The History Of Education by Ellwood P. Cubberley (epub e reader .txt) 📖

the pedagogical part, the shortest rule would be, Consult the schools of the Jesuits; for nothing better has been put in practice.” (_De Augmentis_, VI, 4.) [10]

 

SUCCESS OF THE JESUIT SCHOOLS. Displaying a genius for organization worthy of Rome, Loyola and his followers absorbed the best educational ideas of the time as to school organization and management and curriculum, and incorporated these into their educational plan. Too practical to make many changes, but with a keen eye for what was best, they accepted the best and used it much as others had worked it out. From the municipal college of Guyenne, the colleges of Calvin, and Sturm’s organization at Strassburg, they adopted the plan of class organization, with a teacher for each class. From the Calvinists they obtained the idea of the careful supervision of instruction, which was worked out in the Prefect of Studies for their colleges. In their course of study they incorporated the Ciceronian ideal of the humanistic learning, and as careful religious instruction as was provided by any of the reformers. From the Italian court schools they took the idea of physical training. The method of instruction and classroom management which they worked out was detailed, practical, and for their purposes excellent. The reasons for their educational work gave them a clearly defined aim and purpose. The military brotherhood type of organization, the lifetime of celibate service, and the opportunity to sort the carefully selected members according to their ability for service in the different lines of the Order gave them the best-selected teaching force in Europe, and these men they trained for the teaching service with a thoroughness unknown before and seldom equaled since. Knowing why they were at work and what ends they should achieve, intolerant of opposition, intensely practical in all their work, and possessed of an indefatigable zeal in the accomplishment of their purpose, they gave Europe in general and northern continental Europe in particular a system of secondary schools and universities possessed of a high degree of effectiveness, which, combined with religious warfare and persecution, in time drove out or dwarfed all competing institutions in the countries they were able to control.

 

That their educational system, viewed from a modern liberal-education standpoint, equaled in effectiveness for liberal-education ends such institutions as the court schools of Vittorino da Feltre, Battista da Guarino, or other Italian humanistic educators of the Renaissance (p.

267); the French and Swiss colleges of Calvin (p. 331); Colet’s school at Saint Paul’s (p. 275), and the better English grammar schools; or the schools of the Brethren of the Common Life in the Netherlands (p. 271); would hardly be contended for to-day. Such, though, was not their purpose.

To proselyte for the Church rather than to liberalize—from their point of view there had been too much liberalizing already—was their ultimate aim, and their educational work was organized to suppress rather than to awaken more Protestant heresy. The work of this Order was so successful, and for two centuries so dominated secondary and higher education in Europe, that it will pay us to examine a little more closely their educational organization to see more fully the reasons for their large success. In so doing we will examine three points—their school organization, their methods of instruction, and the training of their teachers.

 

JESUIT SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. Each college was presided over by a Rector, who was in effect the president of the institution, and a Prefect of Studies, who was the superintendent of instruction. Below these were the Professors or teachers, the House Prefect, the official disciplinarian of the institution, known as the Corrector, the monitors, and the students. There were two classes of students, interns and externs. Their schools were divided into two courses. The studia inferiora, or lower school, which covered the six years from ten to twelve years of age up to sixteen to eighteen; and the studia superiora, which followed, and included the higher college and university courses, with philosophy and theology as the important subjects. For the whole, there was a very carefully worked-out manual of instruction (R. 180) known as the Ratio Studiorum. [11]

 

The boy entering a Jesuit college was supposed to have previously learned how to read Latin. The first three years were given to learning Latin grammar and a little Greek. In the fourth year Latin and Greek authors were begun, and in the fifth and sixth years a rhetorical study of the Latin authors was made. Latin was the language of the classroom and the playground as well, the mother tongue being used only by permission. Greek was studied through the medium of the Latin. The retention of Latin as the language of all scholarly and political intercourse, and the cultivation of the style and speech of Cicero as the standard of purity and elegance, were the ends aimed at. Careful attention was given to the health and sports of the pupils, and special regard was paid to moral and religious training.

 

Following this lower school of six years came the so-called philosophical course of three years (sometimes two). The study of the Latin classics and rhetoric was continued, and dialectics (logic) and some metaphysics were added. The nine years together covered about the same scope as Sturm’s school (R. 137) at Strassburg (p. 273), but was more formal in character and partook more of the nature of the later formalized humanistic schools.

Slight variations were allowed in places, to meet particular local needs, but this course of study remained practically unchanged until 1832, when some history, geography, and elementary mathematics and science were added to the lower schools, and advanced mathematics and science to the philosophical course. In 1906 each Province of the Order was permitted to change the Ratio further, if necessary to adjust it better to local needs. Above the philosophical course a course of four or six years in philosophy and theology prepared for the higher work of the Order, the four-year course for preaching and the six-year course for teaching.

