2. One thing at a time, and that mastered thoroughly.
3. Much repetition to insure retention.
4. Use of the mother tongue for all instruction, and the languages to
be taught through it.
5. Everything to be taught without constraint. The teacher to teach,
and the scholars to keep order and discipline.
6. No learning by heart. Much questioning and understanding.
7. Uniformity in books and methods a necessity.
8. Knowledge of things to precede words about things.
9. Individual experience and contact and inquiry to replace authority.
We see here the essentials of the Baconian ideas, as well as the foreshadowings of many other subsequent reforms in teaching method.
During the next half-dozen years Ratke was a much-interviewed person, as the idea of a more general education of the people, advanced by the Protestant reformers, had appealed strongly to the imagination of many of the German princes. Finally the necessary money was raised to establish an experimental school, [4] printing-presses were set up to print the necessary books, the people of the village of Köthen, in Anhalt, were ordered to send their children for instruction, and the school opened with Ratke in charge and amid great expectations and enthusiasm. A year and a half later the school had failed, through the bad management of Ratke and his inability to realize the extravagant hopes he had aroused, and he himself had been thrown into prison as an impostor by the princes. This ended Ratke's work. He is important chiefly for his pioneer work as the forerunner of the greatest educator of the seventeenth century.