Learning Practices During the Renaissance

Schools today are the primary way in which students learn to converse about, defend, and argue against ideas and practices. Schools in the past have not been much different in their objectives, but the way in which they brought about that learning is considerably contrastive to the ways students learn today.

The Renaissance

In Silva Rhetoricae: Content/Form, the third paragraph talks about how students of the Renaissance were instructed in imitating works that had been previously written and discussing how the form contributed to the piece. It is this process of imitation that so greatly sets their learning from the modern way of teaching.

During the Renaissance, there was a lack of books and other resources. The printing press had been invented, but books were still rare and expensive. Much of the time it was the instructor only who had a copy of the work they were studying. The instructor would bring the book to class and read it to the students, then they would discuss what the writer could have meant. It was the job of the students to memorize the entire work, as this was the only way they could have continuous access to it. They were then asked to revise it and make it better (remember that they were reading classical greats such as Aristotle and Cicero). They could change the format (i.e. from prose to poetry), include dialogue in an otherwise dialogue-free text, or they could translate it into another language. Again, they were all the while attempting to improve it. This caused the students to constantly reflect on word usage and whether the form of the original piece was the best possible form for the intended message.

Many master writers were taught in this way, including William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. By dissecting the writings of Classical Greats, they were able to hone their own craft and emerge as Greats themselves.