Jesuit Education/Chapter 1

by Robert Schwickerath

 

Chapter I.

Introduction.

We are living in an age of school reforms and pedagogical experiments. The question of higher education in particular is warmly debated in England, France, Germany, and the United States. The respective merits of rival educational systems are topics of lively discussion and comment in numberless books and articles. New "curricula" are planned on all sides, and new courses are offered in the various seats of learning. Not long ago it was stated that "the American College was passing." Harvard, Yale, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and other leading schools, now accept the studies of the professional schools as meeting the requirements of the last year in college. Yale University was also reported as making ready to follow in the wake of Harvard and abolish the study of Greek as a requisite for admission. The University of Michigan, abandoning the attempt to distinguish between forms of admission or courses of study pursued in the college, will give up degrees like bachelor of letters or bachelor of philosophy, and confer on all its students indiscriminately at graduation the degree of bachelor of arts, in this respect following what is substantially the procedure of Harvard. Harvard, with its system of election, election in the preparatory schools, in the college, and in the professional schools, is the forerunner in the revolution, and to the course it has laid down the other colleges and universities either have adapted themselves or are preparing so to do. "Faculties and Presidents are trying to tear down the old order which they no longer honor."^[1]

For two or three decades various attempts and experiments have been made to establish a "new order." But the dissatisfaction seems rather to grow than to diminish. The man who has kept in touch with pedagogical publications knows right well that there exists in our high schools and colleges an unsettled state of affairs and a wide-spread discontent with present methods. Thus, in the Educational Review, we find the following statements: "It is not without reason that one so often hears the state of the educational world described as chaotic."^[2] The first sentence of an article on "Latin in the High School" informs us that "even to the superficial observer it must be apparent that our secondary Latin teaching is in a state of unrest." "Further proof of this widespread feeling of insecurity lies in the susceptibility of our Latin teachers to fashions or 'fads', in a surprising readiness to adopt innovations and carry them to an extreme."^[3] Many will not care much for the "dead" languages, if only the "sciences" are taught well. What is said about the sciences? The same volume contains an article entitled: "The Disappointing Results of Science Teaching." Therein it is stated that "the results of the teaching of science in schools of all kinds have been very disappointing to the friends and advocates of science teaching. ... The work is unsatisfactory when the best opportunities are provided and skilled teachers devote all their time to it, indeed where they practically have everything their own way. ... This has given the advocates of the older literary studies a chance to look over their spectacles and say: 'I told you so.' It is plain that class-room science-teaching has no history to be proud of, but the reverse. Something is radically wrong when, after a generation of science-teaching, those who have had the best available teaching in it do not show some of the superiority which is claimed for it in insight, tact, skill, judgment, and affairs in general."^[4] Complaints of a similar nature can be found in more recent publications.

It is evident, then, that final judgment on the modern system is reserved for the future. If we consider the results obtained within the last ten years, it appears unintelligible that many writers on education are so unreserved in denouncing systems of the past, which have a "history to be proud of." Indeed, it may be said that the present educational movement is characterized by a morbid craving for novelties, but still more by contempt of old traditions. Modern pedagogy has rightly been called a Proteus. It daily assumes new forms so that even its most ardent followers seem not to know what they are really grappling with. In very truth, pedagogists of to-day appear to be quite certain of only one point, that "the old is worthless and that something new must be produced at any price."^[5]

We do not deny that our age demands "something" new in education. Growth and development are necessary in educational systems. Every age and every nation has its own spirit, its peculiar ways and means to meet a given end, and these very ways and means inevitably exert a great influence on educational methods and call for modifications and adaptations of what has met the purpose of the past. An educational system, fitted in every detail to all times and all nations, is an impossibility. For the majority of cases it would be a Procrustean bed. It would be folly, therefore, to claim that even the best system of education in all its details were as fit for the twentieth century as for the sixteenth, or that the same system in its entirety might be introduced into Japan or China as well as into Germany, England and the United States.

