ABSTRACT
Of the various classical theories of education surveyed in this volume, the contribution of the humanists of the Northern Renaissance – of what came to be known as ‘Erasmian humanism’ – may well be the least familiar to modern students of education. There is some irony in this. The name of Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), though scarcely remembered today beyond the university, was in his own day synonymous with learning and the pursuit of knowledge. The most famous of his associates, Thomas More (1478–1535), is better remembered, but mainly for his martyrdom, and perhaps secondarily for coining the term ‘Utopia’ – but not as a leading exemplar and promoter of the Erasmian humanist approach to learning and knowledge. Other leading Erasmian humanist figures, such as Guillaume Budé or Juan Luis Vives, are now remembered almost exclusively by historians. Yet the contribution made by Erasmus and his circle to the theory and practice of education was as influential as perhaps any of the approaches surveyed in this collection.
