FOOTNOTES:
[71] See especially the following chapters: Book I. chaps. XIV., XV., XXI., XXII., XXIV.; Book II. chaps. V., VI., VII., VIII.
[72] The contrast between the general system of education that culminated with the Reformation, and the system that had its rise at the same period, is so marked that there is an historical propriety in calling the first the old education, and the second, or later, the new education. Recollecting the tendency of the human mind to pass from one extreme to an opposite extreme, we may suspect that the final state of educational thought and practice will represent a mean between these two contrasted systems: it is inconceivable that the old was wholly wrong, or that the new is wholly right. (P.)
[73] Book I. chap. XXIV.
[74] Rabelais recommends the study of Hebrew, so that the sacred books may be known in their original form. In some place he says: “I love much more to hear the Gospel than to hear the life of Saint Margaret or some other cant.”
[75] Book II. chap. VIII.
[76] This pansophic scheme of Rabelais has been revived in later times by Bentham, in his Chrestomathia, and still later by Spencer, in his Education. It seems to have been forgotten that the division of labor affects education in much the same way as it affects all other departments of human activity: that there is no more need of having as a personal possession all the knowledge we need for guidance, than for owning all the agencies we need for locomotion or communication. (P.)
[77] “I was above six years of age before I understood either French or Perigordian any more than Arabic, and without art, book, grammar, or precept, whipping, or the experience of a tear, had by that time learned to speak as pure Latin as my master himself.” Essays, Book I. chap. XXV. In this chapter I have several times quoted from Cotton’s translation. (London: 1711.) (P.)
[78] Book I. chap. XXV.
[79] Book I. chap. XXV.
[80] See particularly Chap. XXIV. of Book I., Of Pedantry; Chap. XXV. Book I., Of the Education of Children; Chap. VIII. Book II., Of the Affection of Fathers to their Children.
[81] Book I. chap. XXV.
[82] Book I. chap. XXIV.
[83] Book I. chap. XXIV.
[84] Book I. chap. XXV.
[85] Book I. chap. XXV.
[86] Has not this extravagant preference for things, as distinguished from words, become a new superstition in educational theory? Considering the misuse made of words by Scholasticism, it was time for Montaigne to summon the attention outwards to sensible realities; but it is more than doubtful whether there is any valid ground for the absolute rule of modern pedagogy, “first the idea, then the term.” In actual experience, there is no invariable sequence. The really important thing is, that terms be made significant. (P.)
[87] Book I. chap. XXV.
[88] Book I. chap. XXV.
[89] Book II. chap. VIII.
[90] I am not sure that this remark does not do Montaigne injustice, especially when we consider the connection in which the original remark is made: “I am of opinion that what is not to be done by reason, prudence, and address, is never to be effected by force. I myself was brought up after that manner; and they tell me that, in all my first age, I never felt the rod but twice, and then very easily. I have practised the same method with my children, who all of them dy’d at nurse; but Leonora, my only daughter, is arrived to the age of six years and upwards without other correction for her childish faults than words only, and those very gentle.” Book II. chap. VIII. (P.)
[91] Book III. chap. XIII.
[92] Book III. chap. III.
[93] Book III. chap. III.
[94] See particularly Chap. XIV. of Book III.
[CHAPTER VI.]
PROTESTANTISM AND PRIMARY INSTRUCTION. LUTHER AND COMENIUS.
ORIGIN OF PRIMARY INSTRUCTION; SPIRIT OF THE PROTESTANT REFORM; CALVIN, MELANCTHON, ZWINGLI; LUTHER (1483-1546); APPEAL ADDRESSED TO THE MAGISTRATES AND LEGISLATORS OF GERMANY; DOUBLE UTILITY OF INSTRUCTION; NECESSITY OF A SYSTEM OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION; CRITICISM OF THE SCHOOLS OF THE PERIOD; ORGANIZATION OF NEW SCHOOLS; PROGRAMME OF STUDIES; PROGRESS IN METHODS; THE STATES GENERAL OF ORLEANS (1560); RATICH (1571-1635); COMENIUS (1592-1671); HIS CHARACTER; BACONIAN INSPIRATION; LIFE OF COMENIUS; HIS PRINCIPAL WORKS; DIVISION OF INSTRUCTION INTO FOUR GRADES; ELEMENTARY INITIATION INTO ALL THE STUDIES; THE PEOPLE’S SCHOOL; SITE OF THE SCHOOL; INTUITIONS OF SENSE; SIMPLIFICATION OF GRAMMATICAL STUDIES; PEDAGOGICAL PRINCIPLES OF COMENIUS; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
122. Origin of Primary Instruction.—With La Salle and the foundation of the Institute of the Brethren of the Christian Schools, the historian of education recognizes the Catholic origin of primary instruction; in the decrees and laws of the French Revolution, its lay and philosophical origin; but it is to the Protestant Reformers,—to Luther in the sixteenth century, and to Comenius in the seventeenth—that must be ascribed the honor of having first organized schools for the people. In its origin, the primary school is the child of Protestantism, and its cradle was the Reformation.
