Juan Luis Vives on the use of Ancient literature in education

Abstract

The work “On Education” (De tradendis disciplinis) by the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives (1492/3–1540) is considered from the perspective of the use of ancient literature during the in-itial period of child school training (from 7 to 15 years). Vives’ appreciation of the Latin language, a positive attitude towards teaching Greek at school, and the influence of ancient languages on modern European languages — Italian, Spanish, and French are discussed. The article draws attention to some features in teaching the Latin language that are not characteristic of the hu-manists who preceded Vives and also wrote about school. They are as follows: using the native language as an instrument for mastering Latin at the initial stage of learning, and using modern literature - writers, grammarians, humanists, which helps to learn ancient languages in the subsequent period. These features can be explained by Vives’ epoch when national states were being estab-lished, national languages were strengthening, and pedagogical thinking was developing. The article also examines the issue brought up by Vives himself about the attitude to pagan literature and to some, in Vives’ opinion, morally questionable poets. With all the inconsistency of Vives and the low persuasiveness of his self-censorship, the solution to this problem comes down to se-lecting such authors the study of whose works will protect school students from vices. The article shows that both Latin and Greek literature (works on oratory, poetry, comedy, history, my-thology, etc.) are widely used in teaching. Ancient writings not only form and enrich the language, but also provide versatile knowledge, mainly of humanitarian kind, help to bring up an ed-ucated and cultured person. This is supported by a large survey of over 100 ancient authors, modern writers, scientists, humanists, early medieval writers, “church fathers”, publishers, translators, and commentators provided at the very end of Vives' discussion on education, with brief characteristics of many of them.