For an educational system must aim not at educating men in general, but at educating the youth of a certain age in a certain country. Hence the necessity of changes, of development. Education is something living and must grow, otherwise it will soon wither and decay. There are, however, certain fundamental principles, certain broad outlines of education, based on sound philosophy and the experience of centuries, which surfer no change. Unfortunately, it is some of these principles which have been abandoned by modern pedagogists, and it is for this reason that many "school reforms" of these days have proved mere "school changes" or, as Professor Münsterberg of Harvard University styles them, "school deteriorations."^[6] This important distinction between what is essential and what is accidental in education, has too frequently been disregarded by those advocates of the new system who claim that the old principles and methods must be given up, because they are not suited to cope with modern conditions. What is but secondary in education, as for instance the election of courses and branches, has been proclaimed to be of vital importance, and its absence in the older systems has been considered as the strongest proof that these systems are entirely antiquated. This mistake has more than once been made by those who attack one of the celebrated old systems, the Ratio Studiorum of the Jesuits.

Only three years ago, President Eliot of Harvard University, in a paper read before the American Institute of Instruction, July 10, 1899, advocated the extension of electivism to secondary or high schools.^[7] As opposed to his favorite system, President Eliot mentioned "the method followed in Moslem countries, where the Koran prescribes the perfect education to be administered to all children alike. Another instance of uniform prescribed education may be found in the curriculum of Jesuit colleges, which has remained almost unchanged for four hundred years, disregarding some trifling concessions made to natural sciences." The President further declared that "the immense deepening and expanding of human knowledge in the nineteenth century and the increasing sense of the sanctity of the individual's gifts and will-power have made uniform prescriptions of study in secondary schools impossible and absurd."

As the Jesuits, together with the Moslems, are said to uphold prescribed courses, they are implicitly charged with attempting what is "absurd," nay "impossible." In our days of critical and fair-minded research, such sweeping condemnations are beyond excuse; they show forth no careful and impartial examination of the system censured. But we have reasons to suspect that lack of sympathy and of knowledge impairs the judgment of most opponents of the Jesuits. "True criticism," writes a distinguished English historian, "must be sympathetic;"^[8] where there is antipathy a false appreciation is inevitable. That lack of sympathy has led many critics into unfair discriminations in regard to the educational system of the Jesuits, can be proved by numerous instances. In the sixteenth century, Protestant as well as Catholic schools made Latin the principal subject matter of instruction, and the study of the mother tongue was well nigh neglected. In many Protestant schools the use of the Latin language in conversation, school exercises and dramatic performances was more strictly enforced than in Jesuit colleges, and those who spoke the vernacular were punished.^[9] Should we not suppose that in Protestant and Jesuit schools the same reasons suggested the use of the Latin tongue? Some Protestant critics assign quite different reasons, but without proof. In a work published by order of the Prussian Ministry for Instruction,^[10] we find the following: "The School System of Saxony of 1528 provided Latin schools pure and simple. Why? Because it demanded an extraordinary amount of time to make Latinists of German boys, so that little time and energy were left for other subjects. Melanchthon, for this reason, excluded even Greek from his plan of studies. As Latin, at that time, was the universal language of all Western Christendom, the official language of the Roman Church and of diplomatic intercourse, the language of the most celebrated code of laws, the only language of learning, mastery of this language was the first and indispensable condition for a career in Church and State, and for every participation in the higher intellectual life." However, when speaking of the great stress laid on Latin in the Jesuit schools, the same author does not hesitate to assert: "A more zealous cultivation of the mother tongue would have opposed the Romish-international tendencies of the Order."^[11] Here we must ask: Was not the Latin language, for Catholics as well as for Protestants, the language of learning, of diplomatic intercourse, of the most celebrated code of laws? And was not the mastery of this language, equally for the Catholics, the indispensable condition for a career in Church and State, and for every participation in the higher intellectual life? Consequently, the Jesuits had to insist on this language as well as the Protestants, and that for the very same reasons. Why, then, impute to them other motives of rather a suspicious character?

Nor are scholarly works of prominent American writers free from similar misstatements. Dr. Russell, Dean of Teachers' College, Columbia University, writes: "Catholic and Protestant schools alike at the beginning of the seventeenth century, gave little heed to the substance of the ancient civilization. Both alike were earnestly devoted to the study of the Latin language – the Jesuits, because it was the universal speech of their Order; the Protestants, because it was the first step towards a knowledge of Holy Writ."^[12] No proof is given to substantiate the discrimination between Protestants and Catholics. Latin was, as Dr. Rethwisch affirms, "the universal language of all Western Christendom," not only the universal speech of the Order of Jesuits. Besides, as the Catholics used extensively the Latin Vulgate of the Bible, the study of Latin was for them much more than for the Protestants "the first step towards a knowledge of Holy Writ."