123. Spirit of the Protestant Reform.—The development of primary instruction was the logical consequence of the fundamental principles of the Protestant Reform. As Michel Bréal has said: “In making man responsible for his own faith, and in placing the source of that faith in the Holy Scriptures, the Reform contracted the obligation to put each one in a condition to save himself by the reading and the understanding of the Bible.... The necessity of explaining the Catechism, and making comments on it, was for teachers an obligation to learn how to expound a thought, and to decompose it into its elements. The study of the mother tongue and of singing, was associated with the reading of the Bible (translated into German by Luther) and with religious services.” The Reform, then, contained, in germ, a complete revolution in education; it enlisted the interests of religion in the service of instruction, and associated knowledge with faith. This is the reason that, for three centuries, the Protestant nations have led humanity in the matter of primary instruction.
124. Calvin (1509-1564), Melancthon (1497-1560), Zwingli (1484-1532).—However, all the Protestant Reformers were far from exhibiting the same zeal in behalf of primary instruction. Calvin, absorbed in religious struggles and polemics, was not occupied with the organization of schools till towards the close of his life, and even the college that he founded at Geneva, in 1559, was scarcely more than a school for the study of Latin. Melancthon, who has been called “the preceptor of Germany,” worked more for high schools than for schools for the people. He was above all else a professor of Belles-Lettres; and it was with chagrin that he saw his courses in the University of Wittenberg deserted by students when he lectured on the Olynthiacs of Demosthenes. Before Calvin and Melancthon, the Swiss reformer Zwingli had shown his great interest in primary teaching, in his little book “upon the manner of instructing and bringing up boys in a Christian way” (1524). In this he recommended natural history, arithmetic, and also exercises in fencing, in order to furnish the country with timely defenders.
125. Luther (1483-1546).—The German reformer Luther is, of all his co-religionists, the one who has served the cause of elementary instruction with the most ardor. He not only addressed a pressing appeal to the ruling classes in behalf of founding schools for the people, but, by his influence, methods of instruction were improved, and the educational spirit was renewed in accordance with the principles of Protestantism. “Spontaneity,” it has been said, not without some exaggeration, “free thought, and free inquiry, are the basis of Protestantism; where it has reigned, there have disappeared the method of repeating and of learning by heart without reflection, mechanism, subjection to authority, the paralysis of the intelligence oppressed by dogmatic instruction, and science put in tutelage by the beliefs of the Church.”[95]
126. Appeal addressed to the Magistrates and Legislators of Germany.—In 1524, Luther, in a special document addressed to the public authorities of Germany, forcibly expressed himself against the neglect into which the interests of instruction had fallen. This appeal has this characteristic, that the great reformer, while assuming that the Church is the mother of the school, seems especially to count on the secular arm, upon the power of the people, to serve his purposes in the cause of universal instruction. “Each city,” he said, “is subjected to great expense every year for the construction of roads, for fortifying its ramparts, and for buying arms and equipping soldiers. Why should it not spend an equal sum for the support of one or two school-masters? The prosperity of a city does not depend solely on its natural riches, on the solidity of its walls, on the elegance of its mansions, and on the abundance of arms in its arsenals; but the safety and strength of a city reside above all in a good education, which furnishes it with instructed, reasonable, honorable, and well-trained citizens.”[96]
127. Double Utility of Instruction.—A remarkable fact about Luther is, that as a preacher of instruction, he does not speak merely from the religious point of view. After having recommended schools as institutions auxiliary to the Church, he makes a resolute argument from the human point of view. “Were there neither soul, heaven, nor hell,” he says, “it would still be necessary to have schools for the sake of affairs here below, as the history of the Greeks and the Romans plainly teaches. The world has need of educated men and women, to the end that the men may govern the country properly, and that the women may properly bring up their children, care for their domestics, and direct the affairs of their households.”
