The Intellectual Scope.
In the preceding chapter we mentioned a statement of the present
General of the Society, “that the characteristics of the Ratio
Studiorum are not to be sought in the subject matter or in the order,
but in what may be called the form or the spirit of the system.” Father
Martin explained in what this form consists: “It consists chiefly in
_the training of the mind_, which is the object, and in the various
_exercises_, which are the means to attain this object.” In these words
we have the intellectual scope of the Ratio Studiorum, in fact the
intellectual scope of every rational system of education. This training
of the mind means the gradual and harmonious development of all the
higher faculties of man, of memory, imagination, intellect, and will.
The very meaning of the word confirms this view: to “educate”
signifies to exercise the mental faculties of man, by instruction,
training and discipline in such a way as to develop and render
efficient the natural powers; to develop a man physically, mentally,
morally, and spiritually.[543] The mind is _educated_ when its powers
are _developed_ and disciplined, so that it can perform its appropriate
work. In speaking of one as _educated_, we imply not merely that he
has acquired knowledge, but that his mental powers have been developed
and disciplined to effective action. Education is, consequently, the
systematic _development_ and cultivation of the mind and faculties.
In these definitions we see that education signifies development, and
rightly so, as its original meaning is to “draw out.” The fundamental
mistake of many modern systems is the utter disregard of this truth.
Father Dowling, S. J., of Creighton University, has expressed this very
well in the following words[544]: “Unfortunately education, which ought
to signify a _drawing out_, has come to be regarded as the proper word
to denote a _putting in_. Properly it supposes that there is something
in the mind capable of development, faculties that can be trained,
implicit knowledge which can be made explicit, dormant powers which
can be awakened. The main end of education should be to unfold these
faculties. It means not so much the actual imparting of knowledge, as
the development of the power to gain knowledge, to apply the intellect,
to cultivate taste, utilize the memory, make use of observations
and facts. It is not essential that the studies which produce these
results should be directly useful in after life any more than it is
necessary for the athlete in the development of his powers to wield the
blacksmith’s hammer, instead of using dumb-bells or horizontal bars,
none of which play any part in his subsequent career; he puts them all
aside when the physical powers have been developed.”
The Germans express the same idea admirably by the name they give to
their colleges. They call a college a _gymnasium_. Indeed, this is
what a college should be, a place of mental gymnastics, of training,
not for the muscles, but the mind. Education ought not to be merely
an accumulating of knowledge, of data from various sciences, of
bits of learning gathered here and there. This, alas, it now is in
too many modern systems. “Give the pupils facts, broad information,
varied instruction,” is their watch-word. And yet, facts, information,
instruction, are only a means of educating, not education itself;
they are, to use the above mentioned metaphor, the dumb-bells, the
horizontal bars, the pulleys of this mental gymnasium, by the use of
which the mind acquires that agility and nimbleness, that quickness of
action, and last, but not least, that gracefulness and refinement which
we call taste, the noblest result of a well balanced education. A mind
thus trained and developed may then take up any special study. A young
man thus educated has his intellectual tools sharpened and ready for
use. He will accomplish more, and will do more thorough and successful
work, in any line of professional or practical work, than the one who
from the beginning took up special studies. Undoubtedly, the latter
will get an earlier start in life; when twenty-five years old he is
earning money, while the former has just finished his long course of
training. But wait until they are thirty-five, then, _ceteris paribus_,
the one who laid a deeper and broader foundation of general education,
will be known as the more successful lawyer, physician, or teacher,
perhaps even the more prosperous business man, and certainly the more
cultured and more refined gentleman, one who exercises an elevating and
ennobling influence on all who come into contact with him.
It may safely be said that one of the worst features of modern
educational systems is the tendency to cram too much into the courses
of study, too much that is considered “practical” in one way or
other. As Professor Treitschke of Berlin has expressed it, “the
greatest danger that threatens the education of modern man lies in
the infinite distraction of our inner life, in the superabundance of
mental impressions of every sort that rush upon us and hamper the one
prerequisite of all great work: recollection of soul, concentration of
mind.” Hence he thinks it absolutely necessary that youths should be
educated as simply as possible, and should not be mentally overfed by
many and various things.[545] It is, indeed, a most serious mistake
to think that a person who knows all sorts of things is educated; no,
sciolism is not culture. Consequently, that school is by no means the
right one which “coaches” or “crams” for the future profession,--we
are not speaking of the professional schools,--but that which trains
the _man_, trains the mental faculties, develops clear logical
thinking, cultivates the imagination, ennobles the sentiments, and
strengthens the will. This, indeed, is educating, that is, “drawing
out” what lies hidden and undeveloped in the soul. Instead of this,
many modern schools aim at further expansion, which, considering the
limited capacity of the youthful mind, is inseparable from shallowness.
