Ten Daily Exercises at the Heart of 16th Century
Protestant Classical Schools
Johann Sturm was a highly influential German educator during the 16th century Reformation. He referred frequently in his writings to
schools, advisors, and individual teachers and scholars to ‘the method’, a collection of exercises he
established in his schools and promoted elsewhere. His chief interest was in
developing the liberal arts, and particularly the language arts, in his
pre-university students. His goal was the training of a “wise and eloquent
piety”.
To accomplish this he emphasized
daily drill in reading, grammar, exposition, writing, and public speaking. Younger
students spent most of their time digging deeply into grammar and the meaning
of words, while work for older students branched out to include the writing and
delivery of frequent public addresses. While significant time in classrooms was
no doubt taken up with teacher explanations, ‘the method’ clearly shows that Sturm
placed a premium on students being constantly and actively engaged in a variety
of exercises meant to develop their ability to think, to write, to discuss, and
to speak truthfully, wisely, and persuasively.
Sturm championed these methods in his
role as teacher and leader of the movement to found schools in
newly-reformed Protestant cities.
1. Psalms
·
singing psalms as a group and as a school
·
3x daily: morning, mid-day, evening
·
Sung and ‘invoked’
2. Daily
Recitations
·
students reading aloud
·
read the psalms that are sung, and other
important pieces (e.g., creeds, prayers, etc.)
·
emphasis on pronunciation and improving voice
and delivery, including body language
3. Orations
·
short pieces (‘homilies’) to be recited or read
·
brief, serious (e.g., devotional reading)
·
either from written document, or prepared and memorized
·
emphasize purity of speech, clarity of meaning
4. Writing
·
daily practice: “never lacking a written
composition or pen, or minus a pack of paper”
·
three-fold writing practice:
-hand-writing
(elementary grades, mainly)
-diaries/journals: note-taking, commonplace books, notebooks for
language, words, quotations, examples; these are “the custodians of
memory”
-stylistic examples: parts of orations and declamations; arguments;
well-constructed letters and narratives
5. Declamations
·
practice speeches, hypothetical situations;
praise, censure, etc. (upper progymnasmata and suasoria exercises)
·
emphasize knowledge, custom, and eloquence
6. Disputations
· debates and discussions
7. Conversations
·
integration of, and immersion into, Latin whenever possible
·
during the day, in class, out of class (e.g., breaks, after school)
8. Demonstrations
·
didactic and socratic instruction
·
discourse and demonstration
·
e.g., proofs in mathematics, expositions of
literature and poetry, etc.
9. Comedies
and Tragedies
·
dramatic performances and readings
·
recite passages from memory
·
work in groups to perform, present
10. Games
·
“All the above exercises should be held with
games”
·
use jests and games
·
teach Latin in the games
·
field trips: “Get out of cities to view the
fields, and gardens, to dig our plants, to ask their names”, etc.
For more on Johann Sturm, see Johann Sturm on Education: The Reformation and Humanist Learning, Lewis K. Spitz and Barbara Sher Tinsley, Concordia Publishing House