Harold Perkin Histories Of Education Summary

In the Histories of Education by Harold Perkin, the author makes it a point on how all colleges and universities stem from a common organizational model and intellectual history. Academic disciplines are defined worldwide in common terms. For example, the studies in Japan and Germany are similar as the studies in the United States. The beginning chapters covered medieval scholasticism, in specific how Paris and Bologna became “university of masters”. Perkin states how Bologna and the student rector determined doctor fees, levied fines to the instructors for starting and finishing lectures late, as well as not keeping up with the syllabus, and leaving the city without permission from the students (165). Other Italian universities followed the Bologna model of student

Early institutions were flexible enough to serve the needs of enormously different societies in every part of the world. Since the higher education establishment in Europe, in the 12th century, universities have frequently been asked to undertake essential roles. However, only when they were considered irrelevant were they isolated, as when the Enlightenment largely bypassed the European universities were in dispute between Catholics and Protestants from an earlier period (Perkin, 172). Medieval universities were mainly focused on professional education, however they also focused on intellectual, religious and political life. The University of Paris helped to settle a division in the Catholic Church in 1409 (Perkin, 168). Furthermore, in the 16th century, the ideas that led to the Protestant Reformation came from the universities in Germany. Universities thrived when they were engaged in professional education and the intellectual life of society. When universities engaged with society and with the emerging scientific and political developments of an era, they went