Comenius and the Beginnings of Educational Reform. W. S. Monroe
in regard to Aristotle; while he regards the Greek as a great philosopher, he declares that the world has gained in experience since Aristotle wrote, and he sees no reason why his teachings should not be set aside if found to be incorrect. He has no doubt but that later generations will find theories better adapted to their ends than those he himself advocates, but he greets as a friend the one who shall point out his errors.
In the first part he treats of the decline of the sciences. The causes of this decline he considers twofold: (1) Moral; and here he notes an unwillingness to search for truth for truth’s sake. Pride is the root of this evil. A student in the University of Paris had remarked to him, “Sooner than not distinguish myself by founding some new doctrine, I would defend one of whose falsity I was convinced.” This moral weakness he thought altogether inconsistent with the advancement of the sciences. (2) Historical and material, including as causes the migration of nations by which existing orders of civilization have been annihilated; the obscurity of ancient manuscripts, requiring more time to decipher their meaning than it would take to discover from nature their meaning; the ever increasing use of commentaries in the study of originals, in which the diverse opinions of the commentators lead farther from the original sense; the practice of scholastic disputation which is taught the pupils before they know what they are disputing about; and the practice of regarding teaching as a trade rather than a profession, thus causing many bright minds to select other vocations, and to bring to the work incompetent and coarse minds.
The second part treats of the decline of grammar, and the third part of the art of teaching, in which he gives some most sane directions. Schools should be located in the most healthy part of the community. They should not be too near commercial centres; at the same time, they should not be too distant from the centre of population. As to teachers, they should have good academic training; they should be skilled in the art of imparting knowledge; and their morals should be such as would furnish examples to their pupils. Covetousness and ambition, above all things, should be unknown to them. Teachers who have ambition and reputation in their minds are thereby unfitted for the work of teaching. On this account, the state should fix the salaries, and the compensation should be the wage of honest men. There should be a school in every community. Before pupils should be assigned tasks, teachers should ascertain their mental capacities and characteristics. They should also be privately tested four times a year; and when children are found who possess no taste for study they should be dismissed from the school. Corporal punishment should seldom be applied, and never to such a degree as to humiliate the pupils. Children should be given plenty of play time; and hearty, romping games are especially recommended. In the matter of method, Vives heartily commends the inductive—from particulars to generals—and he urges such a grouping of studies that each new subject studied may naturally grow out of the preceding lesson. While he strongly advises the study of the natural sciences, he is less enthusiastic here than Bacon, fearing, as he admits, that a contemplation of nature may prove dangerous to those not deeply grounded in faith.
But Vives was essentially a realist in his doctrines of education; and when his views are compared with those of Comenius, community of ideas is at once apparent. Both would begin education in the home and make the mother the first teacher. Both realized the need of better organization and classification of the schools. Both urged reforms in the matter of language teaching. Both considered education a matter of state concern, and urged pedagogical training for teachers. Both presented the claims of science and urged the coördination and correlation of the different subjects of study. Both emphasized the value of play and the need of physical training. Both advocated education for all classes of both sexes, and both exaggerated the need and importance of the religious training of the child.
Bacon
“Though there were many before Bacon, and especially artists and craftsmen,” says Raumer, “who lived in communion with nature, and who, in manifold ways, transfigured and idealized her, and unveiled her glory; and, though their sense for nature was so highly cultivated that they attained to a practical understanding of her ways, yet this understanding was at best merely instinctive: for it led them to no scientific deductions and yielded them no thoughtful and legitimate dominion over her.”
The founder of modern realism was born in London on the 22d of January in the year 1561. When sixteen years of age he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied under Dr. John Whitgift, a noted professor of theology, and afterward archbishop of Canterbury. He studied diligently the writings of Aristotle, but was convinced of their inadequacy. Writing of this period he says: “Amid men of sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors, chiefly Aristotle, their dictator, as their persons are shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges; and who knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great quantity of matter, and infinite agitation of wit, spin cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of the thread and work, but of no substance or profit.”
The checkered career of Bacon is extraneous to his writings and may be passed over in silence. As noted in the first chapter, the educational institutions of the sixteenth century concerned themselves wholly with the acquisition and display of Latin eloquence. Grammar was studied with infinite labor and sorrow for years that students might acquire correct forms of speech; logic that they might express themselves with precision; and a minimum of history was taught that ancient records might furnish ornate illustrations in speaking and writing.
Erasmus and Melanchthon had disputed this ideal of culture, but it remained for Bacon to demolish this idol of mediævalism. “Forsooth,” he says, “we suffer the penalty of our first parents’ sin, and yet follow in their footsteps. They desired to be like God, and we, their posterity, would be so in a higher degree. For we create worlds, direct and control nature, and, in short, square all things by the measure of our own folly, not by the plummet of divine wisdom, nor as we find them in reality. I know not whether, for this result we are forced to do violence to nature or to our own intelligence the most; but it nevertheless remains true, that we stamp the seal of our own image upon the creatures and works of God, instead of carefully searching for, and acknowledging, the seal of the Creator manifest in them. Therefore have we lost, the second time, and that deservedly, our empire over the creatures, yea, when after and notwithstanding the fall, there was left to us some title to dominion over the unwilling creatures, so that they could be subjected and controlled, even this we have lost, in great part through our pride, in that we have desired to be like God, and to follow the dictates of our own reason alone. Now then, if there be any humility in the presence of the Creator, if there be any reverence for and exaltation of his handiwork, if there be any charity toward men, any desires to relieve the woes and sufferings of humanity, any love for the light of truth, and hatred toward the darkness of error—I would beseech men again and again, to dismiss altogether, or at least for a moment to put away their absurd and intractable theories, which give to assumptions the dignity of hypotheses, dispense with experiment, and turn them away from the works of God. Let them with a teachable spirit approach the great volume of creation, patiently decipher its secret characters, and converse with its lofty truths; so shall they leave behind the delusive echoes of prejudice, and dwell within the perpetual outgoings of divine wisdom. This is that speech and language whose lines have gone out into all the earth, and no confusion of tongues has ever befallen it. This language we should all strive to understand, first condescending, like little children, to master its alphabet.”
Instead of training children to interrogate nature for themselves, and to interpret the answers to these interrogations, instead of going straight to nature herself, the schools are forever teaching what others have thought and written on the subject. This procedure, according to Bacon, not only displays lack of pedagogic sense, but gives evidence of ignorance and self-conceit, and inflicts the greatest injury on philosophy and learning. Such methods of instruction, moreover, tend to stifle and interrupt all inquiry. We must, says Bacon, “come as new-born children, with open and fresh minds, to the observation of nature. For it is no less true in this human kingdom of knowledge than in God’s kingdom of heaven, that no man shall enter into it except as he becomes first as