128. Necessity of Public Instruction.—The objection will perhaps be made, says Luther, that for the education of children the home is sufficient, and that the school is useless: “To this I reply: We clearly see how the boys and girls are educated who remain at home.” He then shows that they are ignorant and “stupid,” incapable of taking part in conversation, of giving good advice, and without any experience of life; while, if they had been educated in the schools, by teachers who could give instruction in the languages, in the arts, and in history, they might in a little time gather up within themselves, as in a mirror, the experience of whatever has happened since the beginning of the world; and from this experience, he adds, they would derive the wisdom they need for self-direction and for giving wise counsel to others.
129. Criticism of the Schools of the Period.—But since there must be public schools, can we not be content with those which already exist? Luther replies by proving that parents neglect to send their children to them, and by denouncing the uselessness of the results obtained by those who attend them. “We find people,” he says, “who serve God in strange ways. They fast and wear coarse clothing, but they pass blindly by the true divine service of the home,—they do not know how to bring up their children.... Believe me, it is much more necessary to give attention to your children and to provide for their education than to purchase indulgencies, to visit foreign churches, or to make solemn vows.... All people, especially the Jews, oblige their children to go to school more than Christians do. This is why the state of Christianity is so low, for all its force and power are in the rising generation; and if these are neglected, there will be Christian churches like a garden that has been neglected in the spring-time.... Every day children are born and are growing up, and, unfortunately, no one cares for the poor young people, no one thinks to train them; they are allowed to go as they will. Was it not lamentable to see a lad study in twenty years and more only just enough bad Latin to enable him to become a priest, and to go to mass? And he who attained to this was counted a very happy being! Right happy the mother who bore such a child! And he has remained all his life a poor unlettered man. Everywhere we have seen such teachers and masters, who knew nothing themselves and could teach nothing that was good and useful; they did not even know how to learn and to teach. Has anything else been learned up to this time in the high schools and in the convents except to become asses and blockheads? ...”
130. Organization of the New Schools.—So Luther resolves on the organization of new schools. The cost of their maintenance he makes a charge on the public treasury; he demonstrates to parents the moral obligation to have their children instructed in them; to the duty of conscience he adds civil obligation; and, finally, he gives his thought to the means of recruiting the teaching service. “Since the greatest evil in every place is the lack of teachers, we must not wait till they come forward of themselves; we must take the trouble to educate them and prepare them.” To this end Luther keeps the best of the pupils, boys and girls, for a longer time in school; gives them special instructors, and opens libraries for their use. In his thought he never distinguishes women teachers from men teachers; he wants schools for girls as well as for boys. Only, not to burden parents and divert children from their daily labor, he requires but little time for school duties. “You ask: Is it possible to get along without our children, and bring them up like gentlemen? Is it not necessary that they work at home? I reply: I by no means approve of those schools where a child was accustomed to pass twenty or thirty years in studying Donatus or Alexander[97] without learning anything. Another world has dawned, in which things go differently. My opinion is that we must send the boys to school one or two hours a day, and have them learn a trade at home for the rest of the time. It is desirable that these two occupations march side by side. As it now is, children certainly spend twice as much time in playing ball, running the streets, and playing truant. And so the girls can equally well devote nearly the same time to school, without neglecting their home duties; they lose more time than this in over-sleeping and in dancing more than is meet.”
131. Programme of Studies.—Luther gives the first place to the teaching of religion: “Is it not reasonable that every Christian should know the Gospel at the age of nine or ten?”
Then come the languages, not, as might be hoped, the mother tongue, but the learned languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Luther had not yet been sufficiently rid of the old spirit to comprehend that the language of the people ought to be the basis of universal instruction. He left to Comenius the glory of making the final separation of the primary school from the Latin school. But yet, Luther gave excellent advice for the study of languages, which must be learned, he said, less in the abstract rules of grammar than in their concrete reality.
Luther recommends the mathematics, and also the study of nature; but he has a partiality for history and historians, who are, he says, “the best people and the best teachers,” on the condition that they do not tamper with the truth, and that “they do not make obscure the work of God.”
Of the liberal arts of the Middle Age, Luther does not make much account. He rightly says of dialectics, that it is no equivalent for real knowledge, and that it is simply “an instrument by which we render to ourselves an account of what we know.”
Physical exercises are not forgotten in Luther’s pedagogical regulations. But he attaches an especial importance to singing. “Unless a schoolmaster know how to sing, I think him of no account.” “Music,” he says again, “is a half discipline which makes men more indulgent and more mild.”
132. Progress in Methods.—At the same time that he extends the programme of studies, Luther introduces a new spirit into methods. He wishes more liberty and more joy in the school.
