ABSTRACT
The most valued goals of modern education are to inculcate a capacity to think independentiy. The pupil should assimilate an existing body of information and then exercise critical understanding upon it. This stress on order and conformity ensured that memorising or learning by rote played an enormous role in the educational process. The catechitical form was central to all teaching and learning. Even arithmetic teaching texts resembled simple catechisms because they did not try to explain theory, relying instead on memorising rules and examples. Teachers might make up their own teaching materials or use almost anything as a basis for instruction, and often had to in parts of Europe where texts were sparse or parents too poor to buy them. German catechisms of the sixteenth century were often manuscript, suggesting they were locally produced and learned orally, the teacher declaiming questions and answers. Catechism was at the leading edge of any early modern Christianisation or conversion campaign.
