Comenius and the Beginnings of Educational Reform

by W. S. Monroe

Such we may suppose to have been the character of his studies at Prerau during the two years from 1608 to 1610. Because of his maturity, he appreciated most keenly the faults of current humanistic methods of teaching. As one of his biographers remarks: “The defects of this early education were the seeds from which sprang the whole of his didactic efforts. Considerably older than his school-fellows, he was able to criticise the methods and speedily arrive at the conclusion that the lack of progress was due more to the inefficiency of the teachers than to the idleness of their pupils. From this time onward, he began to devise new methods of class instruction and better schemes of study. From the vivid memory of the horrors through which he had passed, of the thousand and one rules that had to be learned by rote before they were understood, of the monotonous study of grammar, only diversified by the maddening effort to translate Latin authors without the assistance of suitable dictionaries or commentaries, sprang that intense sympathy with beginners which characterizes his whole life and gives practical worth to every precept that he enunciated.”

After two years in the Latin school at Prerau, he entered the college at Herborn on the 30th of March, 1611. The University of Prague was at this time in the hands of the Utraquists, whose unfriendly attitude toward the Moravian Brethren led to the selection of a German university for his higher course of instruction. He had determined to qualify for the ministry, and the institution at Herborn at this time afforded unusual opportunities for the study of theology. Doubtless another factor in the selection of Herborn was the fact that John Henry Alsted, one of the most distinguished theological and philosophical professors of the day, was lecturing there, and aspiring youths of the temperament of Comenius naturally gravitated toward this centre of fresh thought. Although but four years older than Comenius, Alsted was the most commanding figure in the academic circles of Europe at this time. He had travelled extensively; had made the acquaintance of most of the learned men in Europe worth knowing; and had advocated views of education which were new and startling.

For twenty-seven years Herborn had enjoyed unprecedented academic prosperity. Opportunities for the study of education were unexcelled; for, connected with the college, there was a preparatory department which served as a laboratory for the study of pedagogic problems, in which, for example, the lower classes were instructed in the mother-tongue—a procedure that was regarded as ultra-heterodox at this time.

Comenius was most helped by the instruction of the distinguished theologian and philosopher, Professor John Henry Alsted. The teachings of Alsted were of a character calculated to deepen the convictions of the young student from Moravia, for the Herborn professor taught among other things—as is indicated by his Encyclopædia of the sciences, published a few years later—the following: (1) Not more than one thing should be taught at a time; (2) not more than one book should be used on one subject, and not more than one subject should be taught on one day; (3) everything should be taught through the medium of what is more familiar; (4) all superfluity should be avoided; (5) all study should be mapped out in fixed periods; (6) all rules should be as short as possible; (7) everything should be taught without severity, though discipline must be maintained; (8) corporal punishment should be reserved for moral offences, and never inflicted for lack of industry; (9) authority should not be allowed to prejudice the mind against the facts gleaned from experience, nor should custom or preconceived opinion prevail; (10) the construction of a new language should first be explained in the vernacular; (11) no language should be taught by means of grammar; (12) grammatical terms should be the same in all languages. “The teacher,” said Alsted, “should be a skilled reader of character, so that he may be able to classify the dispositions of his pupils. Unless he pays great attention to differences of disposition, he will but waste all the efforts he expends in teaching.”

Another professor of philosophy at Herborn at the time was Heinrich Gutberleth, who was likewise deeply interested in pedagogy and whose lectures seem to have influenced Comenius, with special reference to his advocacy of the study of the physical sciences. In theology he heard lectures by Piscator, Hermannus, and Pasor. Since 1530 the schools of Nassau had been marked by great improvement, and this improvement was in no small measure due to the intelligent interest of the professors of theology at Herborn in the schools of the province. Hermannus, with whom Comenius studied practical theology, was especially active in school reform.

It was during his student life at Herborn that Comenius became acquainted with Ratke’s plan of instruction, then much discussed at university centres, and especially at Jena, Giessen, and Herborn. However much he may have been stimulated to educational reform by his own belated classical training and by the pedagogic character of the work at Herborn, the writings of Ratke, as he himself tells us, played the largest part in making him an educational reformer. While at Herborn he gave special attention to the Bohemian language, and planned a dictionary which was never published.

Comenius left Herborn in the spring of 1613; and after a few weeks’ sojourn at Amsterdam he repaired to Heidelberg, where he matriculated as a student of philosophy and theology on the 13th of June. Beyond the fact that he purchased a manuscript of Copernicus, and that at the end of a year, his funds becoming exhausted, he was forced to make the return journey to Prague on foot, nothing is known of his life at Heidelberg.

Back in his native country after these years of study and travel in Germany, he was still too young by two years for ordination in the brotherhood. Meanwhile he turned his attention to education, and engaged himself as a teacher in the elementary school at Prerau conducted by the Moravian Brethren. This experience brought him face to face with problems of methodology and discipline, and gave him an opportunity to apply some of the theories he had formulated while a student at Herborn. His attention was at once called to the ineffective methods employed in teaching Latin, for the remedy of which he prepared an easy Latin book for beginners.

His ordination took place at Zerwick on the 29th day of April, 1616, although he continued teaching at Prerau for two years longer, when he was called to the pastorate of the flourishing Moravian church at Fulneck. At the same time, or shortly thereafter, he was elected superintendent of the schools of the town. In this twofold capacity he ministered to the spiritual and educational needs of Fulneck for three years, and passed the only tranquil and happy years of his life. But the year that ushered in this prosperous career witnessed the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War.