The Grammar School

The Grammar School: A Cognitive History, c. 1450-1700 explores the evolution of Latin education in English grammar schools from the mid-fifteenth to the turn of the eighteenth century. By interweaving book history with modern cognitive science, the book examines how the paper and printing revolutions, the Reformation, Renaissance humanism, and the seventeenth century's social upheavals reshaped the mental lives of generations of students. Drawing on hundreds of manuscripts, early printed books, marginalia, and archaeological evidence, the study demonstrates how children learned to deploy their attention in novel ways, how educators dismantled centuries-old mnemonic traditions, and how emerging modes of reading and written composition fundamentally transformed the students' grasp of language. It charts the profound implications of the "coming of the book" to the classroom, uncovers some hidden agendas of humanist educators, and exposes their often gritty, imperfect realization in the schoolroom. These shifts in schooling altered the cognitive architecture of schoolboys in ways that transcended the formal curriculum and that are not always related to the subject matter of classical education. Ultimately, the book reveals that these shifts had far-reaching implications for English culture and society, tracing these cognitive transformations through diverse sites—from the pews of the parish church and the yards of Elizabethan playhouses to the pioneering scientific work of the Royal Society. It offers a provocative new perspective on how the early modern schoolroom functioned as a laboratory for the modern mind.