<p>During the last nine years of his life, Ignatius (founder of the Jesuits) opened 33 schools. Within a century 300 Jesuit colleges dotted Catholic Europe in “one of the great extensions and consolidations of Renaissance humanism”. His innovations were perpetuated by his followers so that two centuries later Jesuits operated 740 Jesuit schools (survivors of over a thousand which had been started) and taught in eleven other state schools. Jesuits were called the schoolmasters of Europe during these centuries, not only because of their schools but also for their pre-eminence as scholars and for the thousands of textbooks they composed. Christopher Clavius, S.J., for example, whom Descartes and Leibniz acknowledged as a source of their inspiration, wrote a standard geometry text used throughout Europe. </p>
<p>Today there is an extensive network of Jesuit schools educating one and a half million students. There are 90 Jesuit colleges in 27 countries. Here in the United States the 28 Jesuit colleges and universities have over a million living graduates. There are also 430 Jesuit high schools in 55 countries. In these schools the Ignatian system of values has attracted exceptionally competent faculty as well as highly qualified students. They form a Jesuit network, not that they are administered in the same way, but that they pursue the same goals. </p>
<p>from: [Jesuit</a> Educational Tradition](<a href=“http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/jmac/se/sjedtrad.htm]Jesuit”>http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/jmac/se/sjedtrad.htm)</p>