Moreover, the crude form comes first, then the elaboration of the parts.
The architect, acting on this principle, first makes a rough plan or
model, and then by degrees designs the details; last of all he attends to
the ornamentation. In teaching, then, let the inmost part, _i.e._, the
understanding of the subject, come first; then let the thing understood
be used to exercise the memory, the speech, and the hands; and let every
language, science, and art be taught first in its rudimentary outline;
then more completely with examples and rules; finally, with exceptions
and anomalies. Instead of this, some teachers are foolish enough to
require beginners to get up all the anomalies in Latin Grammar, and the
dialects in Greek.
§ 26. Again, as Nature does nothing _per saltum_, nor halts when she
has begun, the whole course of studies should be arranged in strict
order, so that the earlier studies prepare the way for the later. Every
year, every month, every day and hour even, should have its task marked
out beforehand, and the plan should be rigidly carried out. Much loss
is occasioned by absence of boys from school, and by changes in the
instruction. Iron that might be wrought with one heating should not be
allowed to get cold, and be heated over and over again.
§ 27. Nature protects her work from injurious influences, so boys should
be kept from injurious companionships and books.
§ 28. In a chapter devoted to the principles of easy teaching, Comenius
lays down, among rules similar to the foregoing, that children will
learn if they are taught only what they have a desire to learn, with due
regard to their age and the method of instruction, and especially when
everything is first taught by means of the senses. On this point Comenius
laid great stress, and he was the first who did so. Education should
proceed, he said, in the following order: first, educate the senses, then
the memory, then the intellect; last of all the critical faculty. This
is the order of Nature. The child first perceives through the senses.
“_Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu._ Everything in
the intellect must have come through the senses.” These perceptions are
stored in the memory, and called up by the imagination.[71] By comparing
one with another, the understanding forms general ideas, and at length
the judgment decides between the false and the true. By keeping to this
order, Comenius believed it would be possible to make learning entirely
pleasant to the pupils, however young. Here Comenius went even further
than the Jesuits. They wished to make learning pleasant, but despaired
of doing this except by external influences, emulation and the like.
Comenius did not neglect external means to make the road to learning
agreeable. Like the Jesuits, he would have short school-hours, and would
make great use of praise and blame, but he did not depend, as they did
almost exclusively, on emulation. He would have the desire of learning
fostered in every possible way—by parents, by teachers, by school
buildings and apparatus, by the subjects themselves, by the method of
teaching them, and lastly, by the public authorities. (1) The parents
must praise learning and learned men, must show children beautiful books,
&c., must treat the teachers with great respect. (2) The teacher must be
kind and fatherly, he must distribute praise and reward, and must always,
where it is possible, give the children something to look at. (3) The
school buildings must be light, airy, and cheerful, and well furnished
with apparatus, as pictures, maps, models, collections of specimens. (4)
The subjects taught must not be too hard for the learner’s comprehension,
and the more entertaining parts of them must be especially dwelt upon.
(5) The method must be natural, and everything that is not essential to
the subject or is beyond the pupil must be omitted. Fables and allegories
should be introduced, and enigmas given for the pupils to guess. (6) The
authorities must appoint public examinations and reward merit.
§ 29. Nature helps herself in various ways, so the pupils should have
every assistance given them. It should especially be made clear what the
pupils are to learn, and how they should learn it.
§ 30. The pupils should be punished for offences against morals only. If
they do not learn, the fault is with the teacher.
§ 31. One of Comenius’s most distinctive principles was that there should
no longer be “_infelix divortium rerum et verborum_, the wretched divorce
of words from things” (the phrase, I think, is Campanella’s), but that
knowledge of _things_ and words should go together. This, together with
his desire of submitting everything to the pupil’s senses, would have
introduced a great change into the course of instruction, which was then,
as it has for the most part continued, purely literary. We should learn,
says Comenius, as much as possible, not from books, but from the great
book of Nature, from heaven and earth, from oaks and beeches.
§ 32. When languages are to be learnt, he would have them taught
separately. Till the pupil is from eight to ten years old, he should
be instructed only in the mother-tongue, and about things. Then other
languages can be acquired in about a year each; Latin (which is to be
studied more thoroughly) in about two years. Every language must be
learnt by use rather than by rules, _i.e._, it must be learnt by hearing,
reading and re-reading, transcribing, attempting imitations in writing
and orally, and by using the language in conversation. Rules assist and
confirm practice, but they must come after, not before it. The first
exercises in a language should take for their subject something of which
the sense is already known, so that the mind may be fixed on the words
and their connections.[72] The Catechism and Bible History may be used
for this purpose.
