Note 12 — III. STURMIUS. 1507-1589.

Sturm’s school “had an European reputation: there were Poles and Portuguese, Spaniards, Danes, Italians, French and English. But besides this, it was the model and mother school of a numerous progeny. Sturm himself organized schools for several towns which applied to him. His disciples became organizers, rectors, and professors. In short, if Melanchthon was the instructor, Sturm was the schoolmaster of Germany. Together with his method, his school-books were spread broadcast over the land. Both were adopted by Ascham in England, and by Buchanan in Scotland. Sturm himself was a great man at the imperial court. No diplomatist passed through Strasburg without stopping to converse with him. He drew a pension from the King of Denmark, another from the King of France, a third from the Queen of England, collected political information for Cardinal Granvella, and was ennobled by Charles V. He helped to negotiate peace between France and England, and was appointed to confer with a commission of Cardinals on reunion of the Church. In short, Sturm knew what he was about as well as most men of his time. Yet few will be disposed to accept his theory of education, even for the sixteenth century, as the best. Wherein then lay the mistake?... Sturm asserted that the proper end of school education is eloquence, or in modern phrase, a masterly command of language, and that the knowledge of things mainly belongs to a later stage ... Sturm assumed that Latin is the language in which eloquence is to be acquired.”

This is from Mr. Charles Stuart Parker’s excellent account of Sturm in Essays on a Liberal Education, edited by Farrar, Essay I., On History of Classical Education, p. 39.

I find from Herbart (Päd. Schriften, O. Wilmann’s edition, vol. ij, 229 ff; Beyer’s edition, ij, 321) that the historian, F. H. Ch. Schwarz, took a very favourable view of Sturm’s work; and both he and Karl Schmidt give Sturm credit for introducing the two ways of studying an author that may be carried on at the same time—1st, statarisch, i.e., reading a small quantity accurately, and 2nd, cursorisch, i.e., getting over the ground. These two kinds, of reading were made much of by J. M. Gesner (1691-1761). Ernst Laas has written Die Pädagogik J. Sturms which no doubt does him justice, but I have not seen the book.