was a hundred and fifty years later, with Holstein and Hamburg. He was
born at Wilster in Holstein in 1571, and studied at Hamburg and at the
University of Rostock. He afterwards travelled to Amsterdam and to
England, and it was perhaps owing to his residence in this country that
he was acquainted with the new philosophy of Bacon. We next hear of him
at the Electoral Diet, held as usual in Frankfurt-on-Main, in 1612. He
was then over forty years old, and he had elaborated a new scheme for
teaching. Like all inventors, he was fully impressed with the importance
of his discovery, and he sent to the assembled Princes an address, in
which he undertook some startling performances. He was able, he said: (1)
to teach young or old Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, or other languages, in
a very short time and without any difficulty; (2) to establish schools
in which all arts should be taught and extended; (3) to introduce and
peaceably establish throughout the German Empire a uniform speech, a
uniform government, and (still more wonderful) a uniform religion.
§ 4. Naturally enough the address arrested the attention of the Princes.
The Landgraf Lewis of Darmstadt thought the matter worthy of examination,
and he deputed two learned men, Jung and Helwig, to confer with Ratke.
Their report was entirely favourable, and they did all they could to get
for Ratke the means of carrying his scheme into execution. “We are,”
writes Helwig, “in bondage to Latin. The Greeks and Saracens would
never have done so much for posterity if they had spent their youth in
acquiring a foreign tongue. We must study our own language, and then
sciences. Ratichius has discovered the art of teaching according to
Nature. By his method, languages will be quickly learned, so that we
shall have time for science; and science will be learned even better
still, as the natural system suits best with science, which is the study
of Nature.” Moved by this report the Town Council of Augsburg agreed to
give Ratke the necessary power over their schools, and accompanied by
Helwig, he accordingly went to Augsburg and set to work. But the good
folks of Augsburg were like children, who expect a plant as soon as they
have sown the seed. They were speedily dissatisfied, and Ratke and Helwig
left Augsburg, the latter much discouraged but still faithful to his
friend. Ratke went to Frankfurt again, and a Commission was appointed
to consider his proposals, but by its advice Ratke was “allowed to try
elsewhere.”
§ 5. He would never have had a fair chance had he not had a firm friend
in the Duchess Dorothy of Weimar. Then, as now, we find women taking the
lead in everything which promises to improve education, and this good
Duchess sent for Ratke and tested his method by herself taking lessons
of him in Hebrew. With this adult pupil his plans seem to have answered
well, and she always continued his admirer and advocate. By her advice
her brother, Prince Lewis of Anhalt-Koethen, decided that the great
discovery should not be lost for want of a fair trial; so he called Ratke
to Koethen and complied with all his demands. A band of teachers sworn
to secrecy were first of all instructed in the art by Ratke himself.
Next, schools with very costly appliances were provided, and lastly some
500 little Koetheners—boys and girls—were collected and handed over to
Ratke to work his wonders with.
§ 6. It never seems to have occurred either to Ratke or his friends or
the Prince that all the principles and methods that ever were or ever
will be established could not enable a man without experience to organize
a school of 500 children. A man who had never been in the water might
just as well plunge into the sea at once and trust to his knowledge of
the laws of fluid pressure to save him from drowning. There are endless
details to be settled which would bewilder any one without experience.
Some years ago school-buildings were provided for one of our county
schools, and the council consulted a master of great experience who
strongly urged them not to start as they had intended with 300 boys.
“_I_ would not undertake such a thing,” said he. When pressed for his
reason, he said quietly, “I would not be responsible for the _boots_.”
I have no doubt Ratke had to come down from his principles and his new
method to deal with numberless little questions of caps, bonnets, late
children, broken windows, and the like; and he was without the tact and
the experience which enable many ordinary men and women, who know nothing
of principles, to settle such matters satisfactorily.
§ 7. Years afterwards there was another thinker much more profound and
influential than Ratke, who was quite as incompetent to organize. I
mean Pestalozzi. But Pestalozzi had one great advantage over Ratke. He
attached all his assistants to him by inspiring them with love and
reverence of himself. This made up for many deficiencies. But Ratke
was not like the fatherly, self-sacrificing Pestalozzi. He leads us to
suspect him of being an impostor by making a mystery of his invention,
and he never could keep the peace with his assistants.
