The History of Education / Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

III. SENSE REALISM

THE NEW EDUCATIONAL AIMS OF THIS GROUP. This represented a still further and more important step in advance than either of the preceding. In a very direct way sense realism in education was an outgrowth of the organizing work of Francis Bacon. Its aim was:

(1) To apply the same inductive method formulated by Bacon for the sciences to the work of education, with a view to organizing a general method which would greatly simplify the instructional process, reduce educational work to an organized system, and in consequence effect a great saving of time; and

(2) To replace the instruction in Latin by instruction in the vernacular, [3] and to substitute new scientific and social studies, deemed of greater value for a modern world, for the excessive devotion to linguistic studies.

The sixteenth century had been essentially a period of criticism in education, and the leading thinkers on education, as in other lines of intellectual activity, were not in the schools. In the seventeenth century we come to a new group of men who attempted to think out and work out in practice the ideas advanced by the critics of the preceding period. In the seventeenth century we have, in consequence, the first serious attempt to formulate an educational method since the days of the Athenian Greeks and the treatise of Quintilian.

The possibility of formulating an educational method that would simplify the educational process and save time in instruction, appealed to a number of thinkers, in different lands. This group of thinkers, due to their new methods of attack and thought, the German historian of education, Karl von Raumer, has called Innovators. The chief pedagogical ideas of the Innovators were:

1. That education should proceed from the simple to the complex, and the concrete to the abstract.

2. That things should come before rules.

3. That students should be taught to analyze, rather than to
construct.

4. That each student should be taught to investigate for himself,
rather than to accept or depend upon authority.

5. That only that should be memorized which is clearly understood and
of real value.

6. That restraint and coercion should be replaced by interest in the
studies taught.

7. That the vernacular should be used as the medium for all
instruction.

8. That the study of real things should precede the study of words
about things.

9. That the order and course of Nature be discovered, and that a
method of teaching based on this then be worked out.

10. That physical education should be introduced for the sake of
health, and not merely to teach gentlemanly sports.

11. That all should be provided with the opportunity for an education
in the elements of knowledge. This to be in the vernacular.

12. That Latin and Greek be taught only to those likely to complete an
education, and then through the medium of the mother tongue.

13. That a uniform and scientific method of instruction could be worked out, which would reduce education to a science and serve as a guide for teachers everywhere.

The Englishman, Francis Bacon, whom we have previously considered; the German, Wolfgang Ratichius (or Ratke); and the Moravian bishop and teacher, Johann Amos Comenius, stand as perhaps the clearest examples of this organizing tendency in education. Ratke and Comenius will be considered here as types.

WOLFGANG RATKE. Bacon had believed that the new scientific knowledge should be incorporated into the instruction of the schools, and had suggested, in his Advancement of Learning (1603-05), a broader course of study for them, and better facilities for scientific investigation and teaching. While Bacon was not a teacher and did not write specifically on school instruction, his writings nevertheless deeply influenced many of those who followed his thinking.

The first writer to apply Bacon's ideas to education and to attempt to evolve a new method and a new course of instruction was a German, by the name of Wolfgang Ratke (1571-1635). While studying in England he had read Bacon's Advancement of Learning, and from Bacon's suggestions Ratke tried to work out a new method of instruction. This he offered, and with much secrecy, unsuccessfully for sale at various German courts. Finally he issued an "Address" to the princes of Germany, assembled at an Electoral Diet at Frankfurt-am-Main, in 1612. In this he told them of his new method, which followed Nature, and declared that it was "fraught with momentous consequences" for mankind. He claimed that he could:

1. By using the German language in the earlier years:
(a) Bring about the use of one common language among the German
people, and thus lay the basis for unity in government and
religion;
(b) Impart to children a knowledge of the useful arts and sciences.

2. Teach Latin. Greek, and Hebrew better, and in far less time, than had previously been required for one language only.

This method he offered to sell to the princes, and he would impart it only on the promise that it be not revealed to others. Two professors were appointed to examine Ratke, and they reported very favorably on his plan.

In 1617 Ratke published, in Leipzig, his Methodus Nova, which was the pioneer work on school method, and is Ratke's chief claim to mention here. In this he laid down the fundamental rules for teaching, as he had thought them out. They were as follows:

1. The order of Nature was to be sought and followed.

2. One thing at a time, and that mastered thoroughly.

3. Much repetition to insure retention.

4. Use of the mother tongue for all instruction, and the languages to
be taught through it.

5. Everything to be taught without constraint. The teacher to teach,
and the scholars to keep order and discipline.

6. No learning by heart. Much questioning and understanding.

7. Uniformity in books and methods a necessity.

8. Knowledge of things to precede words about things.

9. Individual experience and contact and inquiry to replace authority.

We see here the essentials of the Baconian ideas, as well as the foreshadowings of many other subsequent reforms in teaching method.

