Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits — John Shaqi
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
Not knowing what the absolute average really was in these 700
institutions, we may still form some idea of what the sum total of
students must have been at its lowest figure. For this purpose, we can
take an average which seems about the lowest possible. I have not met
with any distinct mention of a college having less than 300 scholars.
There are indeed frequent complaints in the general assemblies,
regarding what are denounced as "small" colleges. However, it seems
clear from numerous indications, as, for instance, from the Encyclical
letter of the General Paul Oliva,[51] that these colleges were called
small, not primarily on account of an insufficient number of students,
but because of insufficient foundations, which did not support the
Professors actually employed. A document for the Rectors notes
that "thus far almost all the colleges, even such as have received
endowments, suffer want regularly, and have frequently to borrow
money."[52]
Hence we may be allowed to take, as a tentative average, 300 students
to a college. At once, we rise to a sum total of more than 200,000
students in these collegiate and university grades, all being formed
at a given date under one system of studies and of government,
intellectual and moral.
If statistics, in that nicely tabulated form which delights modern
bureaus, have failed us as we run over the whole world to decipher
the indications, there is yet another view which we may catch of the
same subject, and one that is equally valuable. It is the multitude
of nations into which this educational growth ramified. At Goa, in
Hindustan, the seminary, which was inferior to none in Europe, had for
its students, Brahmins, Persians, Arabians, Ethiopians, Armenians,
Chaldeans, Malabari, Cananorii, Guzarates, Dacanii, and others from the
countries beyond the Ganges. Japan had its colleges at Funai, Arima,
Anzuchzana, and Nangasaki. China had a college at Macao; and later
on many more, reaching into the interior, where the Fathers became
the highest mandarins in the service of the Emperor, and built his
observatory. Towards the close of the eighteenth century a large number
of colleges were flourishing in Central and South America. All of these
disappeared, when the Order was suppressed. The youth, who could
afford to obtain the education needed, went over to Europe, whence they
returned, a generation quite different from what had been known of
before. They returned with the principles of the Revolution. And the
whole history of Central and South America has changed, from that date
onwards, into a series of revolutions, which are the standing marvel of
political scientists to our day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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