This Blog is History

As a teacher of history I am also a teacher of writing. There is just no way around it. History is a written discipline. It is based on written record and presented in written arguements. I got to thinking that as a teacher of writing I should also be an active writer. I also wanted to stimulate an open discussion of ideas on a level that might not be possible in a class of 45 students. So, please feel free to respond to my posts! I figured that a blog would take perfectly address both of these goals. This isn't my first blog, so I'm also comfortable with the medium. Feel free to check out my travel blog sometime (http://majesticeurope.blogspot.com).

This blog and the rapidly-approaching AP Exam provided the topic for my first post. So far, our course of study has taken us from the middle of the fifteenth century all the way to the middle of the twentieth. By the middle of April our journey through history will take us all of the way to the present century. We have a tremendous amount of reviewing and studying to do before the AP Exam (May 15)! So, how in the world do we handle all of that information? The best way to approach all of this information is to examine the major themes and concepts that weave themselves throughout the fabric of modern European history. Let's take a look at one of these basic themes, the changing access to information and education between 1450 and 1800 and the impact of this change on European civilization.

The changing attitude toward education and the increased access to information were two of the defining characteristics of the Renaissance, where this course picks up the thread of European history. Since the fall of the Roman Empire a thousand years before, access to knowledge and education was literally locked up by the Church. The largest libraries of Europe were to be found in monasteries, and the abbots held the keys closely. The books were chained to the desks (hand copied scripts were very expensive), and lending required the deposit of collateral worth the price of the book to be borrowed. The great universities, such as the University of Paris, were mostly concerned with reconciling classical knowledge to the revealed and accepted truth presented by the Church. The persuit of knowledge was to be done in an introspective, almost monastic way. Learning was to be applied mostly toward theological matters. Renaissance humanism changed all of this.

Renaissance humanists changed the focus and purpose of education, making it more secular and human-centered. Early fifteenth-century humanists, inspired by the works of Petrarch and classical works making their way west from the crumbling Byzantine Empire, began raiding the monastic libraries of Europe searching for classical literary treasures. Cosimo de' Medici found himself caught up in this frenzy with other young humanists. Throughout his life, he patronized the work of these founders of humanism. He supported Marcilio Ficino, who translated and renewed interest in the works of the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato. He was a close friend and patron of artists like Donatello and Fra Angelico. He also supported the writing of Leonardo Bruni, who wrote the first work of modern history, "History of the Florentine People." These early humanists concerned themselves with secular concerns. Their works were not about the glory of god, but the glory of mankind. As civic humanists, they did not believe that the acquisition of knowledge should be an introspective and private persuit. They beleived that education should lead to an active life dedicated to the betterment of one's city or community. Education became a tool of statecraft. The humanist education that they advocated was secular in nature, and not limited to the monasteries. Cosimo would ensure that his grandson, Lorenzo, recieved a humanist education. Lorenzo, in his turn, continued to patronize great humanist philosophers and artists, thus ensuring the continuation and spread of humanist ideals. However, this Italian Renaissance humanist was still limited to the sons of the wealthy merchants and rulers of Europe. It would take another revolution, partially inspired by the individualistic spirit of humanism, to further democratize access to knowledge and education.

The religious reformations of the sixteenth century (both Protestant and Catholic) took some of the chains off of learning and ensured that most Europeans would recieve a basic education. The reformation started with the question "What must I do to be saved?". The very nature of this question shows the influence of the spirit of individualism present in the new humanism upon Martin Luther and other northern humanists such as the artist Albrecht Dürer. Luther reflected the desire of many Christians to have a more personal connection to the Church and their faith in his doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. By this, Martin Luther meant that Christians did not need the services of a priest to understand and interpret the Bible. They could do this for themselves. This meant that followers of Lutheran doctrine needed to learn how to read. They needed a basic education. Even women needed an education so that they could provide a religious education to their children. Protestant communities all over Europe began to provide a basic schooling to their followers during the sixteenth century. After half a century fighting against this humanist coup, the Catholic Church finally recognized the value of this kind of education and a personal experience within the Church in the Council of Trent. The council offical sanctioned the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), a militant order within the Church that took as its mission providing a humanist education to Catholics all over Europe and the world. By the end of the sixteenth century the rising middle-class merchants and monarchs great and small began to see a humanist education as means of increasing the wealth and power of their states. By the middle of the seventeenth century, a new breed of monarchs, in an attempt to further enhance the power and prestige of their states, began to openly support the work of scientists, supporting scientific societies that fostered the development of a secular, educated, and very literate international community.

Absolute monarchs of the seventeenth century and the scientific societies they created contributed greatly to creating an international culture of literacy. This culutre of literacy, in turn, lead to increased popularization of scientific and philosophical literature in the Age of Enlightenment that followed. While they may have not contributed directly to increasing political democratization, Louis XIV of France and Charles II of England contributed to the creation of an international spirit of scientific speculation and collaboration through the creation of the Royal Academy of Science and the Royal Society, respectively. Through these scientific societies great minds like Sir Issac Newton were able to share and argue their findings with other scientists all over Europe. The new, mechanical view of the Universe that these scientist described in their very technical works (Seriously! Just try to get through the first ten pages of Newton's "Principia"!) were translated and popularized by a new group of intellectuals, the Philosophes of the eighteenth century. To these works they added their own rational arguements on everything from political reform, to prison reform, to educational reform. The works of these Philosophes - Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot, Smith, and many others - were not limited to high intellectual circles. These works were written for an increasingly literate society, in a market that saw books become so afordable that almost every household owned at least one. In Paris, their ideas were debated in the salons of wealthy aristocratic women. In London, their works became the subject of coffeehouse discussion. Indeed, the eighteenth century finally let the genie out of the bottle. "Dare to know!", exclaimed Immanuel Kant, "Have the courage to use your own understanding."

As political democracy took hold in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the democratization of knowledge and learning were not far behind. Political democracy works best when the electorate is well informed and well educated. In this first decade of the twenty-first century we have seen access to knowledge and education expand at a rate never before experienced. This blog is the perfect example of this. Anybody with an internet connection has the ability to be published and read around the world. Services like iTunes U provide anybody with course lectures and materials from universities all over the world absolutely free of charge. It is up to us to ensure that we take advantage of these opportunities and use them responsibly.

Okay, so that was a particularly long post. You probably won't be required to cover quite the chronological distance that I covered here on any essay on the AP exam. However, you can see that the ability to follow a theme over the course of a couple of centuries will help you to construct a cohesive arguement in an essay. This is what I mean when I say to study according to the "big ideas." This is the best way to review and study for the AP exam. We'll work on this in class in the month before the exam. In the next blog I'll try to tackle some of the confusion about analyzing point-of-view in a DBQ.