Early learned-centered education

Throughout its history the university has been in a constant state of crisis, in response to which successive reforms and counter-reforms have taken place. However, the evolution of the university has been limited to its structures, systems of government and administration and greater diversity of fields of learning, teaching methods and course contents: the «academic ethos» has changed little since the Middle Ages. However, there is a significant difference between the early university as a social institution and the university of today.

At the beginning its structures were more informal and, contrary to what is generally believed, more flexible. It was the students who sought out their professors on the basis of their epistemological and deontological authority. The university structure revolved around the studium generale o particulare which was managed or governed by a student rector who, as in Bologna, was drawn from the societies of scholars – universitates – or student body. This is to say that teaching was based on the learning person: a learned-centered education. The institution was basically organized around that person, namely the student.

©2011 Miguel Angel Escotet. All rights reserved. Permission to reprint with appropriate citing.