Formal educational institutions as grammar schools, petty schools and sewing schools for girls were established in Scotland by the sixteenth century. Children of the nobility often studied under private tutors. Early modern Scotland had three universities, but the curriculum was limited and Scottish scholars had to go abroad to gain second degrees. These contacts were one of the most important ways in which the new ideas of Humanism were brought into Scottish intellectual life. Humanist concern with education and Latin culminated in the Education Act 1496.

After the Reformation the Humanist concern with education became part of a programme of godly education, with an attempt to establish a system of parish schools administered by the Church of Scotland (the "Kirk"). A new university was established in Edinburgh and the existing universities underwent a series of reforms associated with Andrew Melville that revitalised them and brought them up to the standards of Humanist scholarship and methods of teaching of institutions elsewhere. In the seventeenth century there were attempts to organise and finance the system of parish schools and a successful expansion of the university system. By the early eighteenth century the network of parish schools was reasonably complete in the Scottish Lowlands, but limited in the Highlands where it was supplemented by the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge. Scotland began to reap the benefits of its university system, with major early figures of the Enlightenment including Francis Hutcheson, Colin Maclaurin and David Hume.

Background

Schooling

Surviving sources for education in Medieval Scotland are extremely limited. Outside of occasional references in documents concerned with other matters, they amount to a handful of burgh records and monastic and episcopal registers. In the Scottish Highlands there are indications of a system of Gaelic education associated with the professions of poetry and medicine, with ferleyn, who may have taught theology and arts, and rex scholarum of lesser status, but evidence of formal schooling is largely only preserved in place names.S. Murdoch, "Schools and schooling: I to 1696", in M. Lynch, ed., The Oxford Companion to Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), , pp. 561–3. By the end of the Middle Ages most large churches probably had song schools, open to all boys. Grammar schools, which were based on the teaching of Latin grammar for boys, could be found in all the main Scottish burghs and some small towns. Educational provision was probably better in towns; in rural areas, petty schools provided an elementary education.M. Lynch, Scotland: A New History (New York, NY: Random House, 2011), , pp. 104–7. They were almost exclusively aimed at boys, but by the end of the fifteenth century Edinburgh also had schools for girls. These were sometimes described as "sewing schools", whose name probably indicates one of their major functions, although reading may also have been taught,E. Ewen, "'Hamperit in ane hony came': sights, sounds and smells in the Medieval town", in E. J. Cowan and L. Henderson, A History of Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland: 1000 to 1600 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), , p. 126. and were generally run by lay women or nuns. There was also the development of private tuition in the families of lords and wealthy burghers. Sometimes these developed into "household schools" that may also have catered to farming neighbours and kin, as well as the sons of the laird's household. There is documentary evidence for about 100 schools of these different kinds before the Reformation. The growing Humanist-inspired emphasis on education in the late Middle Ages culminated in the passing of the Education Act 1496, which decreed that all sons of barons and freeholders of substance should attend grammar schools and endorsed the Humanist concern to learn "perfyct Latyne". All this resulted in an increase in literacy, although it was largely concentrated among a male and wealthy elite,P. J. Bawcutt and J. H. Williams, A Companion to Medieval Scottish Poetry (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2006), , pp. 29–30. with perhaps 60 per cent of the nobility being literate by the beginning of the sixteenth century.J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), , pp. 68–72.

Universities

From the end of the eleventh century universities had been founded across Europe, developing as semi-autonomous centres of learning, often teaching theology, mathematics, law and medicine.I. Wei, "The rise of universities" in A. MacKay, ed., Atlas of Medieval Europe (London: Routledge, 1997), , pp. 241–3. By the fifteenth century, beginning in northern Italy, universities had become strongly influenced by Humanist thinking. This put an emphasis on classical authors, questioned some of the accepted certainties of established thinking and manifested itself in the teaching of new subjects, particularly through the medium of the Greek language.W. Rüegg, "The rise of Humanism", in Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, ed., A History of the University in Europe: Volume 1, Universities in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), , pp. 452–9. In the fifteenth century university colleges had been founded at St John's College, St Andrews (1418) and St Salvator's College was added in 1450. Glasgow was founded in 1451 and King's College, Aberdeen in 1495. St Leonard's College was added at St. Andrews in 1511. Initially, they were designed for the training of clerics, but they would increasingly be used by laymen who began to challenge the clerical monopoly of administrative posts in government and law.B. Webster, Medieval Scotland: the Making of an Identity (St. Martin's Press, 1997), , pp. 124–5.

In this period Scottish universities largely had a Latin curriculum, designed for the clergy and civil and canon lawyers. They did not teach the Greek that was fundamental to the new Humanist scholarship, focusing on metaphysics, and putting a largely unquestioning faith in the works of Aristotle, whose authority would be challenged in the Renaissance. They provided only basic degrees. Those wanting to study for the more advanced degrees that were common amongst European scholars needed to go to universities in other countries. As a result, large numbers of Scots continued their studies on the Continent and at English universities. These international contacts helped integrate Scotland into a wider European scholarly world and would be one of the most important ways in which the new ideas of Humanism were brought into Scottish intellectual life. By 1497 the Humanist and historian Hector Boece, born in Dundee and who had studied at Paris, returned to become the first principal at the new university of Aberdeen. Another major figure was Archibald Whitelaw, a teacher at St. Andrews and Cologne who later became a tutor to the young James III and served as royal secretary from 1462 to 1493.

Sixteenth century

Humanism and Protestantism

The civic values of humanism, which stressed the importance of order and morality, began to have a major impact on education and would become dominant in universities and schools by the end of the sixteenth century.J. E. A. Dawson, Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), , pp. 340–1. King's College Aberdeen was refounded in 1515. In addition to the basic arts curriculum it offered theology, civil and canon law and medicine.J. E. A. Dawson, Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), , p. 55. St Leonard's College was founded in Aberdeen in 1511 by Archbishop Alexander Stewart. John Douglas led the refoundation of St John's College as St Mary's College, St Andrews in 1538, as a Humanist academy for the training of clerics, with a stress on biblical study.J. E. A. Dawson, Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), , p. 187. Robert Reid, Abbot of Kinloss and later Bishop of Orkney, was responsible in the 1520s and 1530s for bringing the Italian humanist Giovanni Ferrario to teach at Kinloss Abbey, where he established an impressive library and wrote works of Scottish history and biography. Reid was also instrumental in organising the public lectures that were established in Edinburgh in the 1540s on law, Greek, Latin and philosophy, under the patronage of the queen consort Mary of Guise. These developed into the "Tounis College" of the city, which would eventually become the University of Edinburgh.

In the mid-sixteenth century, Scotland underwent a Protestant Reformation that rejected Papal authority and many aspects of Catholic theology and practice. It created a predominately Calvinist national church, known as the kirk, which was strongly Presbyterian in outlook, severely reducing the powers of bishops, although not initially abolishing them.J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), , pp. 102–4. This gave considerable power within the new kirk to local lairds, who often had control over the appointment of the clergy and would be important in establishing and funding schools.J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), , pp. 121–33. There was also a shift from emphasis on ritual to one on the word, making the Bible, and the ability to read the Bible, fundamental to Scottish religion.G. D. Henderson, Religious Life in Seventeenth-Century Scotland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), , pp. 1–4.

Reformation of schools