Читать книгу Essays on Educational Reformers онлайн

46 страница из 91

§ 27. Punishments were to be as light as possible, and the master was to shut his eyes to offences whenever he thought he might do so with safety. Grave offences were to be visited with corporal punishment, performed by a “corrector,” who was not a member of the Order. Where this chastisement did not have a good effect, the pupil was to be expelled.[28]

§ 28. The dry details into which I have been drawn by faithfully copying the manner of the Ratio Studiorum may seem to the reader to afford no answer to the question which naturally suggests itself—To what did the school-system of the Jesuits owe its enormous popularity? But in part, at least, these details do afford an answer. They show us that the Jesuits were intensely practical. The Ratio Studiorum hardly contains a single principle; but what it does is this—it points out a perfectly attainable goal, and carefully defines the road by which that goal is to be approached. For each class was prescribed not only the work to be done, but also the end to be kept in view. Thus method reigned throughout—perhaps not the best method, as the object to be attained was assuredly not the highest object—but the method, such as it was, was applied with undeviating exactness. In this particular the Jesuit schools contrasted strongly with their rivals of old, as indeed with the ordinary school of the present day. The Head Master, who is to the modern English school what the General, Provincial, Rector, Prefect of Studies, and Ratio Studiorum combined were to a school of the Jesuits, has perhaps no standard in view up to which the boy should have been brought when his school course is completed.[29] The masters of forms teach just those portion of their subject in which they themselves are interested, in any way that occurs to them, with by no means uniform success; so that when two forms are examined with the same examination paper, it is no very uncommon occurrence for the lower to be found superior to the higher. It is, perhaps, to be expected that a course in which uniform method tends to a definite goal would on the whole be more successful than one in which a boy has to accustom himself by turns to half-a-dozen different methods, invented at haphazard by individual masters with different aims in view, if indeed they have any aim at all.