“Solomon,” he says, “is a truly royal schoolmaster. He does not, like the monks, forbid the young to go into the world and be happy. Even as Anselm said: ‘A young man turned aside from the world is like a young tree made to grow in a vase.’ The monks have imprisoned young men like birds in their cage. It is dangerous to isolate the young. It is necessary, on the contrary, to allow young people to hear, see, and learn all sorts of things, while all the time observing the restraints and the rules of honor. Enjoyment and recreation are as necessary for children as food and drink. The schools till now were veritable prisons and hells, and the schoolmaster a tyrant.... A child intimidated by bad treatment is irresolute in all he does. He who has trembled before his parents will tremble all his life at the sound of a leaf which rustles in the wind.”
These quotations will suffice to make appreciated the large and liberal spirit of Luther, and the range of his thought as an educator. No one has more extolled the office of the teacher, of which he said, when comparing it to preaching, it is the work of all others the noblest, the most useful, and the best; “and yet,” he added, “I do not know which of these two professions is the better.”
Do not let ourselves imagine, however, that Luther at once exercised a decisive influence on the current education of his day. A few schools were founded, called writing schools; but the Thirty Years’ War, and other events, interrupted the movement of which Luther has the honor of having been the originator.
133. The States General of Orleans (1560).—While in Germany, under the impulse of Luther, primary schools began to be established, France remained in the background. Let us note, however, the desires expressed by the States General of Orleans, in 1560:—
“May it please the king,” it was said in the memorial of the nobility, “to levy a contribution upon the church revenues for the reasonable support of teachers and men of learning in every city and village, for the instruction of the needy youth of the country; and let all parents be required, under penalty of a fine, to send their children to school, and let them be constrained to observe this law by the lords and the ordinary magistrates.”
It was demanded, in addition, that public lectures be given on the Sacred Scriptures in intelligible language, that is, in the mother tongue. But these demands, so earnest and democratic, of the Protestant nobility of sixteenth century France, were not regarded. With the fall of Protestantism, the cause of primary instruction in France was doomed to a long eclipse. The nobles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did not think of petitioning again for the education of the people, and Diderot could truthfully say of them: “The nobility complain of the farm laborers who know how to read. Perhaps the chief grievance of the nobility reduces itself to this: that a peasant who knows how to read is more difficult to oppress than another.”
134. Ratich (1571-1635).—In the first half of the seventeenth century, Ratich, a German, and Comenius, a Slave, were, with very different degrees of merit, the heirs of the educational thought of Luther.
With something of the charlatan and the demagogue, Ratich devoted his life to propagating a novel art of teaching, which he called didactics, and to which he attributed marvels. He pretended, by his method of languages, to teach Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, in six months. But nevertheless, out of many strange performances and lofty promises, there issue some thoughts of practical value. The first merit of Ratich was to give the mother tongue, the German language, the precedence over the ancient languages. An English educational writer, Mr. R. H. Quick, in his Essays on Educational Reformers (1874), has thus summed up the essential principles of the pedagogy of Ratich: 1. Everything should be taught in its own time and order, and according to the natural method, in passing from the more easy to the more difficult. 2. Only one thing should be learned at a time. “We do not cook at the same time in one pot, soup, meat, fish, milk, and vegetables.” 3. The same thing should be repeated several times. 4. By means of these frequent repetitions, the pupil will have nothing to learn by heart. 5. All school-books should be written on the same plan. 6. The thing as a whole should be made known before the thing in its details, and the sequence should be from the general to the special. 7. In every case we should proceed by induction and experiment. Ratich especially means by this that we must make an end of mere authority, and of the testimony of the ancients, and must appeal to individual reason. 8. Finally, everything should be learned without coercion. Coercion and the rod are contrary to nature, and disgust the young with study. The human understanding learns with pleasure all that it ought to retain. It does not seem that Ratich knew how to draw from these principles, which, by the way, are not true save under certain corrections, all the happy results that are contained in them. He left to Comenius the glory of applying the new spirit to actual practice.
135. Comenius (1592-1671).—For a long time unknown and unappreciated, Comenius has finally received from our contemporaries the admiration that is due him. Michelet speaks of him with enthusiasm as “that rare genius, that gentle, fertile, universal scholar”;[98] and he calls him the first evangelist of modern pedagogy, Pestalozzi being the second. It is easy to justify this appreciation. The character of Comenius equals his intelligence. Through a thousand obstacles he devoted his long life to the work of popular instruction. With a generous ardor he consecrated himself to infancy. He wrote twenty works and taught in twenty cities. Moreover, he was the first to form a definite conception of what the elementary studies should be. He determined, nearly three hundred years ago, with an exactness that leaves nothing to be desired, the division of the different grades of instruction. He exactly defined some of the essential laws of the art of teaching. He applied to pedagogy, with remarkable insight, the principles of modern logic. Finally, as Michelet has said, he was the Galileo, we would rather say, the Bacon, of modern education.
