On Education

Of Education represents John Milton's most comprehensive statement on educational reform. It was Milton's opinion that education had two objectives: one public, to "fit a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war"; and the other private, to "repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love Him, to be like Him, as we may the nearest by possessing our soul of true virtue". In this tractate two different influences can be recognized: Renaissance humanism and the via activa. This entire work represents Milton's reaction to the scholasticism that dominated the medieval university from the twelfth century. John Milton (1608 – 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, man of letters, and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval.