Cultivating Talents and Social Responsibility Aims and Means of
Early Jesuit Education The Prefect of the Inferior Classes
"should by all means support the Rector in guiding and
organizing our schools, so that all students make progress no
less in the Liberal Arts than in their conduct of life." The
Inferior Classes at Jesuit colleges, for which these rules of
the Ratio studiorum were crafted in 1599, comprised what
elsewhere was termed studia humanitatis, that is, Latin Grammar,
Greek, poetry, and rhetoric. Thus, they were the introductory
studies before students could move over to philosophy and
eventually theology. This first rule, expressly designated as
the 'aim' of the Prefect, creates an unmistakable link between
moral conduct and academic learning. So, moral conduct is an aim
of education that goes on par with scholarly learning. But one
might think that this simply refers to the individual moral
perfection of the student. And, indeed, the rules for students
seemingly confirm this individualistic view