16-7세기 서양 교육사상 탐구 경향에 대한 비판적 논의: 휴머니즘과 리얼리즘을 중심으로

Abstract

This essay critically investigates the way in which Ellwood P. Cubberley describes the educational ideas of the 16th and the 17th century Europe in his renowned book, The History of Education published in 1948. Cubberley's points examined are formulated as the following four questions: First, what does the term 'realism' that Cubberley uses to explain the 16th and the 17th century educational ideas exactly mean, in what way is it used by him? Second, is it the right way to see the movement of the 16th and the 17th century educational ideas as a gradual progress or development of three stages as Cubberley does―humanistic realism, social realism, and sense realism? Third, is it right to regard 'humanistic realism' and 'social realism' as opposed to renaissance humanism? And fourth, is it right to regard the 17th century 'sense realism' represented by Jahann Amos Comenius as one that succeeded to the ideas of the 16th century critical humanists? These four questions are investigated in order and then the author proposes an alternative view for understanding the educational ideas of these centuries. It is firstly that the ideas of John Milton and Michel de Montaigne and others that are classified by Cubberley as humanistic realism and social realism respectively are not so much new ideas separated from the renaissance humanism as those that can be subsumed in the category of renaissance humanism; and secondly that the ideas of Comenius that Cubberley calls 'sense realism' is not so much an idea that succeeded and developed humanistic realism and social realism as that which should be regard as one that developed in a different tradition from those 'realisms'. At the end of the essay, the author suggests that in order to develop this new perspective it is necessary to study more deeply the educational ideas of the renaissance humanism and further the ideas of Francis Bacon more systematically.