§ 8. So, as might have been expected, the grand experiment failed. The
Prince, exasperated at being placed in a somewhat ridiculous position,
and possibly at the serious loss of money into the bargain, revenged
himself on Ratke by throwing him into prison, nor would he release him
till he had made him sign a paper in which he admitted that he had
undertaken more than he was able to fulfil.
§ 9. This was no doubt the case; and yet Ratke had done more for the
Prince than the Prince for Ratke. In Koethen had been opened the first
German school in which the children were taught to make a study of the
German language.
Ratke never recovered from his failure at Koethen, and nothing memorable
is recorded of him afterwards. He died in 1635.
§ 10. Much was written by Ratke; much has been written about him; and
those who wish to know more than the few particulars I have given may
find all they want in Raumer or Barnard. The Innovator failed in gaining
the applause of his contemporaries, and he does not seem to stand high in
the respect of posterity; but he was a pioneer in the art of didactics,
and the rules which Raumer has gathered from the _Methodus Institutionis
nova ... Ratichii et Ratichianorum_, published by Rhenius at Leipzig
in 1626, raise some of the most interesting points to which a teachers
attention can be directed. I will therefore state them, and say briefly
what I think of them.
§ 11. I. _In everything we should follow the order of Nature. There is
a certain natural sequence along which the human intelligence moves in
acquiring knowledge. This sequence must be studied, and instruction must
be based on the knowledge of it._
Here, as in all teaching of the Reformers, we find “Nature” used as if
the word stood for some definite idea. From the time of the Stoics we
have been exhorted to “follow Nature.” In more modern times the demand
was well formulated by Picus of Mirandola: “Take no heed what thing
many men do, but what thing the _very law of Nature_, what thing _very
reason_, what thing _our Lord Himself_ showeth thee to be done.” (Trans.
by Sir Thomas More, quoted in Seebohm, _Oxford Reformers_.)
Pope, always happy in expression but not always clear in thought, talks
of—
“Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light.”
(_Essay on C._, i, 70.)
But as Dr. W. T. Harris has well pointed out (_St. Louis, Mo., School
Report, ’78, ’79_, p. 217), with this word “Nature” writers on education
do a great deal of juggling. Some times they use it for the external
world, including in it man’s _unconscious_ growth, sometimes they make it
stand for the ideal. What sense does Ratke attach to it? One might have
some difficulty in determining. Perhaps the best meaning we can nowadays
find for his rule is: _study Psychology_.
§ 12. II. _One thing at a time._ Master one subject before you take up
another. For each language master a single book. Go over it again and
again till you have completely made it your own.
In its crude form this rule could not be carried out. If the attempt were
made the results would be no better than from the six months’ course
of Terence under Ratke. It is “against all Nature” to go on hammering
away at one thing day after day without any change; and there is a point
beyond which any attempt at thoroughness must end in simple stagnation.
The rule then would have two fatal drawbacks: 1st, it would lead to
monotony; 2nd, it would require a completeness of learning which to
the young would be impossible. But in these days no one follows Ratke.
On the other hand, concentration in study is often neglected, and our
time-tables afford specimens of the most ingenious mosaic work, in which
everything has a place, but in so small a quantity that the learners
never find out what each thing really is. School subjects are like
the clubs of the eastern tale, which did not give out their medicinal
properties till the patient got warm in the use of them.
When a good hold on a subject has once been secured, short study, with
considerable intervals between, may suffice to keep up and even increase
the knowledge already obtained; but in matters of any difficulty, _e.g._,
in a new language, no start is ever made without allotting to it much
more than two or three hours a week. It is perhaps a mistake to suppose
that if a good deal of the language may be learnt by giving it ten hours
a week, twice that amount might be acquired in twenty hours. It is a
much greater mistake if we think that one-fifth of the amount might be
acquired in two hours.
§ 13. III. _The same thing should be repeated over and over again._
This is like the Jesuits’ _Repetitio Mater Studiorum_; and the same
notion was well developed 200 years later by Jacotot.
