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Although but little more than twenty years the senior of Comenius, Ratke’s mental development was less tardy, so that when the Moravian was a young collegian at Herborn, Ratke was enjoying the full flush of popularity as an educational reformer. Born at Wilster in Holstein (Germany), in 1571, he trained in the gymnasium at Hamburg, and later studied philosophy at Rostock. Later he travelled in England and Holland; studied Hebrew and Arabic, and formulated the plan of education which made him famous as a reformer. He attached great value to his plan and expressed great unwillingness to divulge it without adequate remuneration. He made known his contemplated reforms at a diet of the German Empire, held at Frankfort on the 12th of May, 1612. They were threefold: (1) To teach Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, or any other language, to young or old in a very short time; (2) to establish schools in which the arts and sciences should be taught and extended; (3) to introduce a uniform speech throughout the empire, and, at the same time, uniform government and religion. He proposed to follow the order and course of nature, and teach first the mother-tongue, after this Hebrew and Greek, as being the tongues of the original text of the Bible, and, lastly, Latin.

Through the influence of the princes (and more especially by the encouragement of the Duchess Dorothea of Weimar), the plans of Ratke were submitted to a commission selected from the faculties of the universities at Jena and Giessen—Professors Grawer, Brendel, Walther, and Wolf representing Jena and Professors Helwig and Jung, Giessen. The report was favorable to Ratke. Professor Helwig, who was one of the best linguists of his day, was the spokesman for Giessen, and he accepted Ratke’s views with great enthusiasm. “By diligent reflection and long practice,” he says, “Ratke has discovered a valuable method by which good arts and languages can be taught and studied more easily, quickly, and correctly than has been usual in the schools. Ratke’s method is more practicable in the arts than in the sciences, since arts and sciences are by their nature consistent with themselves, while the languages, on the contrary, by long use have acquired many inaccuracies.”

Professor Helwig commends especially the methodology in Ratke’s plan, and urges that we must consider not only the knowledge to be imparted, but as well the method of imparting knowledge. He says: “Nature does much, it is true, but when art assists her, her work is much more certain and complete. Therefore it is necessary that there should be an especial art to which any one who desires to teach can adhere, so that he shall not teach by mere opinion and guess, nor by native instinct alone, but by the rules of his art; just as he who would speak correctly by the rules of grammar, and he who would sing correctly by the rules of music. This art of teaching, like the art of logic, applies to all languages, arts, and sciences. It discusses among other things how to distinguish among minds and gifts, so that the quicker may not be delayed, and that, on the contrary, those who are by nature not so quick may not remain behind; how and in what order to arrange the exercises; how to assist the understanding; how to strengthen the memory; how to sharpen the intellect without violence and after the true course of nature. This art of teaching, no less than other arts, has its fixed laws and rules, founded not only upon the nature and understanding of man, but upon the peculiarities of languages, arts, and sciences; and it admits of no ways of teaching which are not deduced from sure grounds and founded upon proof.” The Jena professors were no less favorable with regard to this new art of teaching.

The influence of this report on the fame of Ratke was far-reaching. The following year (1614) he was invited to Augsburg to reform the schools of that city. This invitation was the outgrowth of a study of his plan by David Höschel, the principal of St. Anne’s School, and two other teachers appointed by the city to accompany him to Frankfort and aid him in the investigation. They reported that Ratke had so far explained his method to them that they were satisfied and pleased with it; and the invitation to Ratke promptly followed. Beyond a few monographs by the Augsburg disciples, based on his method, and inspired doubtless by his sojourn there, we are altogether without evidence of the success or failure of the reforms at Augsburg.

Early in 1616, Prince Ludwig of Anhalt-Gotha yielded to the persuasions of his sister, the Duchess Dorothea of Weimar, and invited Ratke to Gotha to organize the schools there in accordance with his views. He engaged to organize and supervise the schools and to instruct and train the teachers, but he bound the prince to exact from each teacher a promise not to divulge his method to any one.

A printing-office was established at Gotha to supply the books required by the new order. Fonts of type in six languages were imported from Holland, and four compositors and two pressmen were brought from Rostock and Jena. The people of Gotha were required by the prince to send their children to the schools organized by Ratke. Two hundred and thirty-one boys and two hundred and two girls were enrolled.