§ 33. Considering the classical authors not suited to boys’
understanding, and not fit for the education of Christians, Comenius
proposed writing a set of Latin manuals for the different stages between
childhood and manhood: these were to be called “Vestibulum,” “Janua,”
“Palatium” or “Atrium,” “Thesaurus.” The “Vestibulum,” “Janua,” and
“Atrium” were really carried out.
§ 34. In Comenius’s scheme there were to be four kinds of schools for a
perfect educational course:—1st, the mother’s breast for infancy; 2nd,
the public vernacular school for children, to which all should be sent
from six years old till twelve; 3rd, the Latin school or Gymnasium; 4th,
residence at a University and travelling, to complete the course. The
public schools were to be for all classes alike, and for girls[73] as
well as boys.
§ 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.”
§ 43. He was the first to reach a standpoint which was and perhaps always
will be above the heads of “the practical men,” and demand _education
for all_. “We design for all who have been born human beings, general
instruction to fit them for everything human. They must, therefore, as
far as possible be taught together, so that they may mutually draw each
other out, enliven and stimulate. Of the ‘mother-tongue school’ the end
and aim will be, that all the youth of both sexes between the sixth and
the twelfth or thirteenth years be taught those things which will be
useful to them all their life long.”[79]
In these days we often hear controversies between the men of science and
the ministers of religion. It is as far beyond my intention as it is
beyond my abilities to discuss how far the antithesis between religion
and science is a true one; but our subject sometimes forces us to observe
that religion and science often bring thinkers by different paths to the
same result; _e.g._, they both refuse to recognise class distinctions
and make us see an essential unity underlying superficial variations.
In Comenius we have an earnest Christian minister who was also an
enthusiast for science. Moreover he was without social and virtually
without national restrictions, and he was thus in a good position for
expressing freely and without bias what both his science and his religion
taught him. “Not only are the children of the rich and noble to be drawn
to the school, but all alike, gentle and simple, rich and poor, boys
and girls, in great towns and small, down to the country villages. And
for this reason. Every one who is born a human being is born with this
intent—that he should be a human being, that is, a reasonable creature
ruling over the other creatures and bearing the likeness of his Maker.”
(_Didactica M._ ix, § 1.) This sounds to me nobler than the utterances
of Rousseau and the French Revolutionists, not to mention Locke who fell
back on considering merely “the gentleman’s calling.” Even Bishop Butler
a century after Comenius hardly takes so firm a ground, though he lays it
down that “children have as much right to some proper education as to
have their lives preserved.”[80]
§ 44. The first man who demanded training for every human being _because
he or she was a human being_ must always be thought of with respect and
gratitude by all who care either for science or religion. It has taken
us 250 years to reach the standpoint of Comenius; but we have reached
it, or almost reached it at last, and when we have once got hold of the
idea we are not likely to lose it again. The only question is whether
we shall not go on and in the end agree with Comenius that the primary
school shall be for rich and poor alike. At present the practical
men, in England especially, have things all their own way; but their
horizon is and must be very limited. They have already had to adjust
themselves to many things which their predecessors declared to be “quite
impracticable—indeed impossible.” May not their successors in like manner
get accustomed to other “impossible” things, this scheme of Comenius
among them?
§ 45. The champions of realism have always recognised Comenius as one
of their earliest leaders. Bacon had just given voice to the scientific
spirit which had at length rebelled against the literary spirit dominant
at the Renascence, and had begun to turn from all that had been thought
and said about Nature, straight to Nature herself. Comenius was the
professed disciple of “the noble Verulam, who,” said he, “has given
us the true key of Nature.” Furnished with this key, Comenius would
unlock the door of the treasure-house for himself. “It grieved me,” he
says, “that I saw most noble Verulam present us indeed with a true key
of Nature, but not to open the secrets of Nature, only shewing us by a
few examples how they were to be opened, and leave [_i.e._, leaving]
the rest to depend on observations and inductions continued for several
ages.” Comenius thought that by the light of the senses, of reason, and
of the Bible, he might advance faster. “For what? Are not we as well as
the old philosophers placed in Nature’s garden? Why then do we not cast
about our eyes, nostrils, and ears as well as they? Why should we learn
the works of Nature of any other master rather than of these our senses?
