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3. Was the evolution of the school-teacher out of the copyist at Ratisbon
(55), by a specialization of labor, analogous to the process in more
modern times?

work, training for the calling of teaching and special research
In other respects, it is largely, especially in the most advanced
work, training for the calling of teaching and special research.
By a peculiar superstition, education which has to do chiefly
with preparation for the pursuit of conspicuous idleness, for
teaching, and for literary callings, and for leadership, has been
regarded as non-vocational and even as peculiarly cultural. The
literary training which indirectly fits for authorship, whether
of books, newspaper editorials, or magazine articles, is
especially subject to this superstition: many a teacher and
author writes and argues in behalf of a cultural and humane
education against the encroachments of a specialized practical
education, without recognizing that his own education, which he
calls liberal, has been mainly training for his own particular
calling. He has simply got into the habit of regarding his own
business as essentially cultural and of overlooking the cultural
possibilities of other employments. At the bottom of these
distinctions is undoubtedly the tradition which recognizes as
employment only those pursuits where one is responsible for his
work to a specific employer, rather than to the ultimate
employer, the community.

But victory must be won by fair means. There is a story (possibly
without historical foundation) that a foreign visitor to Oxford said
that the thing that struck him most in that great university was the
fact that there were 3000 men there who would rather lose a game than
win it by unfair means. It would be absurd to pretend that that spirit
is universal: the commercial organisation of professional football and
the development of betting have gone a long way to degrade a noble
sport. But the standard of fair play in school games is high, and it
is the encouragement of this spirit by cricket and football that
renders them so valuable an aid in the activities of boys” clubs in
artisan districts. It has been argued that the prevalence of this
generous temper among our troops has been a real handicap in war; that
we have too much regarded hostilities as a game in which there were
certain rules to be observed, and that when we found ourselves matched
against a foe whose object was to win by any means, fair or foul, the
soldiers who were fettered by the scruples of honour were necessarily
inferior to their unscrupulous foe. It has perhaps yet to be proved
that in the long run the unchivalrous fighter always wins, and I doubt
whether any of us would really prefer that even in war we should set
aside the scruples of fair play. But in the arts and pursuits of peace
that man is best equipped to play a noble part who realises that there
are rules in the great game of life which an honourable man will
respect, that there are advantages which he must not take. How often
does some rather inarticulate hero, who has refused some tempting
prospect or spurned some specious offer, explain his act of
self-denial by the simple phrase of his boyhood, ‘I thought it wasn”t
quite playing the game.’ Schoolboy honour is not always a faultless
thing; sometimes it means the hiding of real iniquity. But the honour
of the playing field is a generous code, and to have learnt its rules
is to have learnt the best that the public opinion of a boy community
can teach.

reproduced:

19. What do the Free School Rules of 1734 (245) indicate as to duties and
discipline?