QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Compare the attention to careful religious instruction in the secondary schools provided by the Lutherans, Calvinists, and English. What analogous instruction do we provide in the American high schools? Is it as thorough or as well done?
2. Compare the scope and ideals of the educational system provided by the Calvinists with the same for the Lutherans and Anglicans.
3. Compare the characteristics of Calvinistic (Huguenot) education, as summarized by Foster, with present-day state educational purposes.
4. Just what kind of a school system did Knox propose (1560) for Scotland?
5. Show how the educational program of the Jesuits reveals Ignatius Loyola as a man of vision.
6. Viewed from the purposes the Order had in mind, was it warranted in neglecting the education of the masses?
7. Does the success of the Order show the importance to society of finding and educating the future leader? Can all men be trained for leadership?
8. What does the statement that the Jesuits were "too practical to make many changes," but had "a keen eye for what was best" in the work of others, indicate as to the nature of school administration and educational progress?
9. Indicate the advantages which the Jesuits had in their teachers and teaching-aim over us of to-day. How could we develop an aim as clearly defined and potent as theirs? Could we select teachers with such care? How?
10. Compare the religious and educational propaganda of the Jesuits with the recent political propaganda of the Germans.
11. What is meant by the statement that the Jesuit teaching method, like that of the modern German Volksschule, was a teaching and not a questioning method?
12. Compare present American standards for teacher-training for elementary and secondary teaching with those required by the Jesuits:—(a) as to length of preparation; (b) as to nature and scope of preparation.
13. How do you explain the introduction of sewing into the elementary vernacular Catholic schools for girls, so long before handiwork for boys was thought of?
14. In schools so formally organized as those of La Salle, how do you explain the great freedom allowed in questioning on arithmetic and the Catechism?
15. Why should La Salle's work have been so opposed by both Church and civil authorities? Do you consider that his Order ever made what would be called rapid progress?
16. Why must the education of leaders always precede the education of the masses?
17. Explain how European countries came naturally to have two largely independent school systems—a secondary school for leaders and an elementary school for the masses—whereas we have only one continuous system.
18. Explain why modern state systems of education developed first in the German States, and why England and the Catholic nations of Europe were so long in developing state school systems.