Repost: Review of Jesuit Education by Robert Schwickerath, S.J. (1905)

[539] There is no end to the discussions and laying down of doctrines and methods touching the education of our youth; and indeed there should not be. For, although the fundamental principles and broad outlines of all moral and intellectual training are given us in a sound philosophy whose efficiency is attested by its harmony with right reason, divine revelation, and an experience of centuries under varying conditions, there yet remains the ever changeable application to the growing development of individual temperament and character, under the progressive influences of racial, national, social, and religious life and environment.

Education in the ordinary acceptation of the term has a twofold scope, the moral and the intellectual. The moral scope may be said to have been ultimately defined for us by Christianity. The Divine Founder of the Church has unalterably fixed in the evangelical principles the lines that divide right and wrong and further the steps that lead unquestionably to a perfecting of the moral qualities according to the divine model. What is greatest and best in all Christian ages has attested the inherent value of the evangelical counsels, although that value has at times been obscured by what is usually termed institutionalism, a process of observance in which the letter of the Christian law is made to supplant the spirit.

The secondary scope of education is the intellectual, the training of the mind; and although I have called it secondary, it is nevertheless capable of enhancing the vital worth of moral or religious education, so as to complete thereby the type of perfect manhood destined for the attainment of its end in God's service, and of absolute happiness.

Both the training of the heart to the attainment of the highest moral sense, and the training of the mind which illuminates the right moral sense to a more perfectly balanced and conscious as well as spontaneous observance of the Divine will, require certain exercises by which, as in military drill, the faculties are directed and habituated [540] to their proper use. When St. Ignatius founded his great educational Order he provided for both these fields of moral and intellectual training a set of rules and observances, perfected in part by his disciples, and known respectively as the Spiritual Exercises and the Ratio Studiorum. The precepts and directions of these two sets of exercises are based upon the constitution, necessities, and ultimate purpose of human nature in the service of its Creator through the love of man for his neighbor; and the method is regulated by the effort of a gradual and harmonious development of all the higher faculties of man,—memory, imagination, intellect, and will. The process of development must be gradual and harmonious. This is effected by exercising the faculties upon certain phenomena and facts, as they present themselves, and the result is dependent upon the capacity of the faculties to take in the phenomena or facts, and to cover them or go out to them. Thus we have a double process of drawing out and putting in, both working simultaneously like the sunlight which draws moisture from and gives heat to the vegetation in the same act. It stands to reason that the "putting in" process is that which gives quality to the mind, and that if we put either too much or the wrong thing into it, we fail to draw out its proportionate activity by overloading or unbalancing the carrying capacity. Old things, out-of-the-way things, as well as untrue things are not as apt to stir the power of observing and comparing in a young mind, as are things present, things new and evidently true. Hence whatever the excellence of our educational principles and methods, if they are exercised upon objects that do not appeal to the young sense by their freshness and reality, the exercise is apt to frustrate the primary object of intellectual education, by failing to properly illuminate moral truth; and although the youth thus educated may be good, he is out of harmony with his environment and therefore incapable of exercising any direct influence upon his fellows.

It is this charge of ill-timed, antiquated exercises employed in their educational methods, which is made against the Jesuits and their instructors of to-day. Whatever the value of the principles and the methods of the Ratio Studiorum in the past and in the abstract, they fail, so it is argued, in an application which demands essentially new objects of illustration and experiment. Father Schwickerath contests this view by showing in an exhaustive and critical way that the Ratio Studiorum has never been employed or regarded by the Society as a system whose precepts are intended permanently to fix the programme [sic] [541] of studies; that its primary object is to maintain intact the essentials of an educational process by which the faculties of the mind are gradually and harmoniously developed. He shows how as a matter of fact the theory of adaptation to actual conditions is marked throughout the history of the educational system of the Society of Jesus from the time of its foundation, when it undertook to gather up the threads of earlier scholasticism and to bring them into contact with the nobler aspirations of the Humanists, giving due attention alike to solid thought and classic form.

It is a very interesting story, this effort to draw up plans, to test, adjust, and revise the Ratio Studiorum, and to note the effects not only of its application at different periods and in different countries, but also of the interference with it during the seasons of suppression by outside elements. Not quite one-half of the volume is taken up with this history of the great educational code, and the difficulties it had to meet in its being carried out by the teachers of the Order.

The principal and really important part of the volume, however, is devoted to an exposition of the principles themselves which constitute the Jesuit method of education. We have already indicated what the vital and pervading element of the Ratio Studiorum is in itself. But one of its characteristics is what the author calls its adaptability. It is not without reason that the Jesuits as a body are credited with a prudent conservatism as the keystone of their public activity. That same conservatism is found in the Ratio Studiorum. Hence our author is able to examine with a certain impartiality arising from his very standpoint the modern systems in which "cramming," "premature specialization," "electivism," have become a more or less distinguishing feature. He contrasts the probable and indeed proved results of a classical training insisted on by the followers of the Ratio with the colorless culture imparted by the elective systems in which the Latin and Greek authors have a subordinate place; he shows how the modern lecture system has brought a tendency to undervalue real teaching; how the neglect of philosophy as a definite system of mental training has induced an atmosphere of vague speculation and exalted personal assertiveness. And then he points the way to a restoration of the ideal teaching with its essential phases of all-sided discipline and training to the use of freedom and of all that appeals to the youth's sense of right and goodness and beauty.

It would lead us too far to discuss here separate and detailed phases of the education which Father Schwickerath advocates. His [542] book needs to be not only read, but studied in order to understand the futility of the arguments advanced against the Jesuit system of education in its fundamental outlines and principles. No doubt here and there in Jesuit colleges there is to be found an excessive and one-sided insistence on traditional details, and this because of the inherent conservatism which we have already pointed out. But neither the Order nor the Ratio Studiorum is responsible for this kind of limitation to which all institutions are liable, and the more so in proportion to their general excellence. The average religious feels as though he or she were better than the religious of other orders or than seculars, not because there is really any conviction of personal superiority, but because the institute, the army and country, so to speak, to which the individual belongs, has a greater claim upon the admiration and gratitude of its members than any other of similar kind. Thus we do what those did and commanded who preceded us in a worthy capacity, as if their acts were not only an example, but an infallible guide never to be deviated from without guile or dishonor. Our author shows that this is not the spirit of St. Ignatius, or of Aquaviva, or of the great leaders of the Order down to our own day. Let us have the Ratio in our education, and the adjustment to modern conditions may easily be accomplished without opposition or misunderstanding on the part of all true educators in or out of the Society.

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Source: Review of Jesuit Education: Its History and Principles Viewed in the Light of Modern Educational Problems, by Robert Schwickerath, SJ, American Ecclesiastical Review 32 (May 1905): 539–542.