During the next half-dozen years Ratke was a much-interviewed person, as the idea of a more general education of the people, advanced by the Protestant reformers, had appealed strongly to the imagination of many of the German princes. Finally the necessary money was raised to establish an experimental school, [4] printing-presses were set up to print the necessary books, the people of the village of Köthen, in Anhalt, were ordered to send their children for instruction, and the school opened with Ratke in charge and amid great expectations and enthusiasm. A year and a half later the school had failed, through the bad management of Ratke and his inability to realize the extravagant hopes he had aroused, and he himself had been thrown into prison as an impostor by the princes. This ended Ratke's work. He is important chiefly for his pioneer work as the forerunner of the greatest educator of the seventeenth century.

JOHANN AMOS COMENIUS. We now reach not only the greatest representative of sense realism, both in theory and practice, before the latter part of the eighteenth century, but also one of the commanding figures in the history of education. Comenius was born at Nivnitz, in Moravia, in 1592. As a member, pastor, and later bishop of the Moravian church, and as a follower of John Huss, he suffered greatly in the Catholic-Protestant warfare which raged over his native land during the period of the Thirty Years' War. His home twice plundered, his books and manuscripts twice burned, his wife and children murdered, and himself at times a fugitive and later an exile, Comenius gave his long life to the advancement of the interests of mankind through religion and learning. Driven from his home and country, he became a scholar of the world.

While a student at the University of Nassau, at the age of twenty, he read and was deeply impressed by the "Address" of Ratke. Bacon's Novum Organum, which appeared when he was twenty-eight, made a still deeper impression upon him. He seems to have been familiar also with the writings of the educational reformers of his time in all European lands. He traveled extensively, and maintained a large correspondence with the scholars of his time. He was master of a Latin school in Moravia from the age of twenty-two to twenty-four, when he was ordained as a pastor of the Moravian Church. Eight years later, in 1632, he was banished, with all Protestant ministers, from his native land, and while an exile for a time took charge of a school at Lissa, in Poland. Here he worked out, in practice, the great work on method which he later published. In 1638 he was invited to reform the schools of Sweden; in 1641 he visited England, in connection with a plan for the organization of all knowledge; he spent the next eight years working at school reform in Sweden; from 1650 to 1654 he was in charge of a school at Saros-Patak, in Hungary, where he worked out his famous textbooks for teaching language; he was consulted with reference to the presidency of Harvard College, in 1654; the same year he returned to Lissa, and once more lost his books and manuscripts and was made a homeless exile; and finally he found a patron and asylum in Amsterdam, where he died in 1671, at the age of seventy-nine. The verse beneath his portrait seems an especially appropriate commentary on his life.

COMENIUS AND EDUCATIONAL METHOD. While teaching at Lissa, in Poland, Comenius had formulated for himself the principles underlying school instruction, as he saw it, in a lengthy book which he called The Great Didactic. [5] The title page (R. 218) and the table of contents (R. 219) will give an idea as to its scope. In this work Comenius formulated and explained his two fundamental ideas, namely, that all instruction must be carefully graded and arranged to follow the order of nature, and that, in imparting knowledge to children, the teacher must make constant appeal through sense-perception to the understanding of the child. We have here the fundamental ideas of Bacon applied to the school, and Comenius stands as the clearest exponent of sense realism in teaching up to his time, and for more than a century afterward.

Deeply religious by nature and training, Comenius held the Holy Scriptures to contain the beginning and end of all learning; to know God aright he held to be the highest aim; and with true Protestant fervor he contended that the education of every human being was a necessity if mankind was to enter into its religious inheritance, and piety, virtue, and learning were to be brought to their fruition. Unlike those who were enthusiasts for religious education only, Comenius saw further, and held an ideal of service to the State and Church here below for which proper training was needed. Still more, he believed in the education of human beings simply because they were human beings, and not merely for salvation, as Luther had held.

Comenius was the first to formulate a practicable school method, working along the new lines marked out by Bacon. He had no psychology to guide him, and worked largely by analogies from nature. A great idea with him was that we should study and follow nature, and this led him to the conclusions that education should proceed from the easy to the difficult, the near to the remote, the general to the special, and the known to the unknown, and that the great business of the teacher was imparting and guiding, and not storing the memory. These conclusions seem commonplaces to us of to-day, but what is commonplace today was genius three hundred years ago. To select the subject-matter of instruction carefully and on the basis of utility, to eliminate needless materials, not to attempt too much at a time, to use concrete examples, to have frequent repetitions to fix ideas, to advance by carefully graded steps, to tie new knowledge to old, to learn by observing and doing, and to learn by use rather than by precept—were still other of the present-day commonplaces which Comenius worked out and formulated in his Didactica Magna. [6] His plea for a mild and gentle discipline in place of the brutality of his time, his emphasis of the vernacular and the realities of life, his conception as to the importance of early education, his careful gradation of the school, and his ability to see the usefulness of Latin without over-emphasizing its importance—all stamp him as a capable and practical schoolmaster who saw deeply into the nature of the educational process.