By Ratke’s application of this rule some odd results were produced. The
little Koetheners were drilled for German in a book of the Bible (Genesis
was selected), and then for Latin in a play of Terence.
Unlike many “theoretical notions” this precept of Ratke’s comes more and
more into favour as the schoolmaster increases in age and experience. But
we must be careful to take our pupils with us; and this repeating the
same thing over and over may seem to them what marking time would seem
to soldiers who wanted to march. Even more than the last rule this is
open to the objections that monotony is deadening, and perfect attainment
of anything but words impossible. In keeping to a subject then we must
not rely on simple repetition. The rule now accepted is thus stated by
Diesterweg:—“Every subject of instruction should be viewed from as many
sides as possible, and as varied exercises as possible should be set on
one and the same thing.” The art of the master is shown in disguising
repetition and bringing known things into new connection, so that they
may partially at least retain their freshness.
§ 14. IV. _First let the mother-tongue be studied, and teach everything
through the mother-tongue, so that the learners attention may not be
diverted to the language._
We saw that Sturm, the leading schoolmaster of Renascence, tried to
suppress the mother-tongue and substitute Latin for it. Against this a
vigorous protest was made in this country by Mulcaster. And our language
was never conquered by a foreign language, as German was conquered first
by Latin and then by French. But “the tongues” have always had the
lion’s share of attention in the schoolroom, and though many have seen
and Milton has said that “our understanding cannot in this body found
itself but on sensible things,” this truth is only now making its way
into the schoolroom. Hitherto the foundation has hardly been laid before
“the schoolmaster has stept in and staid the building by confounding the
language.”[57] Ratke’s protest against this will always be put to his
credit in the history of education.
§ 15. V. _Everything without constraint._ “The young should not be beaten
to make them learn or for not having learnt. It is compulsion and stripes
that set young people against studying. Boys are often beaten for not
having learnt, but they would have learnt had they been well taught. The
human understanding is so formed that it has pleasure in receiving what
it should retain: and this pleasure you destroy by your harshness. Where
the master is skilful and judicious, the boys will take to him and to
their lessons. Folly lurks indeed in the heart of the child and must be
driven out with the rod; but not by the _teacher_.”
Here at least there is nothing original in Ratke’s precept. A goodly
array of authorities have condemned learning “upon compulsion.” This
array extends at least as far as from Plato to Bishop Dupanloup. “In the
case of the mind, no study pursued under compulsion remains rooted in
the memory,” says Plato.[58] “Everything depends,” says Dupanloup, “on
what the teacher induces his pupils to do _freely_: for authority is not
constraint—it ought to be inseparable from respect and devotion. I will
respect human liberty in the smallest child.” As far as I have observed
there is only one class of persons whom the authorities from Plato to
Dupanloup have failed to convince, and that is the schoolmasters. This
is the class to which I have belonged, and I should not be prepared
to take Plato’s counsel: “Bring up your boys in their studies without
constraint and in a playful manner.” (_Ib._) At the same time I see the
importance of self-activity, and there is no such thing as self-activity
upon compulsion. You can no more hurry thought with the cane than you
can hurry a snail with a pin. So without interest there can be no proper
learning. Interest must be aroused—even in Latin Grammar. But if they
could choose their own occupation, the boys, however interested in their
work, would probably find something else more interesting still. We
cannot get on, and never shall, without the _must_.
§ 16. VI. _Nothing may be learnt by heart._
It has always been a common mistake in the schoolroom to confound the
power of running along a sequence of sounds with a mastery of the thought
with which those sounds should be connected. But, as I have remarked
elsewhere (_supra_, p. 74, note), the two things, though different, are
not opposed. Too much is likely to be made of learning by heart, for of
the two things the pupils find it the easier, and the teacher the more
easily tested. We may, however, guard against the abuse without giving up
the use.
§ 17. VII.[59] _Uniformity in all things._
Both in the way of learning, and in the books, and the rules, a uniform
method should be observed, says Ratke.
