Essays on Educational Reformers

by Robert Hebert Quick

§ 26. Again, as Nature does nothing per saltum, nor halts when she has begun, the whole course of studies should be arranged in strict order, so that the earlier studies prepare the way for the later. Every year, every month, every day and hour even, should have its task marked out beforehand, and the plan should be rigidly carried out. Much loss is occasioned by absence of boys from school, and by changes in the instruction. Iron that might be wrought with one heating should not be allowed to get cold, and be heated over and over again.

§ 27. Nature protects her work from injurious influences, so boys should be kept from injurious companionships and books.

§ 28. In a chapter devoted to the principles of easy teaching, Comenius lays down, among rules similar to the foregoing, that children will learn if they are taught only what they have a desire to learn, with due regard to their age and the method of instruction, and especially when everything is first taught by means of the senses. On this point Comenius laid great stress, and he was the first who did so. Education should proceed, he said, in the following order: first, educate the senses, then the memory, then the intellect; last of all the critical faculty. This is the order of Nature. The child first perceives through the senses. “Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu. Everything in the intellect must have come through the senses.” These perceptions are stored in the memory, and called up by the imagination.[71] By comparing one with another, the understanding forms general ideas, and at length the judgment decides between the false and the true. By keeping to this order, Comenius believed it would be possible to make learning entirely pleasant to the pupils, however young. Here Comenius went even further than the Jesuits. They wished to make learning pleasant, but despaired of doing this except by external influences, emulation and the like. Comenius did not neglect external means to make the road to learning agreeable. Like the Jesuits, he would have short school-hours, and would make great use of praise and blame, but he did not depend, as they did almost exclusively, on emulation. He would have the desire of learning fostered in every possible way—by parents, by teachers, by school buildings and apparatus, by the subjects themselves, by the method of teaching them, and lastly, by the public authorities. (1) The parents must praise learning and learned men, must show children beautiful books, &c., must treat the teachers with great respect. (2) The teacher must be kind and fatherly, he must distribute praise and reward, and must always, where it is possible, give the children something to look at. (3) The school buildings must be light, airy, and cheerful, and well furnished with apparatus, as pictures, maps, models, collections of specimens. (4) The subjects taught must not be too hard for the learner’s comprehension, and the more entertaining parts of them must be especially dwelt upon. (5) The method must be natural, and everything that is not essential to the subject or is beyond the pupil must be omitted. Fables and allegories should be introduced, and enigmas given for the pupils to guess. (6) The authorities must appoint public examinations and reward merit.

§ 29. Nature helps herself in various ways, so the pupils should have every assistance given them. It should especially be made clear what the pupils are to learn, and how they should learn it.

§ 30. The pupils should be punished for offences against morals only. If they do not learn, the fault is with the teacher.

§ 31. One of Comenius’s most distinctive principles was that there should no longer be “infelix divortium rerum et verborum, the wretched divorce of words from things” (the phrase, I think, is Campanella’s), but that knowledge of things and words should go together. This, together with his desire of submitting everything to the pupil’s senses, would have introduced a great change into the course of instruction, which was then, as it has for the most part continued, purely literary. We should learn, says Comenius, as much as possible, not from books, but from the great book of Nature, from heaven and earth, from oaks and beeches.

§ 32. When languages are to be learnt, he would have them taught separately. Till the pupil is from eight to ten years old, he should be instructed only in the mother-tongue, and about things. Then other languages can be acquired in about a year each; Latin (which is to be studied more thoroughly) in about two years. Every language must be learnt by use rather than by rules, i.e., it must be learnt by hearing, reading and re-reading, transcribing, attempting imitations in writing and orally, and by using the language in conversation. Rules assist and confirm practice, but they must come after, not before it. The first exercises in a language should take for their subject something of which the sense is already known, so that the mind may be fixed on the words and their connections.[72] The Catechism and Bible History may be used for this purpose.

§ 33. Considering the classical authors not suited to boys’ understanding, and not fit for the education of Christians, Comenius proposed writing a set of Latin manuals for the different stages between childhood and manhood: these were to be called “Vestibulum,” “Janua,” “Palatium” or “Atrium,” “Thesaurus.” The “Vestibulum,” “Janua,” and “Atrium” were really carried out.

§ 34. In Comenius’s scheme there were to be four kinds of schools for a perfect educational course:—1st, the mother’s breast for infancy; 2nd, the public vernacular school for children, to which all should be sent from six years old till twelve; 3rd, the Latin school or Gymnasium; 4th, residence at a University and travelling, to complete the course. The public schools were to be for all classes alike, and for girls[73] as well as boys.