What is gained in extent of knowledge, is necessarily lost in depth,
thoroughness, and mastery of the knowledge acquired. What is sadly
needed now-a-days is concentration, a wise restriction of subjects
which leads to depth and interior strength.
The educational system of the Society always aimed at a thorough
general training in a few branches. Four characteristic points are
discernible in this training: it is to be thorough, prolonged, general,
simple. It is to be _thorough_; for superficial knowledge, smattering,
is not training. It must be _prolonged_; for thoroughness cannot be
effected in a short time. Time is as essential for maturing a man’s
mind and character, as it is for ripening a choice fruit; one may
bake an apple in a few moments, but one cannot ripen it in that time.
Education must, in this regard, follow the laws of nature. Time and
prolonged and patient efforts are absolutely necessary in order to
produce any success in education. In the third place this training
is to be _general_, not professional; its aim is the man, not the
specialist; it is the foundation on which the professional training is
to be built up. It is, in other words, a _liberal_ training; it has to
cultivate the ideal, that which is really human and permanent in life.
What is useful and practical will be cared for in time, and, as a rule,
is sufficiently looked after. Lastly, this training must be _simple_,
that is, it must be based on a few well-related branches; if too many
disconnected subjects are treated, thoroughness becomes absolutely
impossible.
The modern tendency in education is in the opposite direction. It aims
at the useful and practical rather than the general training, or, at
best, allots too short a time to the general education. Hence the very
foundation of the practical training is weak. Besides, it comprises too
many various subjects, the consuming of which does not effect a healthy
mental growth, but an intellectual hypertrophy.[546] It is showy in
the extreme, and dazzles the eye of the public, and even of some whose
education and position in the world of culture should be a safeguard
against such delusion. For these very reasons it is most detrimental to
true progress. Far-seeing men, in this country as well as in Europe,
realize the dangers of this tendency, and warn all educators against
them most emphatically.
In an address on the occasion of the 27th annual commencement of the
Jesuit College, Buffalo, N. Y., 1897, the Right Rev. James E. Quigley,
D. D., Archbishop of Chicago, said: “We Americans are a practical
people, but we are also impatient. We cannot arrive at our goal quickly
enough. We send the boys to a high school for three or four years, and
then we call them away and send them to the study of law or medicine.
Now I would tell the parents: if you want to make a lawyer or a doctor
of your son, let him finish the college course, he will be the better
for it in his profession. We have now lawyers and doctors enough, what
we need is better lawyers and better doctors.”
Dr. McCosh, for twenty years President of Princeton College, says:
“There is a loud demand in the present day for college education being
made what they call _practical_. I believe that this is a mistake. A
well known ship-builder once said to me: ‘Do not try to teach my art
in school; see that you make the youth intelligent, and then I will
easily teach him ship-building.’ The business of a college is to teach
scientific principles of all sorts of practical application. The youth
thus trained will start life in far better circumstances than those who
have learned only the details of their craft, which are best learned in
offices, stores and factories, and will commonly outstrip them in the
rivalries of life. He will be able to advance when others are obliged
to stop.”[547]
Professor Münsterberg of Harvard University, in his article on
_School Reform_,[548] speaks admirably on the same subject. He points
out the various fallacies underlying the system that advocates the
earliest possible beginning of specialization. He ably proves that the
pretensions of this system are wrong, and its calculations superficial,
even from the merely utilitarian and mercenary standpoint. But above
all, this system is to be condemned from the standpoint of liberal
education. The Harvard Professor writes: “The higher the level on
which the professional specializing begins, the more effective it is.
I have said that we German boys did not think of any specialization
and individual variation before we reached a level corresponding to a
college graduation here. In this country, the college must still go
on for a while playing the double rôle of the place for the general
education of the one, and the workshop for the professional training
of the other; but at least the high school ought to be faithful to its
only goal of general education without professional anticipations.
