CHAPTER VIII
STUDY OF LANGUAGE
Dominance of Latin in the seventeenth century—Methods of study characterized by Comenius. The Janua—Purpose and plan—Its success. Atrium and Vestibulum—Their relation to the Janua. The Orbis pictus—How conceived—Its popularity—Use of pictures. Methodus novissima—Principles of language teaching—Function of examples—Place of oral and written language in education.
Recalling that Latin occupied such an exalted place in the schools of Comenius’ day, it is not at all surprising that he gave so much attention to the study of language. Latin absorbed practically all the energies of the pupils, and with results that were far from satisfactory. A historian of the period says, “Boys and teachers were alike unhappy; great severity of discipline was practised, and after all was done, and all the years of youth had been spent in the study mainly of the Latin, the results were contemptible.”
The study of Latin is thus characterized by Comenius:
1. The Latin language is taught abstractly without a knowledge of the things which the words denote. Words should be learned in connection with things already known; it is false to conclude that, because children know how to utter words, they therefore understand them.
2. The second evil in the study of language is driving children into the manifold intricacies of grammar from the very first. It is a blunder to plunge them into the formal statements of grammar on their first beginning Latin. To make matters worse, the Latin grammar is written in Latin. How should we adults like it, if, in the study of Arabic, we had a grammar written in the Arabic first put into our hands?
3. The third evil in the study of language is the practice of compelling children to make impossible leaps instead of carrying them forward step by step. We introduce them from the grammar into Virgil and Cicero. The sublimity of poetic style is beyond the conception of boys, and the subject-matter of Cicero’s epistles not easy for grown men. It will be said that the object is to place before children a perfect model to which they may attain. It is right to aim at a perfect model, when the aim is practicable, and if we proceed gradually to the highest. But larger things are with advantage postponed to lesser things; and lesser things, if accommodated to the age of the learners, yield greater fruits than large things. If Cicero himself were to enter our schools and find boys engaged with his works, Comenius believes that he would be either amused or indignant.
Professor Laurie remarks that “when we bear in mind the construction of the Latin grammars then in use,—that of Alvarus, for example, having five hundred rules and as many exceptions,—we cannot be surprised at the unanimous condemnation of the then current methods of teaching, and the almost universal lamentation over the wasted years of youth.”