What was life for an Elizabethan school boy like?

Question

What was life for an Elizabethan school boy like?

Answer 1

naff

Answer 2

Strange question.

Answer 3

A good question. Please accept a star.

The day was long, without much in the way of relief. The subjects studied were in the first instance reading and writing in one's own language, with elementary Latin starting more or less at the same time. Since all the texts dealing with history, mathematics or more practical subjects tended to be in Latin, for Europe-wide circulation, this was necessary - think of Dutch or Danish children learning English today to get access to a wider culture.

The pattern of the day was simple, alternating periods of instruction with periods of private study, when the boys learned by heart set passages and later were called on individually by the master to translate and comment on them.

The school might have only one room (a great hall, or schoolroom) with the boys on benches; the elementary class on the front bench, with graduated levels of attainment towards the back. Promotion to a higher level was by attainment, so you could have great stupid oafs of 16 still struggling with Latin verbs on the front bench, while a bright 8-y-o had worked his way to the back, among the teenagers preparing for entrance to the university. While the master or an assistant was teaching or examining one bench (or form; the word is still used for a class) the rest were expected to be learning on their own.

As the boys grew older and became competent Latinists, the brighter ones would start to study Greek. All of them learned maths, mainly Euclid (geometry), but simple arithmetic had its place.

The modern stereotype (all Latin and Greek) is misleading; once the lads could understand Latin the texts read would include some quite down-to-earth ones - for instance about agriculture, warfare, arts and crafts. Milton (a little later, but the syllabus hadn't changed much, despite his claims to be a pioneer of new learning) taught in a school and mentions these studies. His contemporary Comenius, in an elementary textbook, (the Orbis Pictus), teaches Latin and practical subjects through parallel text and pictures.

Discipline was summary and by modern standards severe. Boys were whipped, usually with a bundle of birch twigs, not only for misbehaviour but also for failing to learn their lesson.

In the case of a boarding school, the domestic arrangements echoed those of the monks who had been the main educators before the reformation. Day schools worked in the hours of daylight, since lighting was expensive and dim. This meant an agreeably short day in winter, but a long drag in the summer months. Luckily the summer vacation was long, because of the harvest, when every hand was needed.

I hope this helps.

Answer 4

home-schooling?! ha ha.