Essays on Educational Reformers

by Robert Hebert Quick

§ 35. Most boys and girls in every community would stop at the vernacular school; and as this school is a very distinctive feature in Comenius’s plan, it may be worth while to give his programme of studies. In this school the children should learn—1st, to read and write the mother-tongue well, both with writing and printing letters; 2nd, to compose grammatically; 3rd, to cipher; 4th, to measure and weigh; 5th, to sing, at first popular airs, then from music; 6th, to say by heart, sacred psalms and hymns; 7th, Catechism, Bible History, and texts; 8th, moral rules, with examples; 9th, economics and politics, as far as they could be understood; 10th, general history of the world; 11th, figure of the earth and motion of stars, &c., physics and geography, especially of native land; 12th, general knowledge of arts and handicrafts.

§ 36. Each school was to be divided into six classes, corresponding to the six years the pupil should spend in it. The hours of work were to be, in school, two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon, with nearly the same amount of private study. In the morning the mind and memory were to be exercised, in the afternoon the hands and voice. Each class was to have its proper lesson-book written expressly for it, so as to contain everything that class had to learn. When a lesson was to be got by heart from the book, the teacher was first to read it to the class, explain it, and re-read it; the boys then to read it aloud by turns till one of them offered to repeat it without book; the others were to do the same as soon as they were able, till all had repeated it. This lesson was then to be worked over again as a writing lesson, &c. In the higher forms of the vernacular school a modern language was to be taught and duly practised.

§ 37. Here we see a regular school course projected which differed essentially from the only complete school course still earlier, that of the Jesuits. In education Comenius was immeasurably in advance of Loyola and Aquaviva. Like the great thinkers, Pestalozzi and Froebel, who most resemble him, he thought of the development of the child from its birth; and in a singularly wise little book, called Schola materni gremii, or “School of the Mother’s Breast,” he has given advice for bringing up children to the age of six.[74]

§ 38. Very interesting are the hints here given, in which we get the first approaches to Kindergarten training. Comenius saw that, much as their elders might do to develop children’s powers of thought and expression, “yet children of the same age and the same manners and habits are of greater service still. When they talk or play together, they sharpen each other more effectually; for the one does not surpass the other in depth of invention, and there is among them no assumption of superiority of the one over the other, only love, candour, free questionings and answers” (School of Infancy, vi, 12, p. 38).[75] The constant activity of children must be provided for. “It is better to play than to be idle, for during play the mind is intent on some object which often sharpens the abilities. In this way children may be early exercised to an active life without any difficulty, since Nature herself stirs them up to be doing something” (Ib. ix, 15, p. 55). “In the second, third, fourth years, &c., let their spirits be stirred up by means of agreeable play with them or their playing among themselves.... Nay, if some little occupation can be conveniently provided for the child’s eyes, ears, or other senses, these will contribute to its vigour of mind and body” (Ib. vi, 21, p. 31).

§ 39. We have the usual cautions against forcing. “Early fruit is useful for the day, but will not keep; whereas late fruit may be kept all the year. As some natural capacities would fly, as it were, before the sixth, the fifth, or even the fourth year, yet it will be beneficial rather to restrain than permit this; but very much worse to enforce it.” “It is safer that the brain be rightly consolidated before it begin to sustain labours: in a little child the whole bregma is scarcely closed and the brain consolidated within the fifth or sixth year. It is sufficient, therefore, for this age to comprehend spontaneously, imperceptibly and as it were in play, so much as is employed in the domestic circle” (Ib. chap. xi).

§ 40. One disastrous tendency has always shown itself in the schoolroom—the tendency to sever all connection between studies in the schoolroom and life outside. The young pack away their knowledge as it were in water-tight compartments, where it may lie conveniently till the scholastic voyage is over and it can be again unshipped.[76] Against this tendency many great teachers have striven, and none more vigorously than Comenius. Like Pestalozzi he sought to resolve everything into its simplest elements, and he finds the commencements before the school age. In the School of Infancy he says (speaking of rhetoric), “My aim is to shew, although this is not generally attended to, that the roots of all sciences and arts in every instance arise as early as in the tender age, and that on these foundations it is neither impossible nor difficult for the whole superstructure to be laid; provided always that we act reasonably with a reasonable creature” (viij, 6, p. 46). This principle he applies in his chapter, “How children ought to be accustomed to an active life and perpetual employment” (chap. vij). In the fourth and fifth year their powers are to be drawn out in mechanical or architectural efforts, in drawing and writing, in music, in arithmetic, geometry, and dialectics. For arithmetic in the fourth, fifth, or sixth year, it will be sufficient if they count up to twenty; and they may be taught to play at “odd and even.” In geometry they may learn in the fourth year what are lines, what are squares, what are circles; also the usual measures—foot, pint, quart, &c., and soon they should try to measure and weigh for themselves. Similar beginnings are found for other sciences such as physics, astronomy, geography, history, economics, and politics. “The elements of geography will be during the course of the first year and thenceforward, when children begin to distinguish between their cradles and their mother’s bosom” (vj, 6, p. 34). As this geographical knowledge extends, they discover “what a field is, what a mountain, forest, meadow, river” (iv, 9, p. 17). “The beginning of history will be, to be able to remember what was done yesterday, what recently, what a year ago.”[77] (Ib.)

§ 41. In this book Comenius is careful to provide children with occupation for “mind and hand” (iv, 10, p. 18). Drawing is to be practised by all. “It matters not,” says Comenius, “whether the objects be correctly drawn or otherwise provided that they afford delight to the mind.”[78]

§ 42. We see then that this restless thinker considered the entire course of a child’s bringing-up from the cradle to maturity; and we cannot doubt that Raumer is right in saying, “The influence of Comenius on subsequent thinkers and workers in education, especially on the Methodizers, is incalculable.” (Gesch. d. P., ij, “Comenius,” § 10.)

Before we think of his methods and school books, let us inquire what he did for education that has proved to be on a solid foundation and “not liable to any ruin.”