The right plan is for the learner to acquire familiar knowledge of one
subject or part of a subject, and then use this for comparison when he
learns beyond it. If the same method of learning is adopted throughout,
this will render comparison more easy and more striking.[60]
§ 18. VIII. _The thing itself should come first, then whatever explains
it._
To those who do not with closed eyes cling to the method of their
predecessors, this rule may seem founded on common-sense. Would any
one but a “teacher,” or a writer of school books, ever think of making
children who do not know a word of French, learn about the French
accents? And yet what Ratke said 250 years ago has not been disproved
since: “Accidens rei priusquam rem ipsam quaerere prorsus absonum et
absurdum esse videtur,” which I take to mean: “Before the learner has a
notion of the thing itself, it is folly to worry him about its accidents
or even its properties, essential or unessential.” _Ne modus rei ante
rem._[61]
This rule of Ratke’s warns teachers against a very common mistake.
The subject is _to them_ in full view, and they make the most minute
observations on it. But these things cannot be seen by their pupils;
and even if the beginner could see these minutiæ, he would find in them
neither interest nor advantage. But when we apply Ratke’s principle more
widely, we find ourselves involved in the great question whether our
method should be based on synthesis or analysis, a question which Ratke’s
method did not settle for us.
§ 19. IX. _Everything by experience and examination of the parts._ Or as
he states the rule in Latin: _Per inductionem et experimentum omnia._
Nothing was to be received on authority, and this disciple of Bacon went
beyond his master and took for his motto: _Vetustas cessit, ratio vicit_
(“Age has yielded, reason prevailed”); as if reason must be brand-new,
and truth might wax old and be ready to vanish away.
§ 20. From these rules of his we see that Ratke did much to formulate the
main principles of Didactics. He also deserves to be remembered among the
methodizers who have tackled the problem—how to teach a language.
At Köthen the instructor of the lowest class had to talk with the
children, and to take pains with their pronunciation. When they knew
their letters (Ickelsamer’s plan for reading Ratke seems to have
neglected) the teacher read the Book of Genesis through to them, each
chapter twice over, requiring the children to follow with eye and finger.
Then the teacher began the chapter again, and read about four lines
only, which the children read after him. When the book had been worked
over in this way, the children were required to read it through without
assistance. Reading once secured, the master proceeded to grammar. He
explained, say, what a substantive was, and then showed instances in
Genesis, and next required the children to point out others. In this way
the grammar was verified throughout from Genesis, and the pupils were
exercised in declining and conjugating words taken from the Book.
When they advanced to the study of Latin, they were given a _translation_
of a play of Terence, and worked over it several times before they were
shown the Latin.
The master then translated the play to them, each half-hour’s work twice
over. At the next reading, the master translated the first half-hour,
and the boys translated the same piece the second. Having thus got
through the play, they began again, and only the boys translated. After
this there was a course of grammar, which was applied to the Terence,
as the grammar of the mother-tongue had been to Genesis. Finally, the
pupils were put through a course of exercises, in which they had to turn
into Latin sentences imitated from the Terence, and differing from the
original only in the number or person used.
Raumer gives other particulars, and quotes largely from the almost
unreadable account of Kromayer, one of Ratke’s followers, in order that
we may have, as he says, a notion of the tediousness of the method. No
doubt anyone who has followed me hitherto, will consider that this point
has been brought out already with sufficient distinctness.
§ 21. When we compare Ratke’s method with Ascham’s, we find several
points of agreement. Ratke would begin the study of a language by taking
a model book, and working through it with the pupil a great many times.
Ascham did the same. Each lecture according to his plan would be gone
over “a dozen times at the least.” Both construed to the pupil instead of
requiring him to make out the sense for himself. Both Ratke and Ascham
taught grammar not by itself, but in connection with the model book.
But the points of difference are still more striking. In one respect
Ratke’s plan was weak. It gave the pupils little to do, and made no
use of the pen. Ascham’s was better in this and also as a training in
accuracy. Ascham was, as I have pointed out, a “complete retainer.” Ratke
was a “rapid impressionist.” His system was a good deal like that which
had great vogue in the early part of this century as the “Hamiltonian
System.” From the first the language was to be laid on “very thick,” in
the belief that “some of it was sure to stick.” The impressions would be
slight, and there would at first be much confusion between words which
had a superficial resemblance, but accuracy it was thought would come in
time.
