Dbq for Values and Purposes of Renaissance Education

The Renaissance was a period of artistic and cultural revival in which European society cast off the shackles of medieval thought, ushering in a new era of cultural expression which transformed the underlying values and purposes of education. The values and purposes of Renaissance education were to improve the society, increase the economy, and restore the religious beliefs; with changing religious ideas women began to receive education, but even with all of the educational reforms made individual still thought of an education as meaningless.
    As the Renaissance progressed, the purposes and values of education experienced major reformations. Before the Renaissance Scholasticism was the method of teaching in medieval universities, it combined the study of religious doctrine, ancient Church writings, philosophical and logical work emerging mainly from Aristotle. What largely contributed to educational reform during the Renaissance was humanism; this intellectual movement challenged and shattered the old ideas of scholasticism. Humanism was the scholarly study of ancient Greek, Latin, and Church writings; humanists advocated the “studias humanitatis” or the humanities. Combining the humanities along with ancient Greek and Latin classics laid the foundation for Renaissance education.
    The early Renaissance education system placed a disproportionate emphasis on the importance of studying the Arts and Humanities, or what would today be referred to as the Liberal Arts. This approach to education was heavily influenced by the Humanists of the Renaissance, who valued the concept of intellectual enlightenment, believing in the intrinsic value of education as a tool for human fruition and development. In this way, one of the primary purposes of early Renaissance education was the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake. (Doc. 1 & 2) Another central aspect of early Renaissance values was belief in the concept of Virtue, just as intellectual refinement could be...