For unless God Himself be our schoolmaster, we can study and learn nothing that is acceptable to Him and salutary to ourselves and others (SD II, 16).
Bruce A. Kimball, Orators & Philosophers: A History of the Idea of a Liberal Education, 2^nd^ ed. (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1995).
Nock. Theory of Education in the United States. 1932. (pdf)
Sample learning schedule from University in Wittenberg: http://books.google.com/books?id=99KYr19xisAC&lpg=PP1&ots=6cEZHQBBZG&dq=Scheible%20melanchthon&pg=PA49#v=onepage&q&f=false
Gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed saepe cadendo.
Sic homo fit doctus, non vi, sed saepe legendo.
Hinc satis elucet maiorem habere vim ad discenda ista liberam curiositatem quam meticulosam necessitatem (Augustine, De civ., 1.14.23).
Sunt qui scire volunt, eo fine tantum, ut sciant, et turpis curiositas est: et sunt qui scire volunt, ut scientiam suam vendant; verbi gratia, pro pecunia, pro honoribus, et turpis quaestus est: sed sunt, qui scire volunt, ut sciantur ipsi, et turpis vanitas est: sed sunt, qui scire volunt, ut ardentius aedificent; et caritas est: et sunt, qui scire volunt, ut aedificentur; et prudentia est (Quoted by Leipzig theological faculty in Dedekenn, Thesaurus, 1623, vol. 1, fol. (b) v).
omne simile claudicat
C. S. Lewis (The Abolition of Man): "For wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline, and virtue. For the modern, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique."
Nock on why the Great Tradition (Theory, 52): “we may say a word, perhaps, about their formative character. The literatures of Greece and Rome comprise the longest and fullest continuous record available to us, of what the human mind has been busy about in practically every department of spiritual and social activity; every department, I think, except one—music. This record covers twenty-five hundred consecutive years of the human mind's operations in poetry, drama, law, agriculture, philosophy, architecture, natural history, philology, rhetoric, astronomy, politics, medicine, theology, geography, everything. Hence the mind that has attentively canvassed this record is not only a disciplined mind but an experienced mind; a mind that instinctively views any contemporary phenomenon from the vantage-point of an immensely long perspective attained through this profound and weighty experience of the human spirit's operations. If I may paraphrase the words of Emerson, this discipline brings us into the feeling of an immense longevity, and maintains us in it.” (53): “These studies, then, in a word, were regarded as formative because they are maturing, because they powerfully inculcate the views of life and the demands on life that are appropriate to maturity and that are indeed the specific marks, the outward and visible signs, of the inward and spiritual grace of maturity.”