136. Baconian Inspiration.—The special aims of pedagogy are essentially related to the general aims of science. All progress in science has its corresponding effects on education. When an innovator has modified the laws for the discovery of truth, other innovators appear, who modify, in their turn, the rules for instruction. To a new logic almost necessarily corresponds a new pedagogy.
Now Bacon, at the opening of the seventeenth century, had opened unknown routes to scientific investigation. For the abstract processes of thought, for the barren comparison of propositions and words, in which the whole art of the syllogism consisted, the author of the Novum Organum had substituted the concrete study of reality, the living and fruitful observation of nature. The mechanism of deductive reasoning was replaced by the slow and patient interpretation of facts. It no longer answered to analyze with docile spirit principles that were assumed, right or wrong, as absolute truths; nor to become expert in handling the syllogism, which, like a mill running dry, often produced but little flour. It was now necessary to open the eyes to the contemplation of the universe, and by sense intuition, by observation, by experiment, and by induction, to penetrate its secrets, and determine its laws. It was necessary to ascend, step by step, from the knowledge of the simplest things to the discovery of the most general laws; and, finally, to demand of nature herself to reveal all that the human intelligence, in its solitary meditations, is powerless to discover.
Looking at this subject more closely, this revolution in science, so important from the point of view of speculative inquiry, and destined to change the aspect of the sciences, also contained in itself a revolution in education. For this purpose, all that was needed was to apply to the development of the intelligence and to the communication of knowledge the rules proposed by Bacon for the investigation of truth. The laws of scientific induction might become the laws for the education of the soul. No more setting out with abstract principles, imposed by authority; but facts intuitively apprehended, gathered by observation and verified by experiment; the order of nature faithfully followed; a cautious progression from the simplest and most elementary ideas to the most difficult and most complex truths; the knowledge of things instead of an analysis of words,—such was to be the character of the new system of instruction. In other terms, it was possible to make the child follow, in order to lead him to know and to comprehend the capitalized truths that constitute the basis of elementary instruction, the same method that Bacon recommended to scholars for the discovery of unknown truths.[99]
It is this conversion, or, as we might say, this translation, of the maxims of the Baconian logic into pedagogical rules, that Comenius attempted, and this is why he has been called “the father of the intuitive method.” He was nourished, intellectually, by the reading of Bacon, whom he resembles, not only in his ideas, but also in his figurative and often allegorical language. Even the title of one of his books, Didactica Magna, recalls the title of Bacon’s Instauratio Magna.
137. The Life of Comenius.—To know Comenius and the part he played in the seventeenth century, to appreciate this grand educational character, it would be necessary to begin by relating his life; his misfortunes; his journeys to England, where Parliament invoked his aid; to Sweden, where the Chancellor Oxenstiern employed him to write manuals of instruction; especially his relentless industry, his courage through exile, and the long persecutions he suffered as a member of the sect of dissenters, the Moravian Brethren; and the schools he founded at Fulneck, in Bohemia, at Lissa and at Patak, in Poland. But it would require too much of our space to follow in its incidents and catastrophes that troubled life, which, in its sudden trials, as in the firmness that supported them, recalls the life of Pestalozzi.[100]
138. His Principal Works.—Comenius wrote a large number of books in Latin, in German, and in Czech; but of these only a few are worthy to engage the attention of the educator. In his other works he allows himself to go off on philosophic excursions, and to indulge in mystic reveries, led by his ardor to find what he called pansophia, wisdom or universal knowledge. In this wilderness of publications destined to oblivion, we shall notice only three works, which contain the general principles of the pedagogy of Comenius, and the applications which he has made of his method:—
1. The Didactica Magna, the Great Didactics (written in Czech at about 1630, and rewritten in Latin at about 1640). In this work Comenius sets forth his principles, his general theories on education, and also his peculiar views on the practical organization of schools. It is to be regretted that a French translation has not yet popularized this important book, that would be worthy a place beside the Thoughts of Locke and the Émile of Rousseau.[101]
2. The Janua linguarum reserata, the Gate of Tongues Unlocked (1631). In the thought of the author, this was a new method of learning the languages. Comenius, led astray on this point by his religious prejudices, wished to banish the Latin authors from the schools, “for the purpose,” he said, “of reforming studies in the true spirit of Christianity.” Consequently, in order to replace the classical authors, which he repudiated for this further reason, that the reading of them is too difficult, and to make a child study them “is to wish to push out into the vast ocean a tiny bark that should be allowed only to sport on a little lake,” he had formed the idea of composing a collection of phrases distributed into a hundred chapters. These phrases, to the number of a thousand, at first very simple, and of a single member, then longer and more complicated, were formed of two thousand words, chosen from among the most common and the most useful. Moreover, the hundred chapters of the Janua taught the child, in succession and in a methodical order, all the things in the universe,—the elements, the metals, the stars, the animals, the organs of the body, the arts and trades, etc., etc. In other terms, the Janua linguarum is a nomenclature of ideas and words designed to fix the attention of the child upon everything he ought to know of the world. Divested of the Latin text that accompanies it, the Janua is a first reading-book, very defective doubtless, but it gives proof of a determined effort to adapt to the intelligence of the child the knowledge that he ought to acquire.
