§ 1. The history of Education in the fifteen hundreds tells chiefly of two very different classes of men. First we have the practical men, who set themselves to supply the general demand for instruction in the classical languages. This class includes most of the successful schoolmasters, such as Sturm, Trotzendorf, Neander, and the Jesuits. The other class were thinkers, who never attempted to teach, but merely gave form to truths which would in the end affect teaching. These were especially Rabelais and Montaigne. § 2. With the sixteen hundreds we come to men who have earned for themselves a name unpleasant in our ears, although it might fittingly be applied to all the greatest benefactors of the human race. I mean the name of Innovators. These men were not successful; at least they seemed unsuccessful to their contemporaries, who contrasted the promised results with the actual. But their efforts were by no means thrown away: and posterity at least, has acknowledged its obligations to them. One sees now that they could hardly have expected justice in their own time. It is safe to adopt the customary plan; it is safe to speculate how that plan may and should be altered; but it is dangerous[104] to attempt to translate new thought into new action, and boldly to advance without a track, trusting to principles which may, like the compass, show you the right direction, but, like the compass, will give you no hint of the obstacles that lie before you.
The chief demands made by the Innovators have been: 1st, that the study of things should precede, or be united with, the study of words (v. Appendix, p. 538); 2nd, that knowledge should be communicated, where possible, by appeals to the senses; 3rd, that all linguistic study should begin with that of the mother-tongue; 4th, that Latin and Greek should be taught to such boys only as would be likely to complete a learned education; 5th, that physical education should be attended to in all classes of society for the sake of health, not simply with a view to gentlemanly accomplishments; 6th, that a new method of teaching should be adopted, framed “according to Nature.”
Their notions of method have, of course, been very various; but their systems mostly agree in these particulars:—
1. They proceed from the concrete to the abstract, giving some knowledge of the thing itself before the rules which refer to it. 2. They employ the student in analysing matter put before him, rather than in working synthetically according to precept. 3. They require the student to teach himself and investigate for himself under the superintendence and guidance of the master, rather than be taught by the master and receive anything on the master’s authority. 4. They rely on the interest excited in the pupil by the acquisition of knowledge, and renounce coercion. 5. Only that which is understood may be committed to memory (v. supra, p. 74, n.)
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§ 3. The first of the Innovators was Wolfgang Ratichius, who, oddly enough, is known to posterity by a name he and his contemporaries never heard of. His father’s name was Radtké or Ratké, and the son having received a University education, translated this into Ratichius. With our usual impatience of redundant syllables, we have attempted to reduce the word to its original dimensions, and in the process have hit upon Ratich, which is a new name altogether.
Ratke (to adopt the true form of the original) was connected, as Basedow was a hundred and fifty years later, with Holstein and Hamburg. He was born at Wilster in Holstein in 1571, and studied at Hamburg and at the University of Rostock. He afterwards travelled to Amsterdam and to England, and it was perhaps owing to his residence in this country that he was acquainted with the new philosophy of Bacon. We next hear of him at the Electoral Diet, held as usual in Frankfurt-on-Main, in 1612. He was then over forty years old, and he had elaborated a new scheme for teaching. Like all inventors, he was fully impressed with the importance of his discovery, and he sent to the assembled Princes an address, in which he undertook some startling performances. He was able, he said: (1) to teach young or old Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, or other languages, in a very short time and without any difficulty; (2) to establish schools in which all arts should be taught and extended; (3) to introduce and peaceably establish throughout the German Empire a uniform speech, a uniform government, and (still more wonderful) a uniform religion.
§ 4. Naturally enough the address arrested the attention of the Princes. The Landgraf Lewis of Darmstadt thought the matter worthy of examination, and he[106] deputed two learned men, Jung and Helwig, to confer with Ratke. Their report was entirely favourable, and they did all they could to get for Ratke the means of carrying his scheme into execution. “We are,” writes Helwig, “in bondage to Latin. The Greeks and Saracens would never have done so much for posterity if they had spent their youth in acquiring a foreign tongue. We must study our own language, and then sciences. Ratichius has discovered the art of teaching according to Nature. By his method, languages will be quickly learned, so that we shall have time for science; and science will be learned even better still, as the natural system suits best with science, which is the study of Nature.” Moved by this report the Town Council of Augsburg agreed to give Ratke the necessary power over their schools, and accompanied by Helwig, he accordingly went to Augsburg and set to work. But the good folks of Augsburg were like children, who expect a plant as soon as they have sown the seed. They were speedily dissatisfied, and Ratke and Helwig left Augsburg, the latter much discouraged but still faithful to his friend. Ratke went to Frankfurt again, and a Commission was appointed to consider his proposals, but by its advice Ratke was “allowed to try elsewhere.”
