Gargantua: Education

Gargantua follows two diametrically opposed models of education:

a) Medieval Education

Grandgousier entrusts the education of young Gargantua to sophist doctors: Thubal Holoferne and then Jodelin Bridé. This educational system is a legacy of the Middle Ages: traditional scholastic education. This teaching, practiced from the 11th century onwards, favored the acquisition of book knowledge that enlightens Christian faith without any real connection to concrete life and without engaging reason. In Gargantua, Rabelais mocks medieval teaching in its sclerotic and unbalanced presentation:

• Critique of Quantitative and purely Formal Knowledge - A knowledge that prioritizes quantity over quality, the performance of memory without reasoning. Book knowledge combines futile manuals and references (archaic grammar, obsolete legal texts, futile manuals on "serving at the table," etc.) and relies on mechanical memory "backward and forward."
• Critique of Contempt for Hygiene and Reducing the Body to its most animal instincts - Criticism expressed through excessive eating from morning onward, excessive drinking of wine, excretion, laziness, etc. The tutors despise the body: it is not solicited at all since passivity is required (when the giant is not studying, he lounges or listens, receiving passively).
• Critique of Ineffectiveness of the means employed - Through its exceptionally long emblematic uselessness, the lack of connection to concrete reality, and the final stupefaction of the giant reduced to tears in front of the eloquence of a young man educated according to humanist principles.

b) Humanist Education

Ponocrates proposes a completely different method (Chapter 21), based on:

• A Good Schedule based on respect for the natural rhythm of man - Every moment, the student is stimulated to achieve comprehensive erudition: from sciences to arts, including religion and physical exercise.
• Humanist knowledge based on the beautiful letters of Greco-Latin Antiquity - A fundamental bibliography. The student discovers universal new sciences (astronomy, medicine, biology, and knowledge of the world); human activities (craftsmanship, professions, etc.); an interpretive reading making the Bible intelligible... The quest for encyclopedic knowledge is a glory in favor of a progressing world, a confidence in man and his abilities.
• Discipline of the body - It begins with rigorous respect for hygiene, relative dietetics, and physical exercise. The comprehensive training responds to a humanist ideal of a sound mind in a healthy body, an ideal to strive for, an ideal in rupture with the past.