Lack of sympathy is the least unworthy reason assignable for President Eliot's grouping of only Jesuits and Moslems as the upholders of prescribed courses. Have not all European countries prescribed courses that resemble the system of the Jesuits incomparably more than President Eliot's electivism? Germany, for instance, although it offers various schools: classical (Gymnasium), Latin-scientific (Real-Gymnasium), scientific (Real-Schule), has within these schools strictly uniform curricula.^[13] And yet American educators do not hesitate to say that "the organization of the higher school system, especially in Prussia, is worthy of general imitation;" that "for many years American educators have drawn professional inspiration from German sources;" that "the experience of Germany can teach us much, if we will but learn to consider it aright;" and that "a uniform course of study for all schools of a particular grade, and a common standard for promotion and graduation, can be made most serviceable in a national scheme of education."^[14] Why then mention only Jesuits and Moslems? Considering the esteem in which German schools and scholarship are held by many, it would evidently have produced little effect to have said: "Moslems, the Jesuits and the Germans have prescribed courses."

Many writers on education have been misled in their estimate of the Jesuit system by blindly accepting and uncritically repeating the censures of a few authors who, deservedly or not, have acquired a reputation as pedagogical writers. Thus Quick, in numerous passages of his Educational Reformers, pays a high tribute to the Jesuit system. In a few places, especially in one paragraph, he finds fault with it. In some American works^[15] we find this one paragraph quoted as Quick's judgment on the Jesuit system, and not a word is said of his hearty approbation of most points of that system. It is also most unfortunate that American teachers and writers on education place so much confidence in the productions of M. Compayré, especially his History of Pedagogy. For many reasons this work must be called a most unreliable source of information.^[16] In the chapter on the Jesuits in particular, there are not many sentences which do not contain some misstatement. Whereas nearly all writers, even those most hostile to the Society, acknowledge at least a few good points in its educational system, Compayré cannot admit therein a single redeeming feature. The Jesuits are blamed alike in their failures and in their successes. It is sad to think that from such untrustworthy sources American teachers largely derive their information about the educational labors of the Jesuits and of Catholics in general. Can we wonder that so many prejudices prevail against Jesuit education, of which many know only an ugly caricature?

Indeed, lack of sufficient knowledge is at the root of most censures of the educational principles and methods of the Society. In nearly every case of adverse criticism, it is apparent that a scholarly examination of the official documents has been dispensed with, and that the oft-refuted calumnies of virulent partisan pamphlets have simply been repeated. Or have the assailants of the educational system of the Jesuits carefully studied the original sources: the Fourth Part of the Constitutions, the Ratio Studiorum, and the numerous other documents of the Society, treating of its educational system? Or have they themselves studied in Jesuit colleges? Have their children, relatives or friends been Jesuit pupils? Have they been sufficiently acquainted with Jesuit teachers? If not, is it fair and conscientious criticism to condemn a system about which they possess no reliable information whatever? If now-a-days one writes on the philosophy of India, on the doctrine of Zoroaster, or on the education of the Greeks and Romans, he adorns his books with an elaborate scientific apparatus. He studies the original languages or consults the best translations and commentaries, and spares no pains to let the reader know that he has drawn from trustworthy sources. How much more care should be taken if, not philosophic systems or nations of a far-off past, but a living institution is concerned? No matter how much opposed it may be to the critic's views, fair treatment and justice should never be denied, even if all sympathy is withheld. But a few years ago a Protestant writer in Germany, reviewing Father Duhr's work on the educational system of the Society, recommended the work most earnestly to the Protestant educators; for, as he said, "even our scholarly works on education betray a shocking ignorance in regard to everything pertaining to the Jesuits."^[17] It is needless to say that this remark has an application for America and England.

The study of this system cannot be without interest to those who devote themselves to educating youth. During the two centuries preceding the suppression of the Order, this system exerted a world-wide influence on hundreds of thousands of pupils, and, although in a lesser degree, does so at present.^[18] In 1901 the Jesuits imparted a higher education to more than fifty-two thousand youths, of which number seven thousand two hundred belong to this country. The educational work of the Jesuits produced most brilliant results in former centuries and received most flattering commendations from Protestant scholars and rulers, and from atheistic philosophers.

