German in the school. R.'s services. love and reverence of himself. This made up for many deficiencies. But Ratke was not like the fatherly, selfsacrificing 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. died in 1635. He § 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 teacher's attention can be directed. I will therefore state them, and say briefly what I think of them. 1. Follow Nature. 2. One thing at a time. § 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 86 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." 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. 3. Over and over again. In its crude form this rule could not be carried out. It the attempt were made the results would be no better than from the six months' course of Terence under Ratke. It is "against a 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 the young would be impossible. But in these days no one follows Ratke. On the other hand, concentration in study is often neglected, and our time-tables afford specimens of the most ingenious mosaic work, in which everything has a place, but in so small a quantity that the learners never find out what each thing really is. School subjects are like the clubs of the eastern tale, which did not give out their medicinal properties till the patient got warm in the use of them. When a good hold on a subject has once been secured, short study, with considerable intervals between, may suffice to keep up and even increase the knowledge already obtained; but in matters of any difficulty, e.g., in a new language, no start is ever made without allotting to it much more than two or three hours a week. It is perhaps a mistake to suppose that if a good deal of the language may be learnt by giving it ten hours a week, twice that amount might be acquired in twenty hours. It is a much greater mistake if we think that one-fifth of the amount might be acquired in two hours. § 13. III. The same thing should be repeated over and over again. This is like the Jesuits' Repetitio Mater Studiorum; and the same notion was well developed 200 years later by Jacotot. 4. Everything through the mother-tongue. By Ratke's application of this rule some odd results were produced. The little Koetheners were drilled for German in a book of the Bible (Genesis was selected), and then for Latin in a play of Terence. Unlike many "theoretical notions" this precept of Ratke's comes more and more into favour as the schoolmaster increases in age and experience. But we must be careful to take our pupils with us; and this repeating the same thing over and over may seem to them what marking time would seem to soldiers who wanted to march. Even more than the last rule this is open to the objections that monotony is deadening, and perfect attainment of anything but words impossible. In keeping to a subject then we must not rely on simple repetition. The rule now accepted is thus stated by Diesterweg :-"Every subject of instruction should be viewed from as many sides as possible, and as varied exercises as possible should be set on one and the same thing." The art of the master is shown in disguising repetition and bringing known things into new connection, so that they may partially at least retain their freshness. 14. IV. First let the mother-tongue be studied, and teach everything through the mother-tongue, so that the learner's attention may not be diverted to the language. We saw that Sturm, the leading schoolmaster of Renascence, tried to suppress the mother-tongue and substitute Latin for it. Against this a vigorous protest was made in this country by Mulcaster. And our language was never conquered by a foreign language, as German was conquered first by Latin and then by French. But "the tongues have always had the lion's share of attention in the schoolroom, and though many have seen and Milton has said that "our understanding cannot in this body found itself 5. Nothing on compulsion. but on sensible things," this truth is only now making its way into the schoolroom. Hitherto the foundation has hardly been laid before "the schoolmaster has stept in and staid the building by confounding the language.”* Ratke's protest against this will always be put to his credit in the history of education. "The young § 15. V. Everything without constraint. should not be beaten to make them learn or for not having learnt. It is compulsion and stripes that set young people against studying. Boys are often beaten for not having learnt, but they would have learnt had they been well taught. The human understanding is so formed that it has pleasure in receiving what it should retain and this pleasure you destroy by your harshness. Where the master is skilful and judicious, the boys will take to him and to their lessons. Folly lurks indeed in the heart of the child and must be driven out with the rod; but not by the teacher." Here at least there is nothing original in Ratke's precept. A goodly array of authorities have condemned learning "upon compulsion." This array extends at least as far as * Lectures and Essays: English in School, by J. R. Seeley, p. 222. Elsewhere in the same lecture (p. 229) Professor Seeley says: "The schoolmaster might set this right. Every boy that enters the school is a talking creature. He is a performer, in his small degree, upon the same instrument as Milton and Shakespeare. Only do not sacrifice this advantage. Do not try by artificial and laborious processes to give him a new knowledge before you have developed that which he has already. Train and perfect the gift of speech, unfold all that is in it, and you train at the same time the power of thought and the power of intellectual sympathy, you enable your pupil to think the thoughts and to delight in the words of great philosophers and poets." I wish this lecture were published separately. |