Comenius' School of Infancy/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
VALUE OF PRIMARY EDUCATION.
1. It must not be supposed that youth can, without the application of assiduous labor, be trained up in the manner described. For if a young shoot designed to become a tree requires to be planted, watered, hedged around for protection, and to be propped up; if a piece of wood designed for a particular form requires to be submitted to the hatchet, to be split, to be planed, to be carved, to be polished, and to be stained with diverse colors; if a horse, an ox, an ass, or a mule must be trained to perform their services to man; nay, if man himself stands in need of instruction as to his bodily actions, so that he may be daily trained as to eating, drinking, running, speaking, seizing with the hand, and laboring; how, I pray, can those duties, higher and more remote from the senses, such as faith, virtue, wisdom, and knowledge, spontaneously come to any one? It is altogether impossible.[1]
2. God therefore has enjoined this duty on parents, that they should wisely convey, and with all due diligence instil into the tender minds of children, all things appertaining to the knowledge and fear of Himself; and that they should “talk with them respecting these things whether they sit in the house, or walk along the road, or recline or rise up.”
3. To the same purpose Solomon everywhere in his books; agrees in asserting that youth should be instructed in wisdom, and not too readily withdrawn from the rod. David, having seen the necessity of the same thing, was not ashamed, although he was a king, to become a teacher and director of youth, saying: “Come hither, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord.”[2] Paul the Apostle admonishes parents “to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”
4. Since parents, however, are often incompetent to instruct their children; or, by reason of the performance of their duties in family affairs, unable; while others deem such instruction of trifling importance; it has been instituted with prudent and salutary counsel from remote antiquity, that in every state youth should be handed over, to the instruction, along with the right of chastisement, of righteous, wise, and pious persons.
5. Such persons were called pedagogues (leaders not drivers of children), masters, teachers, and doctors. And places destined for such exercises were called colleges, gymnasia, and schools (retreats of ease or places of literary amusements). It being designed by this name to indicate that the action of teaching and learning is of itself, and in its own nature, pleasing and agreeable,—a mere amusement and mental delight.[3]
6. This gladsomeness was, however, altogether departed from in subsequent times; so that schools were not, as their name previously indicated, places of amusement and delight, but grinding houses and places of torture[4] for youth among certain peoples, especially where the youth were instructed by incompetent men, altogether uninstructed in piety and the wisdom of God; such who had become imbecile through indolence, despicably vile, and affording the very worst example, though calling themselves masters and teachers; for these did not imbue the youth with faith, piety, and sound morals, but with superstitions, impiety, and baneful morals; being ignorant of the genuine method, and thinking to inculcate everything by force, they wretchedly tortured the youth; of which we are reminded by the singular though trite dialogue: “He appears to have got a very rich vintage of blows upon his shoulder-blades,” and “He was repeatedly brought to the lash.” For other modes of instruction than with severity of rod and atrocity of blows were unknown.
7. Although our predecessors, together with ecclesiastical reformation, somewhat reversed this state of things, yet God has reserved it for our age to provide a more easy, compendious, and solid instruction, to His own glory, and our comfort.
8. Now I proceed, depending upon the blessing of God, to the form or ideal of the proposed method of education to be devised in the maternal school, during the first six years of age.[5]
- ↑ Pestalozzi says: “It is recorded that God opened the heavens to the patriarch of old, and showed him a ladder leading thither. This ladder is let down to every descendant of Adam; it is offered to your child. But he must be taught to climb it. And let him not attempt it by the cold calculations of the head, or the mere impulse of the heart; but let all these powers combine, and the noble enterprise will be crowned with success.”
- ↑ Psalms xxxiv, 11.
- ↑ Fénelon advises: “Mingle instruction with play. Conceal their studies under the guise of liberty and pleasure.”
- ↑ In his other writings he says: “A musician does not dash his instrument against the wall, or give it blows and cuffs because he cannot draw music from it, but continues to apply his skill till he extracts a melody. So by our skill we have to bring the minds of the young into harmony and to the love of studies.”
- ↑ “Education,” says Rosenkranz, “is the influencing of man by man, and it has for its end to lead him to actualize himself through his own efforts.”