However, the study of the Ratio Studiorum is not only of historical interest. Protestant writers admit that a close examination of the Jesuit system may teach the educators of our age many valuable lessons. According to Quick "it is a system, a system built up by the united efforts of many astute intellects and showing marvellous skill in selecting means to attain a clearly conceived end. There is then in the history of education little that should be more interesting or might be more instructive to the master of an English public school than the chapter about the Jesuits."^[19] Davidson, in spite of some severe strictures, is not less convinced of the advantages which may be derived from the study of Jesuit education: "While it is impossible for lovers of truth and freedom to have any sympathy with either the aim or matter of Jesuit education, there is one point connected with it that well deserves our most serious consideration, and that is its success. This was due to three causes, first, to the single-minded devotion of the members of the Society; second, to their clear insight into the needs of their times; third, to the completeness with which they systematized their entire course, in view of a simple, well-defined aim. In all these matters we can well afford to imitate them. Indeed, the education of the present day demands just the three conditions which they realized."^[20]

For many the study of one of the old systems may be the greatest novelty. So much is said now-a-days about the new pedagogy and modern psychology, that it might appear as if the past had been utterly ignorant of the true nature of the child and of the rational methods of education. Still the writer hopes to establish that, what the ablest educators, even of our own age, have pronounced essential for the training of the young, is contained in the educational system of the Jesuits. It is not claimed that this system is perfect. No educational system can be found which, both in plan and execution, is without defects. The Society of Jesus has never denied the possibility and necessity of improvements in its educational system; nor has it ever claimed that the Ratio Studiorum, in every detail was to be applied to all countries and to all ages. Changes were made in the course of time; and in many passages of the Ratio Studiorum it is expressly stated that the Superiors are empowered to make these changes, according to the demands of time and place. Thus the teaching of the Jesuits varies considerably in different countries, without necessitating any change in the Order's legislation on education.

A biographer of the founder of the Society says with reference to the educational system of the Order: "It is a plan which admits of every legitimate progress and perfection, and what Ignatius said of the Society in general, may be applied to its system of studies in particular, namely, that it ought to suit itself to the times and comply with them, and not make the times suit themselves to it."^[21] The advice of St. Ignatius is undoubtedly of vital importance to the Order, if now and in future it wants to do the work for which it was instituted. In fact, the versatility of the Jesuits has become proverbial and a reproach to the Order; they are said to be so shrewd and cunning that, among those hostile to the Order, the very word "Jesuit" has come to mean the incarnation of craft and subtlety. Is it probable that the Jesuits on a sudden have utterly forgotten the all-important injunction of their founder? Is it probable that they who are said to be most ambitious and most anxious of success, have so little suited themselves to the times, as to leave their method of teaching unchanged for centuries? Is it possible that the men who, as Davidson says, had such "a clear insight into the needs of their times" do not adapt their system to the needs of our age? Or is their system not capable of being suited to modern times? This indeed is the favorite objection raised now-a-days. "The Ratio Studiorum is antiquated and difficult to reform... For nearly three centuries they [the Jesuits] were the best schoolmasters of Europe; they revolutionized instruction as completely as Frederick the Great modern warfare, and have thus acted, whether they meant it or not, as pioneers of human progress... Whatever may have been the service of the Jesuits in past times, we have little to hope for them in the improvement of education at present. Governments have, on the whole, acted wisely by checking and suppressing their colleges."^[22] At any rate, the study of a system which for "centuries furnished the best schoolmasters of Europe and completely revolutionized instruction", must be interesting for the student of the history of education. For this reason we first present the history, or the development, of this system. In the second part we shall explain its principles, its theory and practice, with special reference to modern educational views.