The school was graded into six classes. The mother-tongue was taught in the lowest classes; Latin was begun in the fourth, and Greek in the sixth. He required that the teacher in the lowest class should be a man of kind manners, and that he need know no language but the German. This scandalized the whole German nation. A schoolmaster ignorant of Latin! Critics appeared from the first with the most cogent reasons for distrusting the “new methods.” But Ratke had the confidence of the prince, and all went merrily for a time. The instruction was simplified; and, besides the mother-tongue, arithmetic, singing, and religion were taught.

But he encountered numerous obstacles at Gotha: the teachers of the town, it would appear, did not fully share his views; the town adhered to the Reformed Church and Ratke was a Lutheran—a fact which caused no end of trouble; and the prince was not altogether satisfied with the fulfilment of Ratke’s promises of reform. The pastor of the Reformed Church of Gotha preferred formal charges of heterodoxy against him, and maintained, besides, that Ratke made too little provision for the study of music and the catechism; that too much time was given to recreation; that the discipline was altogether too mild; and that the children were permitted to pass from one study to another too rapidly. Singular charges, these! And the more singular when one recalls the long hours and the harsh discipline of the seventeenth century.

The opposition was strong, and at the end of eighteen months the Gotha experiment was brought to an abrupt close. Ratke was not only dismissed, but was imprisoned on the charge that he “had claimed and promised more than he knew that he could bring to pass.” After spending the best of a year in prison, he signed a declaration in which he assented to the charges. Then the prince released him. He went to Magdeburg, where he was well received by the school authorities; but the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the city were soon at war with him, and he moved on to Rudolstadt, where he was cordially received by the Princess Anna Sophia, wife of Prince Gunther of Swarzburg-Rudolstadt.

Subsequently Oxenstiern, the chancellor of Sweden, sought his services in the reformation of the Swedish schools; but instead of the requested interview, he sent the chancellor a thick quarto. “I accomplished this wearisome labor,” says Oxenstiern; “and after I had read the whole book through, I found that he had not ill displayed the faults of the schools, but his remedies did not seem to me adequate.” Ratke died shortly afterward at the age of sixty-four years.

Ratke’s contribution to education was chiefly in the matter of methodology. His leading principles were: (1) In everything we should follow the order of nature. There is a certain natural sequence along which the human intelligence moves in the acquisition of knowledge. This sequence must be studied, and instruction must be based on a knowledge of it. (2) One thing at a time. Each subject of study should be orderly developed and thoroughly dealt with before proceeding to the next. (3) There should be frequent repetition. It is astonishing what may be accomplished by the frequent repetition of one thing. (4) Everything first in the mother-tongue. The first thinking should always be in the vernacular. Whatever the vocation, the pupil should learn to express himself in the mother-tongue. After the mother-tongue has been mastered, the other languages may be studied. (5) Everything without compulsion. Children cannot be whipped into learning or wishing to learn; by compulsion and blows they are so disgusted with their studies that study becomes hateful to them. Moreover, it is contrary to nature to flog children for not remembering what has been taught them. If they had been properly taught they would have remembered, and blows would have been unnecessary. Children should be taught to love and reverence—not to fear their teachers. (6) Nothing should be learned by rote. Learning by heart weakens the understanding. If a subject has been well developed, and has been impressed upon the mind by frequent repetition, the memory of it will follow without any pains. Frequent hours of recreation are advised; in fact, no two lessons should come immediately together. (7) A definite method (and a uniform method) for all studies. In the languages, arts, and sciences, there must be a conformity in the methods of teaching, text-books used, and precepts given. The German grammar, for instance, must agree with the Hebrew and the Greek as far as the idioms of the language will permit. (8) The thing itself should first be studied, and then whatever explains it. Study first the literature of a language and then its grammar. A basis of material must first be laid in the mind before rules can be applied. He admits that many of the grammars furnish examples with the rules; but these examples “come together from all sorts of authors, like mixed fodder in a manger.” (9) Everything must be learned by experience and examination. Nothing is to be taken on authority. It will be recalled that Ratke visited England after the completion of his studies at Rostock; and it is altogether likely that while there he became a convert to induction and the philosophy of Bacon.

In most particulars Ratke and Comenius were in harmony. Both urged that the study of things should precede or be united with the study of words; that knowledge should be communicated through appeals to the senses; that all linguistic study should begin with the mother-tongue; that methods of teaching should be in accordance with the laws of nature; and that progress in studies should be based not on compulsion, but on the interest aroused in the pupils.