Over the last 5 centuries, successive generations of educators have engaged in a reevaluation of curriculum and pedagogy in an effort to reveal the mechanisms that underlie the mysteries of the educational process. The current debate in the USA over the nature of pedagogical reform, particularly in terms of teacher accountability, high-stakes testing and the standardization of teacher education programmes, continues to adhere to this long tradition. This article describes the historical pedagogical practices generated by Renaissance humanists' reforms of scholastic education, ones transported across the Atlantic to the New World to become the standard forms of curriculum and pedagogy in the USA. This examination begins with a discussion on medieval scholasticism's search for more efficient procedures by which knowledge could be dispensed to students. This discussion leads to Ramus's pedagogical solution--the Ramist method. The conclusion briefly touches upon its appropriation and use by Calvinist educators and the colonial Puritans in general.