Ratio Studiorum

The Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum Societatis Iesu (Method and System of the Studies of the Society of Jesus), often abbreviated as Ratio Studiorum (Latin: Plan of Studies), was a document that standardized the globally influential system of Jesuit education in 1599. The Ratio was a collection of regulations for school officials and teachers. It relied on the classical subjects (theology, philosophy, Latin and Greek) and did not contain any provisions for elementary education. The document was revised in 1832, still built upon the classical subjects but giving more attention to the study of native languages of the students, history, geography, mathematics, and the natural sciences. The work was the product of many hands and wide experience, but it most directly derives from the efforts of an international team of academics at the Collegio Romano, the Jesuit school in Rome. The Ratio had a major impact on later humanist education. In his Renaissance Literary Theory and Practice, Charles Sears Baldwin writes, "The sixteenth century closed with the full [classical] doctrine operative in the Ratio Studiorum and in the rhetoric of Soarez" (64).