Great Scot - The Scotch Family Magazine - Issue 151 September 2017 GreatScot_Internal_Sept_2017_FA | Page 9

ABOVE: KING’S COLLEGE, ABERDEEN. THIS IS THE UNIVERSITY ATTENDED BY REV. JAMES FORBES.
and arithmetic as they prepared young men for
life and further learning at university.
The importance of education in Scotland
continued down through the years. It prompted
Knox’s successors to look to improve the
standard of teaching in the face of the
urbanisation due to the Industrial Revolution.
Teacher training colleges were established in
order to provide a professional education for all
teachers.
David Stow, who opened the first teacher-
education college in Britain in 1836, was
committed to the heritage of the Reformed
faith and to the improvement of society through
education. Stow’s ideas on education were far
ahead of his time. In particular, he stressed the
importance of play and of the child’s observation
of the world around him or her. The work of these
teacher-training colleges established by Stow and
his colleagues continues to this day.
The vision of Knox and his fellow reformers
did not stop at the level of the local parish school.
While pre-Reformation Scotland had three
universities (St Andrew’s, Glasgow and King’s
College, Aberdeen), Knox stipulated in the First
Book of Discipline that each major town should
have its own college (read university).
The main mover of Scottish university
education was Andrew Melville (1545-1622).
Melville had benefited from studying and working
in education on the continent (Paris, Poitiers and
Geneva). The Reformation saw further universities
established in Edinburgh and Marischal College
(Aberdeen). Interestingly, Aberdeen could boast
that it had within its bounds the same number of
universities as the whole of England (Oxford and
Cambridge).
While Melville’s approach was motivated
by his desire to see educated men as church
ministers, his university model was deliberately
broad and stipulated that candidates for the
ministry studied for an Arts degree before their
Divinity studies. Students in other fields (like the
Law) were similarly encouraged to embrace this
broad and thoroughly rounded training before
specialising in their chosen fields.
Knox, Melville, Stow and their colleagues
were convinced of their faith and the importance
of education. They did not live out their faith
in the cloisters cut off from the world and the
problems of society. As a result, their students
were equipped to engage with the world, and to
overcome the challenges by using their minds
and by trusting in God. The Reformation did not
demand a flight from the world, or contempt for
classical learning. To the reformers, the great
antithesis was not between the sacred and the
secular, but between sin and the grace that is
found in Christ.
At Scotch, we fervently hope that the boys
will develop minds that long to discover more, to
ask questions that wrestle with the issues of the
age, and who look to integrate their learning with
everyday life. By so doing, we continue along the
paths of those who have gone before us, whose
vision blessed the hamlets and cities of a small
nation and then the world.
www.scotch.vic.edu.au Great Scot
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