Renaissance Education: The Renaissance And The Renaissance

Education plays an important role in the lives of people today. In today’s society obtaining an undergraduate degree from a college or university is seen as the norm. In conjunction with this education today depends heavily on written texts. This has not always been the case. To be educated in the Roman Republic one was immersed in Greek language and culture (Herrick, 92). As education began to become more prevalent throughout time the idea of Scholasticism became dominant in Europe and in medieval education (Herrick, 122). With the passing of the medieval times came the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a period that stretched from 1400-1700, during this time period education flourished and was heavily influenced by rhetoric (Brian Vickers). Education played perhaps its largest role in the enlightenment period during the …show more content…
So, to say that rhetoric played a major role in the education of the period is a bit of an understatement. As opposed to the scholastics of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance brought about the Humanism movement, which sought to differentiate between physical and intangible aspects in life. The renaissance period saw extraordinary strides toward developing a system in which rhetorical knowledge would be used for educational purposes (Herrick, 144). As a result those who had skill in rhetoric would become the capstone of the educated person as it had been in the Roman Empire. However, as the humanists sought to differentiate between the tangible and intangible there began a debate as to what was more important, the idea of rhetoric or ideas such as philosophy. Without rhetoric and the humanistic movement people would not have contemplated philosophy or questioned rhetoric. Thus, rhetoric and the humanistic movement education in philosophy became more