Why do we not, I say, turn over the living book of the world instead
of dead papers? In it we may contemplate more things and with greater
delight and profit than any one can tell us. If we have anywhere need of
an interpreter, the Maker of Nature is the best interpreter Himself.”
(Preface to _Naturall Philosophie reformed_. English trans., 1651.)
§ 46. Several things are involved in this so-called “realism.” First,
Comenius would fix the mind of learners on material objects. Secondly,
he would have them acquire their notions of these for themselves through
the senses. From these two principles he drew the corollary that the
vast accumulation of traditional learning and literature must be thrown
overboard.
§ 47. The demand for the study of things has been best formulated by one
of the greatest masters of words, by Milton. “Because our understanding
cannot in the body found itself but on sensible things, nor arrive so
clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by orderly
conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same method is
necessarily to be followed in all discreet teaching.” (_To Hartlib._) Its
material surroundings then are to be the subjects on which the mind of
the child must be fixed. This being settled, Comenius demands that the
child’s knowledge shall not be _verbal_ but _real_ realism, knowledge
derived at first hand through the senses.[81]
§ 48. On this subject Comenius may speak for himself: “The ground of
this business is, that sensual objects [we now say _sensible_: why not
_sensuous_?] be rightly presented to the senses, for fear they may not be
received. I say, and say it again aloud, that this last is the foundation
of all the rest: because we can neither act nor speak wisely, unless we
first rightly understand all the things which are to be done and whereof
we have to speak. Now there is nothing in the understanding which was not
before in the sense. And therefore to exercise the senses well about the
right perceiving the differences of things will be to lay the grounds
for all wisdom and all wise discourse and all discreet actions in one’s
course of life. Which, because it is commonly neglected in Schools, and
the things that are to be learned are offered to scholars without their
being understood or being rightly presented to the senses, it cometh to
pass that the work of teaching and learning goeth heavily onward and
affordeth little benefit.” (Preface to _Orbis Pictus_, Hoole’s trans.
A.D. 1658.)
§ 49. Without going into any metaphysical discussion, we must all
agree that a vast amount of impressions come to children through the
senses, and that it is by the exercise of the senses that they learn
most readily. As Comenius says: “The senses (being the main guides of
childhood, because therein the mind doth not as yet raise up it self to
an abstracted contemplation of things) evermore seek their own objects;
and if these be away, they grow dull, and wry themselves hither and
thither out of a weariness of themselves: but when their objects are
present, they grow merry, wax lively, and willingly suffer themselves
to be fastened upon them till the thing be sufficiently discerned.”
(P. to _Orbis._) This truth lay at the root of most of the methods of
Pestalozzi; and though it has had little effect on teaching in England
(where for the word _anschaulich_ there is no equivalent), everything
that goes on in a German Folkschool has reference to it.
§ 50. For children then Comenius gave good counsel when he would have
their senses exercised on the world about them. But after all, whatever
may be thought of the proposition that all knowledge comes through the
senses, we must not ignore what is bequeathed to us, both in science
and in literature. Comenius says: “And now I beseech you let this be
our business that the schools may cease to _persuade_ and begin to
_demonstrate_; cease to _dispute_ and begin to _look_; cease lastly to
_believe_ and begin to _know_. For that Aristotellical maxim ‘_Discentem
oportet credere_, A learner must believe,’ is as tyrannical as it is
dangerous; so also is that same Pythagorean ‘_Ipse dixit_, The Master has
said it.’ Let no man be compelled to swear to his Masters words, but let
the things themselves constrain the intellect.” (P. to _Nat. Phil. R._)
But the things themselves will not take us far. Even in Natural Science
we need teachers, for Science is not reached through the senses but
through the intellectual grasp of knowledge which has been accumulating
for centuries. If the education of times past has neglected the senses,
we must not demand that the education of the future should care for the
senses only. There is as yet little danger of our thinking too much of
physical education; but we sometimes hear reformers talking as if the
true ideal were sketched in “Locksley Hall:”
“Iron-jointed, supple-sinew’d, they shall dive, and they shall run,
Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun,
Whistle back the parrot’s call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks;
Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books.”