[Illustration: PLATE 10. JOHN AMOS COMENIUS (1592-1671)
The Moravian Bishop at the age of fifty. (After an engraving by Glover,
printed as a frontispiece to Hartlib's A Reformation of Schooles.
London, 1642.)

Loe, here an Exile, who to serve his God,
Hath sharply tasted of proud Pashurs Rod
Whose learning, Piety, & true worth, being knowne
To all the world, makes all the world his owne. F.Q.]

COMENIUS' IDEAS AS TO THE ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS. In his Didactica Magna Comenius divided the school life of a child into four great divisions. The first concerned the period from infancy to the age of six, which he called The Mother School. For this period he wrote The School of Infancy (1628), a book intended primarily for parents, and one of such deep insight and fundamental importance that parents and teachers may still read it with interest and profit. In it he anticipated many of the ideas of the kindergarten of to-day. The next division was The Vernacular School, which covered the period from the ages of six to twelve. For this period six classes were to be provided, and the emphasis was to be on the mother tongue. This school was to be for all, of both sexes, and in it the basis of an education for life was to be given. It was to teach its pupils to read and write the mother tongue; enough arithmetic for the ordinary business of life, and the commonly used measures; to sing, and to know certain songs by rote; to know about the real things of life; the Catechism and the Bible; a general knowledge of history, and especially the creation, fall, and redemption of man; the elements of geography and astronomy; and a knowledge of the trades and occupations of life; all of which, says Comenius, can be taught better through the mother tongue than through the medium of the Latin and Greek. In scope this school corresponds with the vernacular school of modern Europe.

The next school was The Latin School, covering the years from twelve to eighteen, and in this German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were to be taught, by improved methods, and with physics and mathematics added. This school he divided into six classes, named from the principal study in each, as follows: (1) Grammar, (2) Physics, (3) Mathematics, (4) Ethics, (5) Dialectics, (6) Rhetoric. He also later outlined a plan for a six-class Gymnasium for Saros-Patak (R. 220), culminating in a seventh year for preparation for the ministry, which was an improvement on the Latin School and very modern in character. Had such a school become common, secondary education in Europe might have been a century in advance of where the nineteenth century found it. The Latin school was to be attended only by those of ability who were likely to enter the service of Church or State, or who intended to pass on to the University. This last was to cover the period from eighteen to twenty-four. Unlike all educational practice of his time and later, Comenius here provides for an educational ladder of the present-day American type, wholly unlike the European two-class school system which (p. 353) later evolved.

COMENIUS' WORK IN REFORMING LANGUAGE TEACHING. At the time Comenius lived and wrote, the languages constituted almost the only subject of study, and Latin grammar was the great introductory subject. The mediaeval grammars (Donatus; Alexander de Villa Dei; pp. 156, 155) had been so poor that the instruction was difficult and, in consequence, long drawn out. Lily's Latin Grammar (p. 276), published in 1513, and Melanchthon's Latin Grammar, published in 1525, had represented marked advances. Still the subject remained difficult, even when taught from these new types of grammars. Comenius early became convinced, as a result of his teaching and studies in educational method, that the ancient classical authors were not only too difficult for boys beginning the study of Latin, but that they also did not contain the type of real knowledge he felt should be taught in the schools. He accordingly set to work to construct a series of introductory Latin readers which would form a graded introduction to the study of Latin, and which would also introduce the pupil to the type of world knowledge and scientific information he felt should be taught.

His plan eventually embraced a graded series of five books, as follows:

1. The Orbis Sensualium Pictus, or the World of Sense Objects Pictured. This was an illustrated primer and first reader, which appeared in 1658, and was the first illustrated book ever written for children (R. 221).

2. The Vestibulum (Vestibule, or gate). An easy first reader, consisting of but a few hundred of the most commonly used Latin words and sentences, with a translation into the vernacular in parallel columns. This book required about a half-year for its completion.

3. The Janua Linguarum Reserata, or Gate of Languages Unlocked. This was the first of the series printed (1631), the Vestibulum being an easy introduction to it, and the Orbis Pictus being the Janua simplified and illustrated. The Janua contained some eight thousand Latin words, arranged in simple sentences, with the vernacular equivalent in parallel columns; included information on a variety of subjects; [7] and was a regular Noah's Ark for vocabulary purposes. It embraced sufficient reading material and grammar for a year.

4. The Atrium. This was an expansion of the Janua, and treated the same topics more in detail. It was intended to be an advanced reader, based, as was the Janua, on studies about the real things of life. The vocabulary now was Latin-Latin, instead of Latin-vernacular.