3. The Orbis sensualium pictus, the Illustrated World of Sensible Objects, the most popular of the author’s works (1658). It is the Janua linguarum accompanied with pictures, in lieu of real objects, representing to the child the things that he hears spoken of, as fast as he learns their names. The Orbis pictus, the first practical application of the intuitive method, had an extraordinary success, and has served as a model for the innumerable illustrated books which for three centuries have invaded the schools.
Geometria.
Die Erdmesskunst.
(Facsimile of illustration in the Orbis Pictus of Comenius.)
(Facsimile of page of text of the Orbis Pictus.)
139. The Four Grades of Instruction.—We must not require a man of the seventeenth century to abjure Latin studies. Comenius prizes them highly; but at least he is wise enough to put them in their place, and does not confound them, as Luther did, with elementary studies.
Nothing could be more exact, more clearly cut, than the scholastic organization proposed by Comenius. We shall find in it what the experience of three centuries has finally sanctioned and established, the distribution of schools into these grades,—infant schools, primary schools, secondary schools, and higher schools.
The first grade of instruction is the maternal school, the school by the mother’s knee, materni gremii, as Comenius calls it. The mother is the first teacher. Up to the age of six the child is taught by her; he is initiated by her into those branches of knowledge that he will pursue in the primary school.
The second grade is the elementary public school. All the children, girls and boys, enter here at six, and leave at twelve. The characteristic of this school is that the instruction there given is in the mother tongue, and this is why Comenius calls it the “common” school, vernacula, a term given by the Romans to the language of the people.
The third grade is represented by the Latin school or gymnasium. Thither are sent the children from twelve to eighteen years of age for whom has been reserved a more complete instruction, such as we would now call secondary instruction.
Finally, to the fourth grade correspond the academies, that is, institutions of higher instruction, opened to young men from eighteen to twenty-four years of age.
The child, if he is able, will traverse these four grades in succession; but, in the thought of Comenius, the studies should be so arranged in the elementary schools, that in leaving them, the pupil shall have a general education which makes it unnecessary for him to go farther, if his condition in life does not destine him to pursue the courses of the Latin School.
“We pursue,” says Comenius, “a general education, the teaching to all men of all the subjects of human concern.... The purpose of the people’s school shall be that all children of both sexes, from the tenth to the twelfth or the thirteenth year, may be instructed in that knowledge which is useful during the whole of life.”
This was an admirable definition of the purpose of the primary school. A thing not less remarkable is that Comenius establishes an elementary school in each village:—
“There should be a maternal school in each family; an elementary school in each district; a gymnasium in each city; an academy in each kingdom, or even in each considerable province.”
140. Elementary Initiation into All the Studies.—One of the most novel and most original ideas of the great Slavic educator is the wish that, from the earliest years of his life, the child may acquire some elementary notions of all the sciences that he is to study at a later period. From the cradle, the gaze of the infant, guided by the mother, should be directed to all the objects that surround him, so that his growing powers of reflection will be brought into play in working on these sense intuitions. “Thus, from the moment he begins to speak, the child comes to know himself, and, by his daily experience, certain general and abstract expressions; he comes to comprehend the meaning of the words something, nothing, thus, otherwise, where, similar, different; and what are generalizations and the categories expressed by these words but the rudiments of metaphysics? In the domain of physics, the infant can learn to know water, earth, air, fire, rain, snow, etc., as well as the names and uses of the parts of his body, or at least of the external members and organs. He will take his first lesson in optics in learning to distinguish light, darkness, and the different colors; and in astronomy, in noticing the sun, the moon, and the stars, and in observing that these heavenly bodies rise and set every day. In geography, according to the place where he lives, he will be shown a mountain, a valley, a plain, a river, a village, a hamlet, a city, etc. In chronology, he will be taught what an hour is, a day, a week, a year, summer, winter, yesterday, the day before yesterday, to-morrow, the day after to-morrow, etc. History, such as his age will allow him to conceive, will consist in recalling what has recently passed, in taking account of it, and in noting the part that this one or that has taken in such or such an affair. Arithmetic, geometry, statistics, mechanics, will not remain strangers to him. He will acquire the elements of these sciences in distinguishing the difference between little and much, in learning to count up to ten, in observing that three is more than two; that one added to three makes four; in learning the sense of the words great and small, long and short, wide and narrow, heavy and light; in drawing lines, curves, circles, etc.; in seeing goods measured with a yard-stick; in weighing an object in a balance; in trying to make something or to take it to pieces, as all children love to do.