Moreover, we are not only professional wage earners; we live for
our friends and our nation; we face social and political, moral and
religious problems; we are in contact with nature and science, with art
and literature; we shape our towns and our time, and all that is common
to every one,--to the banker and the manufacturer, to the minister
and the teacher, to the lawyer and the physician. The technique of
our profession, then, appears only as a small variation of the large
background of work in which we all share; and if the education must
be adapted to our later life, all these problems demand a uniform
education for the members of the same social community. The division
of labor lies on the outside. We are specialists in our handiwork, but
our heart work is uniform, and the demand for individual education
emphasizes the small differences in our tasks, and ignores the great
similarities. And, after all, who is able to say what a boy of twelve
years will need for his special life work? It is easily said in a
school programme that the course will be adapted to the needs of the
particular pupil with respect to his later life, but it would be harder
to say how we are to find out what the boy does need; and even if we
know it, the straight line to the goal is not always the shortest way.”
Mr. Clement L. Smith is not less outspoken on this topic[549]: “An
education which aims to equip men for particular callings, or to give
them a special training for entering upon those callings, however
useful it may be, is not the liberal education which should be the
single aim of the college. It should be the aim of the secondary
school, too,--if not for all pupils, certainly for those who are
going to college. For those who turn away, at the end of the school
course, to train themselves for some technical pursuit, let appropriate
technical schools be provided, and let them be held in all honor. But
they should not masquerade as institutions for liberal education. Above
all, they should not invade the province of the college, introducing
confusion, and turning it into a place where there are a number of
unconnected and independent educations going on at the same time,
instead of a place where, though there are many paths, they all lead to
a single goal. For the essence of a liberal education lies in the aim,
not in the studies pursued,[550]--not in letters, not in science. These
are the materials with which it works; and employs them, not to make
professional or technical experts, but to make men and women of broader
views, of greater intellectual power,--better equipped for whatever
profession or employment they may undertake, and for their equally
important function of citizen and neighbor.”
The Honorable James Bryce, a man excellently fitted to express his
opinion on American, as well as on European, questions, a few years
ago, while advocating a special commercial training, warns against
shortening the time allotted to general education, whether elementary
or secondary. On the contrary, the further the general education
can be carried, the better for the young man, and more would be
lost by curtailing the time spent on the subjects which everybody
should learn, than would be gained by any special preparation for a
particular employment. He reminds the people of England and the United
States that the demand for a commercial education might do more harm
than good, “were it to lead to a shortening or to a commercializing
of general school education, or were it to dispose us to ignore the
supreme importance of securing that the teaching of the commercial
subjects themselves shall be so directed as to arouse and stimulate the
faculties no less than to inform the memory of the learner.”[551]
Long before this, Arnold had spoken in similar terms: “It is no wisdom
to make boys prodigies of information, but it is our wisdom and our
duty to cultivate their faculties, each in its season, first the
memory and the imagination, and then the judgment, to furnish them
with the means and to excite the desire of improving themselves.”[552]
The most enlightened and experienced German educators insist on this
point as strongly as any of those whose authority is cited above.[553]
It is needless to point out the fact that these writers clearly and
strikingly express the same opinion about the intellectual scope of
education as the Jesuits, namely, that real education does not consist
in merely imparting information, but in training the mental faculties,
in the _efformatio ingenii_, as the General of the Society called it in
1893.
In this country the question about the intellectual scope of education
is closely connected with the other most important question: What is
the function of the high school and college? Aside from the champions
of extreme electivism, there is no educator of note who does not
consider _general culture_ the function of the high school. A great
number of prominent educators do not hesitate to assign the same
function to the college, relegating specialization, the acquisition of
scholarship, or professional skill, entirely, or for the main part,
to the university. The college should concern itself with the final
stage of secondary education; it ought to stimulate general culture
and to train character, rather than to impart specific instruction. A
college President declared that the first step towards a betterment is
the reassertion of the aim and nature of college life. The university,
demanding for entrance a bachelor’s degree, is the crown of our
educational system. Its province is higher education, the cultivation
of advanced scholarship and research. But “the college should give
itself no airs. It should not pretend to be a university.”[554]
It needs scarcely be stated that the Jesuits’ view of the college is
exactly the same. They assign no other function, no other aim to it
than general culture, harmonious training of the mind.
