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.