“In this impulse to construct and destroy, there is but the effort of the little intelligence to succeed in making or building something for himself; so that, instead of opposing the child in this, he should be encouraged and guided.”
“The grammar of the first period will consist in learning to pronounce the mother tongue correctly. The child may receive elementary notions even of politics, in observing that certain persons assemble at the city hall, and that they are called councillors; and that among these persons there is one called mayor, etc.”[102]
141. The People’s School.—Divided into six classes, the people’s school should prepare the child either for active life or for the higher courses. Comenius sends here not only the sons of peasants and workmen, but the sons of the middle class or of the nobility, who will afterwards enter the Latin school. In other terms, the study of Latin is postponed till the age of twelve; and up to that period all children must receive a thorough primary education, which will comprise, with the mother tongue, arithmetic, geometry, singing, the salient facts of history, the elements of the natural sciences, and religion. The latest reforms in secondary instruction, which, only within a very late period, have postponed the study of Latin till the sixth year,[103] and which till then keep the pupil upon the subjects of primary instruction,—what are they but the distant echo of the thought of Comenius? Let it be noted, too, that the plan of Comenius gave to its primary school a complete encyclopædic course of instruction, which was sufficient for its own ends, but which, while remaining elementary, was a whole, and not a beginning.[104]
Surely, the programme of studies devised by Comenius did not fail in point of insufficiency; we may be allowed, on the contrary, to pronounce it too extended, too crowded, conformed rather to the generous dreams of an innovator than to a prudent appreciation of what is practically possible; and we need not be astonished that, to lighten in part the heavy burden that is imposed on the teacher, Comenius had the notion of dividing the school into sections which assistants, chosen from among the best pupils, should instruct under the supervision of the master.
142. Site of the School.—One is not a complete educator save on the condition of providing for the exterior and material organization of the school, as well as for its moral administration. In this respect, Comenius is still deserving of our encomiums. He requires a yard for recreation, and demands that the school-house have a gay and cheerful aspect. The question had been discussed before him by Vives (1492-1540).
“There should be chosen,” says the Spanish educator, “a healthful situation, so that the pupils may not one day have to take their flight, dispersed by the fear of an epidemic. Firm health is necessary to those who would heartily and profitably apply themselves to the study of the sciences. And the place selected should be isolated from the crowd, and especially at a distance from occupations that are noisy, such as those of smiths, stone-masons, machinists, wheelwrights, and weavers. However, I would not have the situation too cheerful and attractive, lest it might suggest to the scholars the taking of too frequent walks.”
But these considerations that do honor to Vives and to Comenius, were scarcely in harmony with the resources then at the disposal of the friends of instruction. There was scarcely occasion seriously to consider how school-houses should be constructed and situated, at a period when the most often there were no school-houses existing. “In winter,” says Platter, “we slept in the school-room, and in summer in the open air.”[105]
143. Sense Intuitions.—If Comenius has traced with a master hand the general organization of the primary school, he has no less merit in the matter of methods.
When they recommend the observation of sensible things as the first intellectual exercise, modern educators do but repeat what Comenius said three centuries ago.
“In the place of dead books, why should we not open the living book of nature? ... To instruct the young is not to beat into them by repetition a mass of words, phrases, sentences, and opinions gathered out of authors; but it is to open their understanding through things....
“The foundation of all knowledge consists in correctly representing sensible objects to our senses, so that they can be comprehended with facility. I hold that this is the basis of all our other activities, since we could neither act nor speak wisely unless we adequately comprehended what we were to do and say. Now it is certain that there is nothing in the understanding that was not first in the senses, and, consequently, it is to lay the foundation of all wisdom, of all eloquence, and of all good and prudent conduct, carefully to train the senses to note with accuracy the differences between natural objects; and as this point, important as it is, is ordinarily neglected in the schools of to-day, and as objects are proposed to scholars that they do not understand because they have not been properly represented to their senses or to their imagination, it is for this reason, on the one hand, that the toil of teaching, and on the other, that the pain of learning, have become so burdensome and so unfruitful....
