Page:Jesuit Education.djvu/137

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THE RATIO STUDIORUM OF 1599.
117

year the Rector shall report to the General about the college, and all officials of the college shall inform the General through sealed letters about the administration by the Rector."[1]

The chief assistant of the Rector is the Prefect of Studies. To him belongs the direct supervision of the classes and everything connected with instruction. He must be a man of literary and scientific accomplishments and of experience in teaching, so that both teachers and students can have recourse to him with confidence in all questions pertaining to education. It is his duty to assign the students to their proper classes, to determine the matter of examination, and to appoint the examiners, to select the authors to be read during the following scholastic year,[2] to visit every class at least once in two weeks, to admonish the masters of any defects he notices in their manner of teaching, and to direct them by other useful advice. In all this he is the instrument of the Rector, whom he has to consult in all important matters.

There is another assistant of the Rector, the Prefect of Discipline, who is immediately responsible for all that concerns external order and discipline. From these few details, it will appear that the government of a Jesuit college is, at once, extremely simple and highly efficient.

The regulations contained under No. II are for the theological faculty in universities and seminaries. We have to examine chiefly the last two classes: the regu-

  1. Monumenta Paedagogica, p. 102.
  2. "Before selecting the authors", says Father Nadal, "let the Prefect of Studies hear first the opinion of the teachers." Mon. Paed., p. 130.