speaking of comenius...'his house was pillaged and gutted; his books and his manuscripts were burned; and he himself, with his wife and children, had now to flee in hot haste..he had lost his wife and one of his children on the way..; he had lost his post as teacher and minister; and now , for the sake of his suffering brethren, he wrote his beautiful classical allegory, THE LABYRINTH OF THE WORLD AND THE PARADISE OF THE HEART...it is a picture both of the horrors of the time and of the deep religious life of the brethren..the whole land, said comenius, was now in a state of disorder. the reign of justice had ended. the reign of pillage had begun. the plot..is simple. from scene to scene the pilgrim goes and everything fills him with disgust. the pilgrim, of course, is comenius..the labyrinth is bohemia..the time is the early years of the 30 year war (1618-48).
..in witty, satirical language, he held the mirror up to nature. what sort of men were employed by ferdinand to administer justice..he called the judges nogod, lovestrife, hearsay, partial, loveself, lovegold, takegift, ignorant, knowlittle, hasty and slovenly; he..saw the moral world turned upside down. no longer..did men in bohemia call things by their right names. they called drunkenness, merriment; greed, economy; usury, interest; lust, love; pride, dignity; cruelty, severity; and laziness, good nature. he saw his brethren..cast into the fire; some were hanged, beheaded, crucified (surely a poetic exaggeration); some were pierced, chopped, tortured with pincers, and roasted to death on grid-irons.
he studied the lives of professing christians and found that those who claimed the greatest piety were the sorriest scoundrels in the land... he watched the priests and found them no better..some snored, wallowing in feather beds; some feasted till they became speechless; some performed dances and leaps; some passed their time in love makeing and wontoness.
for these..comenius saw one remedy only..the cultivation of the simple and beautiful religion of the brethren...thy religion, said the master to the pilgrim (the brethren church) shall be to serve me in quiet, and not to bind thyself to any ceremonies, for i do not bind thee by them.
for mothers comenius wrote a book, entitled the SCHOOL OF INFANCY. in england this book is scarcely known at all; in bohemia it is a household treasure. comenius regarded it as a work of first rate importance.
what use, he asked, were schemes of education if a good foundation were not first laid by the mother? for the first 6 years of his life..the child must be taught by his mother. if she did her work properly she could teach him many marvelous things. he would learn some physics by handling things; some optics by naming the colors, light and darkness; some astronomy by studying the twinkling stars; some geography by trudging the neighboring streets and hills; some chronology by learning the hours, the days and the months; some history by a chat on local events; some geometry by measuring things for himself; some statics by trying to balance his top; some mechanics by building his little toy-house; some dialectics by asking ?s; some economics by observing his mother's skill as a housekeeper; and some music and poetry by singing psalms and hymns.
as comenius penned these ideal instructions, he must surely have known that 9 mothers out of 10 had neither the patience nor the skill to follow his method; and yet he insisted that, in some things, the mother had a clear course before. her his advice was remarkably sound. at what age, ask mothers, should the education of a child begin? it should begin..before the child is born. at that period in her life the expectant mother must be busy and cheerful, be moderate in her food, avoid all worry and keep in constant touch with God by prayer and thus the child will come into the world well equipped for the battle of life. when must, of course, nurse the child herself. she must feed him, when weaned, on plain and simple food. she must provide him with picture books; and, above all, she must teach him to be clean in his habits, to obey his superiors, to be truthful and polite, to bend the knee and fold his hands in prayer and to remember that the God revealed in Christ was ever near at hand.
..comenius has been justly called the 'father of the elementary school'. it was here that his ideas had the greatest practical value. his first fundamental principle was that in all elementary schools the scholars must learn in their native language..he called these schoold 'mother tongue schools'. for 6 or 8 years..the scholar must hear no language but his own; and his whole attention must be concentrated, not on learning words like a parrot, but on the direct study of nature.
comenius has been called the great sense-realist. he had no belief in learning second hand. he illustrated his books with pictures. he gave his scholars object lessons. he taught them, not about words, but about things. the foundation of all learning consists..in representing clearly to the senses sensible objects. he insisted that no boy or girl should ever have to learn by heart anything which he did not understand. he insisted that nature should be studied, not out of books, but by direct contact with nature herself...he applied these ideas to the teaching of religion and morals. in order to show his scholars the meaning of faith, he wrote a play entitled 'abraham the patriarch', and then taught them to act it..his whole object was moral and religious. all men..were made in the image of God; all men had in them the roots of eternal wisdom; all men were capable of understanding something of the nature of God; and therefore, the whole object of education was to develop, not only the physical and intellectual, but also the moral and spiritual powers, and thus fit men and women to be first, useful citizens in the state and then sints in the kingdom of heaven beyond the tomb.
