Loyola and the Educational System of the JesuitsHughes, Thomas
History
Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits
Hughes, Thomas
Education -- History; Ignatius, of Loyola, Saint, 1491-1556; Jesuits
The manner of teaching the young is oral and tutorial. All through the
Jesuit System the manner followed is oral: in the examinations of the
lower classes, where writing is admitted, it is only as a specimen of
style and composition that writing enters the examination exercises.
With the younger students, the manner of teaching is oral in its
most specific sense. It is not that generic quality which will suit
as well the lecturer or the public speaker. But it is the tutorial
manner, which includes a fund of sympathy, of that tact which supposes
sympathy, of such a superiority, both moral and intellectual, as
knows how to stoop, and elevate the boy by stooping, and does it all
naturally, instinctively, gracefully. In the ordinary course of human
affairs, this magnetic power of the teacher is more intense, according
as in years he is nearer to the subject on whom his ascendancy plays,
and by whom it is spontaneously admitted. I mean that inestimable and
precious subject, the mind and heart of the impressionable boy, who is
about to develop into manhood, first young, and then mature.
The youthful subject is rich, though not in positive acquisitions
already made its own; for, in this respect, it may rather be considered
_parum fructuosa_, as Sacchini says; that is, bearing little fruit as
yet, either of judgment or positive acquirements. But it is rich in
its promise, as it struggles upward into the sunshine of varied and
beautiful truth. This is the fact which imposes upon liberal education
the duty of omitting nothing that is either beautiful or polished,
in imagination, thought, or style. It justifies Belles Lettres and
the most finished course of Literature, as being the chosen garden of
flowers and fruit, to entertain withal, richly and exquisitely, the
youthful promise of mind, sentiment, and heart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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