Laudator Temporis Acti

Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945), Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964), p. 88:

Once, I remember, long before my book was written, when I was listening to some young American educators who were all agog over this-or-that new wrinkle in curricular gadgetry, I said, perhaps with some impatience, that the Ratio Studiorum of Acquaviva had been doing very well by itself for a little matter of three hundred years or so, and if any one had ever suggested any valid essential improvements on it, or could do so now, he was just the man I should like to see. I got no takers. It turned out that these educators had not heard of the Ratio Studiorum, and I suspect they were not quite sure whether Acquaviva was the hero of Rossini's opera or the name of a Pullman car.

If it's not possible to adopt the Ratio Studiorum in toto, perhaps we could start piecemeal, with the adoption of just a few reforms:

• It scarcely becomes the dignity of a professor to cite an authority whose works he himself has not read. (Common Rules of the Professors of Higher Faculties, 8)
• No one shall be permitted to carry weapons either in the corridors or in the classrooms, even of the higher classes. (Rules of the Prefect of Lower Studies, 43)
• Seat-mates must be careful not to copy from one another; for if two compositions are found to be identical or even alike, both will be open to suspicion, since it will be impossible to discover which one was copied from the other. (Rules for Examinations, 5)
• Class contests are to be highly valued and are to be held whenever time permits, so that honorable rivalry which is a powerful incentive to studies may be fostered. (Common Rules for the Teachers of the Lower Classes, 31)
• Daily memory work is necessary for a student of rhetoric. (Rules of the Teacher of Rhetoric, 3)
• No one should apply himself to reading or writing for more than two hours without taking a brief respite. (Rules of the Scholastics of the Society, 10)
• All disfiguring or marking of benches, the professor’s chair, seats, walls, doors, windows, or other furniture by drawing, writing, or carving is strictly forbidden. (Rules for Extern Students, 10)

The translations are from the edition of Allan P. Farrell (Washington: Conference of Major Superiors of Jesuits, 1970).

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.