 

JESUIT SCHOOL METHODS. The characteristic method of the schools was oral, with a consequent closeness of contact of teacher and pupils. This closeness of contact and sympathy was further retained by the system whereby all punishment was given by the official Corrector of the institution. Their method, like that of the modern German Volkschule, was distinctly a teaching and not a questioning method. The teacher planned and gave the instruction; the pupils received it. In the upper classes the teacher explained the general meaning of the entire passage; then the construction of each part; then gave the historical, geographical, and archaeological information needed further to explain the passage; then called attention to the rhetorical and poetical forms and rules; then compared the style with that of other writers; and finally drew the moral lesson. The memory was drilled; but little training of the judgment or understanding was given. Thoroughness, memory drills, and the disciplinary value of studies were foundation stones in the Jesuit’s educational theory. Repetition, they said, was the mother of memory. Each day the work of the previous day was reviewed, and there were further reviews at the end of each week, month, and year.

 

To retain the interest of the pupils amid such a load of memorizing various school devices were resorted to, chief among which were prizes, ranks, emulations, rivals, and public disputations. The system of rivals, whereby each boy had an opponent constantly after him, as shown in Figure 102, was one of the peculiar features of their schools. While the schools were said to have been made pleasant and attractive, the idea of the absolute authority of the Church which they represented pervaded them and repressed the development of that individuality which the court schools of the Italian Renaissance, the schools of the northern humanists, and the Calvinistic colleges had tried particularly to foster. This, however, is a criticism made from a modern point of view. That the school represented well the spirit of the times is indicated by their marked success as teaching institutions.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 102. PLAN OF A JESUIT SCHOOLROOM

The pupils were arranged in equal numbers in opposite rows, known as decuriae, and designated by the numbers. Each boy in each row had a “rival” in the similarly numbered opposite row (one pair is designated by dots), who rose whenever he was called on to recite, and who tried to correct him in some error. A monitor for each group sat at C, and the regular teacher at B. A, D, E, i, o, and x represent various student officials.]

 

TRAINING OF THE JESUIT TEACHER. The newest and the most distinguishing feature of the Jesuit educational scheme, as well as the most important, was the care with which they selected and the thoroughness with which they trained their teachers. To begin with, every Jesuit was a picked man, and of those who entered the Order only the best were selected for teaching.

Each entered the Order for life, was vowed to celibacy, poverty, chastity, uprightness of life, and absolute obedience to the commands of the Order.

The six-year inferior course had to be completed, which required that the boy be sixteen to eighteen years of age before he could take the preliminary steps toward joining the Order. Then a two-year novitiate, away from the world, followed. This was a trial of his real character, his weak points were noted, and his will and determination tested. Many were dismissed before the end of the novitiate. If retained and accepted, he took the preliminary vows and entered the philosophical course of study.

On completing this he was from twenty-one to twenty-three years of age. He was now assigned to teach boys in the inferior classes of some college, and might remain there. If destined for higher work he taught in the inferior classes for two or three years, and then entered the theological course at some Jesuit university. This required four years for those headed for the ministry, and six for those who were being trained for professorships in the colleges. On completing this course the final vows were taken, at an age of from twenty-nine to thirty-two. The training today is still longer. To become a teacher in the inferior classes required training until twenty-one at least, and for college (secondary) classes training until at least twenty-nine. The training was in scholarship, religion, theology, and an apprenticeship in teaching, and was superior to that required for a teaching license in any Protestant country of Europe, or in the Catholic Church itself outside of the Jesuit Order.

 

With such carefully selected and well-educated teachers, themselves models of upright life in an age when priests and monks had been careless, it is not surprising that they wielded an influence wholly out of proportion to their numbers, and supplied Europe with its best secondary schools during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In the loyal Catholic countries they were virtually the first secondary schools outside of the monasteries and churches, and the real introduction of humanism into Spain, Portugal, and parts of France came with the establishment of the Jesuit humanistic colleges. For their schools they wrote new school books —the Protestant books, the most celebrated of which were those of Erasmus, Melanchthon, Sturm, and Lily, were not possible of use—and for a time they put new life into the humanistic type of education. Before the eighteenth century, however, their secondary schools had become as formal as had those in Protestant lands (R. 146), and their universities far more narrow and intolerant.

 

The elements of strength and weakness in the Jesuit system of education has been well summarized by Dabney, [12] in the following words: The order of the Jesuits was anti-democratic, and was founded to uphold authority, and to antagonize the right of private