CHAPTER XIV
[1] "These Calvinists had a common program of broad scope—not merely doctrinal, but also political, economic, and social. Their common program and their social ideals demanded education of all as instruments of Providence for church and commonwealth. Their industrious habits and productive economic life provided funds for education. Their representative institutions in both church and commonwealth not only necessitated general diffusion of knowledge, but furnished the organization necessary for founding, supervising, and maintaining, in wholesome touch with the common man, both elementary and higher institutions of learning. Their disciplined and responsive conscience, their consequent intensity of moral conviction and spirit of self- sacrifice for the common weal, compelled them to realize, in concrete and permanent form, their ideals of college and common school." (Foster, H. D., In Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education, vol. i, p. 499.)
[2] In 1625 a list of the famous men of the city of Louvain, in Belgium, was printed. More than one fourth of those listed had studied in the colleges of Geneva.
[3] Foster, H. D., Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education, vol. I, p. 491.
[4] In Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education, vol. I, p. 498.
[5] "That public schools abounded throughout the Netherlands is evident. Every study of the archives of town or province discloses their presence. The minutes of every religious body bear overwhelming testimony not only to the existence of schools, but also a zealous interest in their maintenance." (Kilpatrick, W. H., Dutch Schools of New Netherlands, p. 37.)
[6] For long the Church had had the Inquisition, but, while it had rendered loyal and iniquitous service, the results had been in no way commensurate with the bitter hatred which its work awakened. Excommunication, persecution, imprisonment, the stake, and the sword had been tried extensively, but with only partial success. In education the reformers had shown the Church a new method, which was positive and effective and did not awaken opposition, and from the reformer's zeal for Latin grammar schools to provide an intelligent ministry the Church took its cue of establishing schools to train its future leaders. It was a long-headed and far-sighted plan, and its success was proportionately large.
[7] This is not true of their missions in foreign lands, where the mission priests usually gave elementary instruction. Elementary schools were maintained in the Jesuit missions of North and South America. Thus a mission school was established at Quebec as early as 1635, and one at Newtown, in Catholic Maryland, in 1640. After 1740 elementary parish schools were opened by the Jesuits among the German Catholics in Pennsylvania. From these beginnings Catholic parish schools have been developed in the United States.
[8] The Order was reëstablished in 1814 and it has since been allowed to reëstablish itself in most countries, though not in France or Germany. There are 41 Jesuit colleges in America, in 21 states. (For list see Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education, vol. III, p. 540.) In the revision of its course of instruction, in 1832, modern studies were added, but the Society has never played any such conspicuous part in education since its reëstablishment as it did during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
[9] It is an interesting speculation as to whether the fact that the Jesuits made such headway in German lands, and so deeply impressed their training on the children of the nobility there, has had any connection with the attitude of German and Austrian political leaders in their governmental and political policies since that time.
[10] By the middle of the eighteenth century the Jesuits had lost much of their former vigor, and their colleges their former large influence. They had become powerful and arrogant, mixed deeply in political intrigues, quarreled with any one who crossed their path, and refused to change their instruction to meet new intellectual needs. They were finally driven from France, Spain, Portugal, and German lands, and were ultimately abolished as an Order.
[11] The care with which the Ratio Studiorum was worked out is typical of the thoroughness of the Order. A preliminary outline of work was followed for many years, the whole being experimental. Reports on it were made, and finally a preliminary Ratio was issued, in 1586. This was again revised and cast into final form, in 1599. In this form it remained until 1832, when some modern studies were added.
[12] Dabney, R. H., The Causes of the French Revolution, p. 203.
[13] For example, the "States-General" of France met four times during the seventeenth century, with weighty problems of religion and state for consideration, yet in three of the four meetings resolutions were passed urging the clergy to establish schoolmasters in all the towns and villages, and a general system of compulsory education for all.
[14] Les vrais Constitutions des Religieuses de la Congrégation de Nostre Dame, chap. xi, sec. 6, 2d ed., Toul, 1694.
[15] See especially Felix Cadet, Port-Royal Education (Scribners, New York, 1898), for translations of many of the brief pedagogical writings of members of the Order.
[16] Father Demia, at Lyons, had organized what was probably the first training-school for masters, in 1672. La Salle's training-school dates from 1684. Francke's German Seminarium Praeceptorum, at Halle, the first in German lands, dates from 1696.
[17] The numerous pictures of schools and educational literature well into the nineteenth century show the general prevalence of the individual method of instruction. It was the method in American schools until well toward the middle of the nineteenth century. To have graded the children and introduced class instruction in 1684 was an important advance which the world has been slow in learning.
[18] Everything was according to rule, even the ferule, which must be made of two strips of leather, ten to twelve inches long, sewed together. All offenses, and the number and location of the blows for each, were specified. Later the corporal punishment was replaced by penances.