 

1. New York Sun, March 3, 1901. – However, at the last Commencement, President Hadley of Yale declared that a careful inquiry made among the masters of the secondary schools had furnished abundant evidence decidedly unfavorable to this change, and he allowed it to be understood that Greek would be required at Yale for a good while to come. The Yale Alumni Weekly, July 31st, 1902, pp. 430-32.
2. Educational Review, 1894, p. 62.
3. Ib., p. 25.
4. Ib., p. 485.
5. See Dr. Dittes, in Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1894-95, vol. I, p. 332. – From different sides complaints are heard that many educationists of to-day are conspicuous for their contempt of all that was venerated formerly. Dr. Matthias of Berlin, one of the most distinguished schoolmen of Germany, wrote recently: "Men of sound judgment point with alarm to a sort of pedagogical pride and arrogance of the younger teachers, which was unknown to the older generation." Monatschrift für höhere Schulen, January 1902, p. 9. – Similarly Professor Willmann of the University of Prague: "A morbid hunting after novelties and a haughty contempt of all traditions are the characteristics of the modern educational agitation." In Vigilate, I, p. 31.
6. Atlantic Monthly, May 1900.
7. The paper was printed in the Atlantic Monthly, October 1899.
8. Professor Ramsay in The Church in the Roman Empire before A. D. 170. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893, p. VIII.
9. Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts auf den deutschen Schulen und Universitäten vom Ausgang des Mittelalters bis zur Gegenwart, p. 239. (2. ed. vol. I, p. 352.)
10. Deutschlands höheres Schulwesen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, von Professor Dr. Conrad Rethwisch. Berlin, 1893, p. 12.
11. Ib., p. 2. There it is also stated that "the greatest Greek authors were all excluded from the Jesuit schools, and that the mother tongue and its literature received some attention for the first time in the Revised Ratio of 1832." How utterly false these assertions are will appear from later chapters of this book. Suffice it to state here that among the Greek authors studied in Jesuit schools were Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Demosthenes, etc. See below chapter XIII, § 1, 4-5. On the study of the mother tongue see chapter IV.
12. German Higher Schools, New York, 1899, p. 50.
13. It is only since 1901 that, in the three middle classes of the Gymnasium, English may be taken as an alternative for Greek; in the three highest classes Greek remains obligatory. Besides in these three classes English or French may be taken (just as in many Jesuit Colleges in this country French or German is obligatory).
14. Dr. Russell, l. c., pp. V, 409, 422. (Italics are ours.) – See also Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1888-1889, Vol. I, pp. 32-74, especially pp. 70 foll, where it is stated that "the superiority of German public schools over those of other nations has been acknowledged repeatedly." In another place of the same Report (1891-92), Vol. I, p. 140, the words of Dr. Joynes of the University of S. C. are quoted: "Germany has now become the schoolmistress of the world."
15. So in the histories of education by Painter and Seeley. – I wish to state here that of all American text-books on the history of education the latest, the History of Education, by Professor Kemp, (Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1902) is the most impartial. The chapter on the Jesuits (XVIII.) is singularly free from the misrepresentations which are so numerous in other text-books. In one point, however, regarding "emulation," the author is mistaken. See below, ch. XVI, § 4.
16. Br. Azarias calls this work a "condensation of all virulence and hatred against everything Catholic, but ill concealed beneath a tone of philosophic moderation." American Ecclesiastical Review, 1890, p. 80. foll. – Another critic said recently of M. Compayré: "He misquotes and suppresses, blinded, I suppose, by a bad form of Anti-Jesuit disease. You can certainly learn from his book the fury of that malady. In France, one may fairly say, M. Compayré is recognized as meaning to attack the beliefs of Christian pupils, and as ranging himself essentially on the side of those who wish 'to eliminate the hypothesis of God' from the education of children." (This opinion was expressed in a resolution of five hundred teachers in a meeting at Bordeaux in 1901.) Mr. Stockley, of the University of New Brunswick, in the American Ecclesiastical Review, July 1902, p. 44. – See also the criticism of Father Poland, S. J., in the American Catholic Quarterly Review, January 1902.
17. Central-Organ für die Interessen des Realschulwesens, Berlin.
18. Quick prefers to speak of the Jesuit schools as "things of the past." Compayré thinks otherwise: "They are more powerful than is believed; and it would be an error to think that the last word is spoken with them." Quick, Educ. Ref., p. 35, note.
19. Educational Reformers, p. 59.
20. A History of Education (New York, Scribner's Sons, 1900), p. 187.
21. Genelli, Life of St. Ignatius, part II, ch. VII.
22. Oscar Browning in the Encyclopedia Britannica, article: "Education".