from court to court he would lead the students onward, from the first court dealing with nature to the last court dealing with God. it is our bounden duty to consider the means whereby the whole body of christian youth may be stirred to vigor of mind and the love of heavenly things.
he believed in caring for the body, because the body was the temple of the Holy Ghost; and, in order to keep the body fit, he laid down the rule that 4 hours of study a day was as much as any boy or girl could stand.
again comenius introduced a new way of learning languages. his great work on this subject was entitled JANUA LINGUARUM RESERATA ie, the gate of languages unlocked. of all his works this was the most popular...it became, next to the bible, the most widely known book on the continent.for one..read ..labyrinth, there were thousands who nearly knew the janua by heart. the labyrinth..religious..was suppressed..it is not the works of richest genius that have the largest sale; it is the books that enable men to get on in life...the janua..supplied..a long felt want.
it was a latin grammar of a novel and original kind. ..it was the language in which the learned conversed, the language spoken at all universities, the language of diplomat..and statesmen, thae language or scientific treatises. if a man could make the learning of latin easier, he was adored as a public benefactor. ..for years all patient students of latin had writhed in agonies untold. they had leaned long lists of latin words, with their meanings; they had wrestled in their teens with gerunds, supines, ablative absolutes and distracting rules about the subjunctive mood, and they had tried in vain to take an interest in stately authors far above their understanding.
comenius reversed the whole process. what is the use, he asked, of learning lists of words that have no connection with each other? what is the use of teaching a lad grammar before he has a working knowledge of the language? what is the use of expecting a boy to take an interest in the political arguments of cicero or the dinner table wisdom of horace? his method was the conversational.
for beginners he prepared an elementary latin grammar, containing, besides a few necessary rules, a number of sentences dealing with events and scenes of everyday life. it was divided into 7 parts. in the first were nouns and adjectives together; in the second nouns and verbs; in the third adverbs, pronouns, numerals and prepositions; in the fourth remarks about things in the school; in the fifth about things in the house; in the sixth about things in the town; in the seventh some moral maxims. and the scholar went thru this book 10 times before he passed on to the janua proper.
the result can be imagined. at the end of a year the boy's knowledge of latin would be a peculiar kind. of grammar he would know but little; of words and phrases he would have a goodly store; and thus he was learning to talk the a language before he had even heard of its perplexing rules. one example must suffice to illustrate the method.
the beginner did not even learn the names of the cases. in a modern english latin grammar, the charming sight that meets our gaze is as follows -
nom. mensa - a table
voc. mensa - oh table!
acc. mensam - a table
gen. mensae -of a table
dat. mensae - to or for a table
abl. mensa - by, with or from a table
the method of comenius was different. instead of mentioning the names of the cases, he showed how the cases were actually used, as follows -
ecce, tabula nigra - look there, a black board
o tu tabula nigra - oh, you black board!
video tabulam nigram - i see a black board
pars tabulae nigrae - part of a black board.
addo partem tabulae nigrae - i add a part to a black board.
vides aliquid in tabula nigra - i see something on a black board
with us the method is theory first, practice afterwards; with comenius the method was practice first, theory afterwards; and the method of comenius, with modifications, is likely to be the method of the future.
but comenius's greatest educational work was undoubtedly his GREAT DIDACTIC or the 'art of teaching all things to all men'. it was a thorough and comprehensive treatise on the whole science, method, scope and purpose of universal education. as this book has been recently translated into english, i need not here..while the 30 years war was raging..turning europe into a desert, this scholar, banished from his native land, was devising sublime and broad minded schemes for the elevation of the whole human race...he played no part in the disgraceful quarrels of the age; he breathed no complaint against his persecutors...when the 30 years war ended ..comenius began to look forward to the day when the brethren would be allowed to return to bohemia and moravia. but the peace of westphalia broke his hear. what provision was made in that famous peace for the poor exiled brethren? absolutely none.
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