The purpose of the Great didactic, as announced by Comenius in the preface, is to seek and find a method of instruction by which teachers may teach less, but learners may learn more; schools may be the scene of less noise, aversion, and useless labor, but of more leisure, enjoyment, and solid progress; the Christian community have less darkness, perplexity, and dissension, but more light, peace, and rest. He promises in his “greeting” an “art of teaching all things to all men, and of teaching them with certainty, so that the result cannot fail.” Among the uses of such an art he notes the advantage (1) to parents, that they may know that if correct methods have been employed with unerring accuracy, it is impossible that the desired result should not follow; (2) to teachers, who, without a knowledge of this art, try in turn first one plan and then another—a course which involves a tedious waste of time and energy; and (3) to schools, that they may become places of amusement, houses of delight and attraction, and that they may cause learning to flourish. Such, in brief, are fundamental principles of a philosophy of education. How well those principles were elaborated and applied will be seen in the exposition of his writings which follows.
Purpose of Education
The opening chapters of the Great didactic treat of man as the highest, the most absolute, and the most excellent of created beings: of the life beyond as man’s ultimate end, and of this life as merely a preparation for eternity. The human being passes through three stages in his preparation for eternity—he learns to know himself, to rule himself, and to direct himself to God. Man’s natural craving is for knowledge,—learning, virtue, piety,—and the seeds of knowledge are implanted in every rational creature. The mind of man is unlimited in its aspirations. “The body is enclosed by small boundaries; the voice roams within wider limits; the sight is bounded only by the vault of heaven; but for the mind, neither in heaven nor anywhere outside of heaven can a boundary be fixed for it.”
Man delights in harmony; and, as respects both his mind and his body, he is a harmony. Just as the great world itself is like an immense piece of clockwork, put together with many wheels and bells, and arranged with such art that, throughout the whole structure, one part depends upon another through the harmony and perfection of the movements—so it is with man. All this harmony and perfection is made possible through education.
He gave no bad definition, remarks Comenius, who said that man was a “teachable animal.” But he must be taught, since he is born only with aptitudes. Before he can sit, stand, walk, or use his hands, he requires instruction. It is the law of all created things that they develop gradually and ultimately reach a state of perfection. Plato was right when he said, “If properly educated, man is the gentlest and most divine of created beings; but if left uneducated or subjected to a false training, he is the most intractable thing in the world.”
Education is necessary for all classes of society; and this is the more apparent when we consider the marked individual differences to be found among human beings. No one doubts that the stupid need instruction that they may outgrow their stupidity. But clever and precocious minds require more careful instruction than dull and backward minds; since those who are mentally active, if not occupied with useful things, will busy themselves with what is useless, curious, and pernicious. Just as a millstone grinds itself away with noise if wheat is not supplied, so an active mind, if void of serious things, entangles itself with vain, curious, and noxious thoughts, and becomes the cause of its own destruction.
The time for education is in early youth.[27] God has, accordingly, made the years of childhood unsuitable for anything but education; and this matter was interposed by the deliberate intent of a wise Providence. Youth is a period of great plasticity. It is in the nature of everything that comes into being to bend and form easily while tender; but when the plastic period has passed to alter only with great difficulty. If one wishes to become a good tailor, writer, or musician, he must apply himself to his art from his earliest youth, during the period when his imagination is most active and when his fingers are most flexible. Only during the years of childhood is it possible to train the muscles to do skilled work. If, then, parents have the welfare of their children at heart, and if the good of the human race be dear to the civil and ecclesiastical guardians of society, let them hasten to make provision for the timely planting, pruning, and watering of the plants of heaven that these may be prudently formed in letters, virtue, and piety.
Private education is not desirable. Children should be trained in common, since better results and more pleasures are to be obtained when they are taught together in classes. Not only is class teaching a saving of labor over private instruction, but it introduces a rivalry that is both needful and helpful. Moreover, young children learn much that is useful by imitation through association with school-fellows. Comenius, it may be remarked, was one of the first of the educational reformers to see clearly the value of class teaching and graded instruction. His reforms in this direction have already been noted.
School training is necessary for the children of all grades of society, not of the rich and powerful only, but the poor and lowly as well. Let none be neglected, unless God has denied him sense and intelligence. When it is urged that the laboring classes need no school education, let it be also recalled that they are expected to think, obey, and do good.
Girls should be educated as well as boys. No satisfactory reason can be given why women should be excluded from the pursuits of knowledge, whether in the Latin or in the mother-tongue. They are formed in the image of God as well as men; and they are endowed with equal sharpness of mind and capacity for learning, often, indeed, with more than the opposite sex. Why, then, should we admit them to the alphabet, and afterwards drive them away from books? Comenius takes issue with most writers on education that study will make women blue-stockings and chatterboxes. On the contrary, he maintains, the more their minds are occupied with the fruits of learning, the less room and temptation there will be for gossip and folly.