“We must offer to the young, not the shadows of things, but the things themselves, which impress the senses and the imagination. Instruction should commence with a real observation of things, and not with a verbal description of them.”
We see that Comenius accepts the doctrine of Bacon, even to his absolute sensationalism. In his pre-occupation with the importance of instruction through the senses, he goes so far as to ignore that other source of knowledge and intuitions, the inner consciousness.
144. Simplification of Grammatical Study.—The first result of the experimental method applied to instruction, is to simplify grammar and to relieve it from the abuse of abstract rules. “Children,” says Comenius, “need examples and things which they can see, and not abstract rules.”
And in the Preface of the Janua linguarum, he dwells upon the faults of the old method employed for the study of languages.
“It is a thing self-evident, that the true and proper way of teaching languages has not been recognized in the schools up to the present time. The most of those who devoted themselves to the study of letters grew old in the study of words, and upwards of ten years was spent in the study of Latin alone; indeed, they even spent their whole life in the study, with a very slow and very trifling profit, which did not pay for the trouble devoted to it.”[106] It is by use and by reading that Comenius would abolish the abuse of rules. Rules ought to intervene only to aid use and give it surety. The pupil will thus learn language, either in speaking, or in reading a book like the Orbis Pictus, in which he will find at the same time all the words of which the language itself is composed, and examples of all the constructions of its syntax.
145. Necessity of Drill and Practice.—Another essential point in the new method, is the importance attributed by Comenius to practical exercises: “Artisans,” he said, “understand this matter perfectly well. Not one of them will give an apprentice a theoretical course on his trade. He is allowed to notice what is done by his master, and then the tool is put in his hands: it is in smiting that one becomes a smith.”[107]
It is no longer the thing to repeat mechanically a lesson learned by heart. There must be a gradual habituation to action, to productive work, to personal effort.
146. General Bearing of the Work of Comenius.—How many other new and judicious ideas we shall have to gather from Comenius! The methods which we would be tempted to consider as wholly recent, his imagination had already suggested to him. For example, preceding the Orbis Pictus, we find an alphabet, where to each letter corresponds the cry of an animal, or else a sound familiar to the child. Is not this already the very essence of the phononimic processes[108] brought into fashion in these last years? But what is of more consequence with Comenius than a few happy discoveries in practical pedagogy, is the general inspiration of his work. He gives to education a psychological basis in demanding that the faculties shall be developed in their natural order: first, the senses, the memory, the imagination, and lastly the judgment and the reason. He is mindful of physical exercises, of technical and practical instruction, without forgetting that in the primary schools, which he calls the “studios of humanity,” there must be trained, not only strong and skilful artisans, but virtuous and religious men, imbued with the principles of order and justice. If he has stepped from theology to pedagogy, and if he permits himself sometimes to be borne along by his artless bursts of mysticism, at least he does not forget the necessities of the real condition, and of the present life of men. “The child,” he says, “shall learn only what is to be useful to him in this life or in the other.” Finally, he does not allow himself to be absorbed in the minute details of school management. He has higher views,—he is working for the regeneration of humanity. Like Leibnitz, he would freely say: “Give me for a few years the direction of education, and I agree to transform the world!”
[147. Analytical Summary.—1. Decisive changes in human opinion, political, religious, or scientific, involve corresponding changes in the purposes and methods of education.
2. The Reformation was a breaking with authority in matters of religion, as the Baconian philosophy was a breaking with authority in matters of science; and their joint effect on education was to subject matters of opinion, belief, and knowledge to the individual reason, experience, and observation.
3. In holding each human being responsible for his own salvation, the Reformation made it necessary for every one to read, and the logical consequence of this was to make instruction universal; and as schools were multiplied, the number of teachers must be increased, and their grade of competence raised.
4. The conception that ignorance is an evil, and a constant menace to spiritual and temporal safety, led to the idea of compulsory school-attendance.
5. In the recoil from the intuitions of the intellect sanctioned by Socrates, to the intuitions of the senses sanctioned by Bacon, education passed from an extreme dependence on reflection and reason, to an extreme dependence on sense and observation; so that inference has been thrown into discredit, and the verdict of the senses has been made the test of knowledge.
6. In adapting the conception of universal education to the social conditions of his time, Comenius was led to a gradation of schools that underlies all modern systems of public instruction.]