§ 5. He would never have had a fair chance had he not had a firm friend in the Duchess Dorothy of Weimar. Then, as now, we find women taking the lead in everything which promises to improve education, and this good Duchess sent for Ratke and tested his method by herself taking lessons of him in Hebrew. With this adult pupil his plans seem to have answered well, and she always continued his admirer and advocate. By her advice her brother, Prince Lewis of Anhalt-Koethen, decided that the great discovery should not be lost for want of a fair trial; so he called Ratke to Koethen[107] and complied with all his demands. A band of teachers sworn to secrecy were first of all instructed in the art by Ratke himself. Next, schools with very costly appliances were provided, and lastly some 500 little Koetheners—boys and girls—were collected and handed over to Ratke to work his wonders with.
§ 6. It never seems to have occurred either to Ratke or his friends or the Prince that all the principles and methods that ever were or ever will be established could not enable a man without experience to organize a school of 500 children. A man who had never been in the water might just as well plunge into the sea at once and trust to his knowledge of the laws of fluid pressure to save him from drowning. There are endless details to be settled which would bewilder any one without experience. Some years ago school-buildings were provided for one of our county schools, and the council consulted a master of great experience who strongly urged them not to start as they had intended with 300 boys. “I would not undertake such a thing,” said he. When pressed for his reason, he said quietly, “I would not be responsible for the boots.” I have no doubt Ratke had to come down from his principles and his new method to deal with numberless little questions of caps, bonnets, late children, broken windows, and the like; and he was without the tact and the experience which enable many ordinary men and women, who know nothing of principles, to settle such matters satisfactorily.
§ 7. Years afterwards there was another thinker much more profound and influential than Ratke, who was quite as incompetent to organize. I mean Pestalozzi. But Pestalozzi had one great advantage over Ratke. He attached all his assistants to him by inspiring them with[108] love and reverence of himself. This made up for many deficiencies. But Ratke was not like the fatherly, self-sacrificing Pestalozzi. He leads us to suspect him of being an impostor by making a mystery of his invention, and he never could keep the peace with his assistants.
§ 8. So, as might have been expected, the grand experiment failed. The Prince, exasperated at being placed in a somewhat ridiculous position, and possibly at the serious loss of money into the bargain, revenged himself on Ratke by throwing him into prison, nor would he release him till he had made him sign a paper in which he admitted that he had undertaken more than he was able to fulfil.
§ 9. This was no doubt the case; and yet Ratke had done more for the Prince than the Prince for Ratke. In Koethen had been opened the first German school in which the children were taught to make a study of the German language.
Ratke never recovered from his failure at Koethen, and nothing memorable is recorded of him afterwards. He died in 1635.
§ 10. Much was written by Ratke; much has been written about him; and those who wish to know more than the few particulars I have given may find all they want in Raumer or Barnard. The Innovator failed in gaining the applause of his contemporaries, and he does not seem to stand high in the respect of posterity; but he was a pioneer in the art of didactics, and the rules which Raumer has gathered from the Methodus Institutionis nova ... Ratichii et Ratichianorum, published by Rhenius at Leipzig in 1626, raise some of the most interesting points to which a teachers attention can be directed. I will therefore state them, and say briefly what I think of them.
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§ 11. I. In everything we should follow the order of Nature. There is a certain natural sequence along which the human intelligence moves in acquiring knowledge. This sequence must be studied, and instruction must be based on the knowledge of it.
Here, as in all teaching of the Reformers, we find “Nature” used as if the word stood for some definite idea. From the time of the Stoics we have been exhorted to “follow Nature.” In more modern times the demand was well formulated by Picus of Mirandola: “Take no heed what thing many men do, but what thing the very law of Nature, what thing very reason, what thing our Lord Himself showeth thee to be done.” (Trans. by Sir Thomas More, quoted in Seebohm, Oxford Reformers.)
Pope, always happy in expression but not always clear in thought, talks of—
“Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light.”
(Essay on C., i, 70.)
But as Dr. W. T. Harris has well pointed out (St. Louis, Mo., School Report, ’78, ’79, p. 217), with this word “Nature” writers on education do a great deal of juggling. Some times they use it for the external world, including in it man’s unconscious growth, sometimes they make it stand for the ideal. What sense does Ratke attach to it? One might have some difficulty in determining. Perhaps the best meaning we can nowadays find for his rule is: study Psychology.
§ 12. II. One thing at a time. Master one subject before you take up another. For each language master a single book. Go over it again and again till you have completely made it your own.
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In its crude form this rule could not be carried out. If the attempt were made the results would be no better than from the six months’ course of Terence under Ratke. It is “against all Nature” to go on hammering away at one thing day after day without any change; and there is a point beyond which any attempt at thoroughness must end in simple stagnation. The rule then would have two fatal drawbacks: 1st, it would lead to monotony; 2nd, it would require a completeness of learning which to t............