children the facts of German history, but not the facts of life. In one frank scene after another, he explored the tragedy of this situation. Fourteen-year-old Wendla becomes pregnant without ever discovering how she conceived. She finally dies from the effects of “abortion pills.” Her lover, Melchior, searches for answers to his sexual questions and finds dishonor instead. He commits suicide. His friend, Moritz, is unable to help and wanders in despair at the final curtain. Only the self-righteous parents and teachers, who have crushed “spring's awakening,” survive.

………nunc adhibe puro
Pectore verba, puer, nunc te melioribus offer
Quo semel imbuta recens servabit odorem
Testa diu.
Hor. Ep. 2 Lib. I

Young man, accept this advice with joy.
Open your heart to these sweet lessons.
Thy cup remains long redolent with the fragrance
of its first liquid.

To the noble and generous Lord John, Count Nassau, Catzenelnbogen, Vianden and Diest,

His respectful and devoted Philip Marnix of Sainte-Aldegonde.

Greetings in Jesus-Christ.

After conferring repeatedly with me, noble and generous sir, on the education of youth, you have deemed it opportune, or rather, in view of the authority you have over me and of my duty toward your Lordship, enjoined me to state and write an outline of my theories on the education of young noblemen, starting with their earliest childhood. As soon as I received your command, I applied myself to this task, hastily, I confess, and without a clear design, but nevertheless with the utmost care possible, within the bounds of my small talents and limited experience.

In the eighteenth century France did not have a system of secondary education. Instead, municipalities, teaching orders, and universities operated individual collèges (secondary schools) on their own initiative and largely free from government control. The universities and the teaching orders, especially the Society of Jesus and the Congregation of the Oratory, provided a uniform administration for their respective collèges. The administration of collèges founded by municipalities varied. Many municipal officials simply had turned over their schools to religious orders and had subsidized their operation. Others had administered their schools independently, with varying degrees of control over the principals and teachers. The situation changed somewhat, however, after 1763, when the government of Louis XV created boards throughout France to administer many collèges, especially those which the Society of Jesus was no longer permitted to operate and which no other religious order could be persuaded to take over. In the establishment of these boards and in the subsequent supervision of them, the royal government and at least one law court attempted to create a loose educational system.

In the years immediately following World War II, national attention was directed to the problems of education in the United States. As was the case with other aspects of American life, the exigencies of war had required that normal growth and development of the educational system be deferred until the cessation of hostilities.

The progressive idea of reform developed through years of experimentation in St. Louis and achieved success in the 1897 School Board reorganization. As early as 1877 the tendency to treat the city as a separate entity became apparent when a new charter separating the city from the county was effected. Previously there had been both a city and a county government in the same area, each with two legislative houses and the power to tax. The “dual double-headed system then in force,” one critic argued, “was anomalous and absurd.” The two bodies, both of which levied taxes, did not really represent the people, since neither was elected at large. The new charter, although retaining the two-house City Council, required one house to be elected at large; efficiency was increased through extended terms for most officials and an increase of administrative powers for the mayor.

If he is alert to avenues of advancement, an educator (a term here applied to all college teachers) will heed the dictum “publish or perish.” Indeed, if he is in the fullest sense of the word an educator, he will have developed or be developing ideas and information he wants to share with readers somewhere. Unpublished material is of little benefit to a waiting world; obviously, information must appear in print to help either the reader or the educator-writer. For a person who has information to communicate, the problem of finding readers cannot be considered acute today. The beginner, whether he considers himself a specialist or a generalist, should find a measure of encouragement in the simple fact that there are literally scores of publications available to him.

The social reconstructionist educators within the progressive education movement were only one of the many groups to emerge in response to the depression of the thirties with the promise that their plan would regenerate society. Compared to Upton Sinclair's “End Poverty in California” program, the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the large followings of Huey Long, Father Coughlin and Francis Townsend, their movement seemed insignificant indeed. Yet they were taken seriously by political groups on both the Left and the Right. This was in marked contrast to the large body of classroom teachers, who remained indifferent to the Promethean role they were being called upon to perform. The extreme Left was forced to consider the social reconstructionists because the revolutionary role they assigned to the school represented a direct challenge to the orthodox Marxist position. Conservative groups responded to the program of the social reconstructionists out of fear that the minds of the young were being filled with un-American ideas and values. While the latter created a louder clamor, it was the Communists who were most deeply affected by social reconstructionism.