§ 22. The contest between the two schools of thought of which Ascham and
Ratke may be taken as representatives has continued till now, and within
the last few years both parties have made great advances in method. But
in nothing does progress seem slower than in education; and the plan of
grammar-teaching in vogue fifty years ago was inferior to the methods
advocated by the old writers.[62]
X.
COMENIUS.
(1592-1671).
§ 1. One of the most hopeful signs of the improvement of education is the
rapid advance in the last thirty years of the fame of Comenius, and the
growth of a large literature about the man and his ideas. Twenty-three
years ago, when I first became interested in him, his name was hardly
known beyond Germany. In English there was indeed an excellent life of
him prefixed to a translation of his _School of Infancy_; but this work,
by Daniel Benham (London, 1858), had not then, and has not now, anything
like the circulation it deserves. A much more successful book has been
Professor S. S. Laurie’s _John Amos Comenius_ (Cambridge University
Press), and this is known to most, and should be to all, English students
of education. By the Germans and French Comenius is now recognised as
the man who first treated education in a scientific spirit, and who
bequeathed the rudiments of a science to later ages. On this account the
great library of pedagogy at Leipzig has been named in his honour the
“Comenius Stiftung.”
§ 2. John Amos Komensky or Comenius, the son of a miller, who belonged
to the Moravian Brethren, was born, at the Moravian village of Niwnic,
in 1592. Of his early life we know nothing but what he himself tells
us in the following passage:—“Losing both my parents while I was yet a
child, I began, through the neglect of my guardians, but at sixteen years
of age to taste of the Latin tongue. Yet by the goodness of God, that
taste bred such a thirst in me, that I ceased not from that time, by all
means and endeavours, to labour for the repairing of my lost years; and
now not only for myself, but for the good of others also. For I could
not but pity others also in this respect, especially in my own nation,
which is too slothful and careless in matter of learning. Thereupon
I was continually full of thoughts for the finding out of some means
whereby more might be inflamed with the love of learning, and whereby
learning itself might be made more compendious, both in matter of the
charge and cost, and of the labour belonging thereto, that so the youth
might be brought by a more easy method, unto some notable proficiency in
learning.”[63] With these thoughts in his head, he pursued his studies in
several German towns, especially at Herborn in Nassau. Here he saw the
Report on Ratke’s method published in 1612 for the Universities of Jena
and Giessen; and we find him shortly afterwards writing his first book,
_Grammaticæ facilioris Præcepta_, which was published at Prag in 1616.
On his return to Moravia, he was appointed to the Brethren’s school at
Prerau, but (to use his own words) “being shortly after at the age of
twenty-four called to the service of the Church, because _that divine
function_ challenged all my endeavours (divinumque HOC AGE præ oculis
erat) these scholastic cares were laid aside.”[64] His pastoral charge
was at Fulneck, the headquarters of the Brethren. As such it soon felt
the effects of the Battle of Prag, being in the following year (1621)
taken and plundered by the Spaniards. On this occasion Comenius lost his
MSS. and almost everything he possessed. The year after his wife died,
and then his only child. In 1624 all Protestant ministers were banished,
and in 1627 a new decree extended the banishment to Protestants of every
description. Comenius bore up against wave after wave of calamity with
Christian courage and resignation, and his writings at this period were
of great value to his fellow-sufferers.
§ 3. For a time he found a hiding-place in the family of a Bohemian
nobleman, Baron Sadowsky, at Slaupna, in the Bohemian mountains, and
in this retirement, his attention was again directed to the science
of teaching. The Baron had engaged Stadius, one of the proscribed, to
educate his three sons, and, at Stadius’ request, Comenius wrote “some
canons of a better method,” for his use. We find him, too, endeavouring
to enrich the literature of his mother-tongue, making a metrical
translation of the Psalms of David, and even writing imitations of
Virgil, Ovid, and Cato’s _Distichs_.
In 1627, however, the persecution waxed so hot, that Comenius, with most
of the Brethren, had to flee their country, never to return. On crossing
the border, Comenius and the exiles who accompanied him knelt down, and
prayed that God would not suffer His truth to fail out of their native
land.