How is this training of the mind to be obtained? The Jesuit answers:
By _exercise_, that is, by the different exercises, such as are laid
down in the Ratio Studiorum: exercises of the intellect--translations,
compositions; exercises of the memory--recitations and declamations;
debates (academies), etc. These exercises have sometimes been styled
“mechanical”; still how can any training be effected except by devices
according to strict rule? Certainly not by the mere lecture of the
teacher, however scholarly or interesting it may be. No one becomes
an athlete by attending lectures on gymnastics, and no one becomes a
perfect soldier by reading the U. S. Infantry Drill Book; but practice,
drill, exercise is required. No one’s mental faculties will ever become
really developed, unless he is trained and drilled. The insisting on
this fundamental principle is probably the most characteristic point
in the educational system of the Society. Practice and exercise run
all through the different grades, beginning from the teaching of the
elements of Latin up to the highest course of theology. It is the same
great principle of the necessity of self-exertion, self-activity which
Ignatius so forcibly insists upon in that admirable little book, which
he justly calls the “Spiritual Exercises.” As there the exercitant
is exhorted to act for himself, and not merely to suffer himself to
be acted upon, so here the pupil is required from the beginning to
act, not merely to listen, to exert himself in the various prescribed
exercises.
As these exercises will be spoken of in a later chapter of this
book,[555] we need not discuss them here. Suffice it to say that the
ablest educators of the nineteenth century have recommended exercises
which are essentially the same as those of the Society. So Dr. Arnold,
the famous head-master of Rugby; Dr. Wiese, for decades one of the most
influential men in the Prussian Ministry of Education; Dr. M. Seyffert,
the great Latinist. In the introduction to his excellent _Scholae
Latinae_, Dr. Seyffert has the following: “I thought this work, the
fruit of twenty-five years experience, was something new. However, I
had scarcely finished, when through the information of a friend of
mine, I found out that there was nothing new under the sun. The merit
and honor of the invention belongs, as I know now, to the seventeenth
century, and, as hardly can be expected otherwise, to the diligence of
the Order of the Jesuits, who were unwearied in preparing pedagogical
helps and means. I shall be satisfied if my work finds only one tenth
of the approval which their work found, and as I think, most deservedly
found.” Another great educator of Germany, K. L. Roth, said: “Exercise
was the secret of the old college-systems; it forced the pupil daily
to use for the formation of his judgment the material accumulated to
excess in his memory.”[556]
FOOTNOTES:
[543] _The Standard Dictionary._
[544] _The Catholic College as a Preparation for a Business Career_, p.
7.--See also _The Month_, February, 1886; _Education and School_, by
the Rev. John Gerard, S. J.
[545] _Neue Jahrbücher_, 1901, vol. VIII, p. 474.
[546] “The educational system [of America] is undertaking too much,
at least in the grades below the college. ‘Research’ is attempted
where drill is what is needed.” President Draper of the University of
Illinois, _Educational Review_, May 1902, p. 455.--See also the words
of Ex-President Cleveland, referred to on p. 294, and the _Electrical
World_, _l. c._
[547] _The Life of James McCosh_, edited by W. M. Sloane, p. 204.
[548] _Atlantic Monthly_, May 1900, p. 662 foll.
[549] “The American College in the 20th Century,” _Atlantic Monthly_,
Feb. 1900.
[550] Almost literally what Father Martin declared to be the essence of
Jesuit education. See above p. 286 and 297.
[551] _North American Review_, June 1899.
[552] Fitch, _Thomas and Matthew Arnold_, p. 61.
[553] See especially Weissenfels, _Die Bildungswirren der Gegenwart_,
Berlin, 1901.--Matthias, _Aus Schule_, _Unterricht und Erziehung_,
1901.--Professor Weissenfels, throughout his book, expresses his
deepest anxiety at the ever increasing spirit of utilitarianism in
German schools.
[554] President Jones of Hobart College, in the _Forum_, January 1901:
_Is the College Graduate Impracticable_?--The greatest difficulty in
this country lies in the fact that pupils go too late to the high
school or college. The study of Latin should be commenced at the age
of ten or twelve years, instead of thirteen or fourteen. See Dr.
Stanley Hall, _Forum_, Sept. 1901; and below ch. XVI, § 1.--The same is
advocated by Professor Nightingale in the _Report of the Conference on
English_, read before the National Association of Education, at Ashbury
Park, N. J., 1894. German boys begin with nine or ten years, why should
not the clever American boy be able to begin with ten or eleven?
[555] Chapter XVI.
[556] In his _Gymnasial-Pädagogik_; see Duhr, p. 119.