5. The Thesaurus, which was never completed, but was planned to be a collection of graded extracts from easy Latin authors—Cornelius Nepos, Caesar, Cicero, Sallust, Vergil, Horace, Pliny—to furnish the needed reading material for the three upper years of the Latin School.

THE TEXTBOOKS ILLUSTRATED. Beginning in the Janua, and afterwards in the Vestibulum and Orbis Pictus as well, Comenius not only simplified the teaching of Latin by producing the best textbooks for instruction in the subject the world had ever known, but he also shifted the whole emphasis in instruction from words to things, and made the teaching of scientific knowledge and useful world information the keynote of his work. The hundred different chapters of the Janua, and the hundred and fifty-one chapters of the Orbis Pictus, were devoted to imparting information as to all kinds of useful subjects. The following selections from the chapter titles of the Orbis Pictus illustrate how large a place the new scientific studies occupied in his conception of the school:

The World Birds Weaving Philosophy
The Heavens Cattle Tailor Prudence
Fire Fish Barber Diligence
Wind Parts of Man Schoolmaster Temperance
Water Flesh and Bowels Shoemaker Fortitude
Clouds Chanels and Bones Carpenter Humanity
Earth Senses Potter Justice
Fruits Deformities Printing Consanguinity
Metals Husbandry Geometry A City
Trees Bees and Honey The Planets Merchandizing
Herbs Butchery Eclipses A Burial
Flowers Cookery Europe Religious Forms

The accompanying illustrations (Figs. 126, 127) reveal the nature of the text-books he prepared. (See also R. 221 for four additional pages of illustrations from the Orbis Pictus.)

[Illustration: FIG. 126. A SAMPLE PAGE FROM THE "ORBIS PICTUS"
The illustration and Latin text is from the first edition of 1658; the
English translation from the English edition of 1727.]

The success of these textbooks was immediate and very great. Within a short time after the publication of the Janua it had been translated into Flemish, Bohemian, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Polish, Spanish, and Swedish, as well as into Arabic, Mongolian, Russian, and Turkish. The Orbis Pictus was an even greater success. [8] It went through many editions, in many languages; stood without a competitor in Europe for a hundred and fifteen years; and was used as an introductory textbook for nearly two hundred years. An American edition was brought out in New York City, as late as 1810.

[Illustration: FIG. 127. PART OF A PAGE FROM A LATIN-ENGLISH EDITION OF
THE "VESTIBULUM">[

Thousands of parents, who knew nothing of Comenius and cared nothing for his educational ideas, bought the book for their children because they found that they liked the pictures and learned the language easily from it. [9]

PLACE AND INFLUENCE OF COMENIUS. Comenius stands in the history of education in a position of commanding importance. He introduces the whole modern conception of the educational process, and outlines many of the modern movements for the improvement of educational procedure. What Petrarch was to the revival of learning, what Wycliffe was to religious thought, what Copernicus was to modern science, and what Bacon and Descartes were to modern philosophy, Comenius was to educational practice and thinking (R. 222). The germ of almost all eighteenth- and nineteenth- century educational theory is to be found in his work, and he, more than any one before him and for at least two centuries after him, made an earnest effort to introduce the new science studies into the school. Far more liberal than his Lutheran or Calvinistic or Anglican or Catholic contemporaries, he planned his school for the education of youth in religion and learning and to fit them for the needs of a modern world. Unlike the textbooks of his time, and for more than a century afterward, his were free from either sectarian bigotry or the intense and gloomy atmosphere of the age.

Yet Comenius lived at an unfortunate period in the history of human progress. The early part of the seventeenth century was not a time when an enthusiastic and aggressive and liberal-minded reformer could expect much of a hearing anywhere in western Europe. The shock of the contest into which western Christendom had been plunged by the challenge of Luther had been felt in every corner of Europe, and the culmination of a century of warfare was then raging, with all the bitterness and brutality that a religious motive develops. Christian Europe was too filled with an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust and hatred to be in any mood to consider reforms for the improvement of the education of mankind. As a result the far-reaching changes in method formulated by Comenius made but slight impression on his contemporaries; his attempt to introduce scientific studies awakened suspicion, rather than interest; and the new method which he formulated in his Great Didactic was ignored and the book itself was forgotten for centuries. His great influence on educational progress was through the reform his textbooks worked in the teaching of Latin, and the slow infiltration into the schools of the scientific ideas they contained. As a result, many of the fundamentally sound reforms for which he stood had to be worked out anew in the nineteenth century. It is sad to contemplate how far our western world might have been advanced in its educational organization and scientific progress, by the close of the eighteenth century, had it been in a mood to receive and utilize the reforms in aims and methods, and to accept the new scientific subject-matter, proposed and worked out by this far-sighted Moravian teacher. Religious bigotry has, in all lands and ages, proved itself one of the most serious of all obstacles in the path of human progress.