Part 41 (1/2)

13 That a uniform and scientific method of instruction could be worked out, which would reduce education to a science and serve as a guide for teachers everywhere

The Englishman, Francis Bacon, e have previously considered; the Ger Ratichius (or Ratke); and the Moravian bishop and teacher, Johann Amos Coanizing tendency in education Ratke and Comenius will be considered here as types

WOLFGANG RATKE Bacon had believed that the new scientific knowledge should be incorporated into the instruction of the schools, and had suggested, in his _Advance_ (1603-05), a broader course of study for theation and teaching While Bacon was not a teacher and did not write specifically on school instruction, his writings nevertheless deeply influenced

The first writer to apply Bacon's ideas to education and to attempt to evolve a new method and a new course of instruction was a Ger in England he had read Bacon's _Advanceestions Ratke tried to work out a new method of instruction This he offered, and with much secrecy, unsuccessfully for sale at various German courts Finally he issued an ”Address” to the princes of Germany, assembled at an Electoral Diet at Frankfurt-am-Main, in 1612 In this he told them of his new ht with momentous consequences” forthe Ger about the use of one co the Geroverne of the useful arts and sciences

2 Teach Latin Greek, and Hebrew better, and in far less tie only

This method he offered to sell to the princes, and he would impart it only on the promise that it be not revealed to others Two professors were appointed to examine Ratke, and they reported very favorably on his plan

In 1617 Ratke published, in Leipzig, his _Methodus Nova_, which was the pioneer work on school method, and is Ratke's chief claim to mention here

In this he laid down the fundaht them out They were as follows:

1 The order of Nature was to be sought and followed

2 One thing at a tihly

3 Much repetition to insure retention

4 Use of the es to be taught through it

5 Everything to be taught without constraint The teacher to teach, and the scholars to keep order and discipline

6 No learning by heart Much questioning and understanding

7 Unifore of things to precede words about things

9 Individual experience and contact and inquiry to replace authority

We see here the essentials of the Baconian ideas, as well as the foreshadowings ofthe next half-dozen years Ratke was a eneral education of the people, advanced by the Protestant reforination of many of the German princes Finally the necessary money was raised to establish an experi-presses were set up to print the necessary books, the people of the village of Kothen, in Anhalt, were ordered to send their children for instruction, and the school opened with Ratke in charge and areat expectations and enthusiash the bad ant hopes he had aroused, and he himself had been thrown into prison as an impostor by the princes This ended Ratke's work He is important chiefly for his pioneer work as the forerunner of the greatest educator of the seventeenth century

JOHANN AMOS COMENIUS We now reach not only the greatest representative of sense realism, both in theory and practice, before the latter part of the eighteenth century, but also one of the coures in the history of education Comenius was born at Nivnitz, in Moravia, in 1592 As a member, pastor, and later bishop of the Moravian church, and as a follower of John Huss, he suffered greatly in the Catholic-Protestant warfare which raged over his native land during the period of the Thirty Years' War His home twice plundered, his books and manuscripts twice burned, his wife and children itive and later an exile, Co life to the advance Driven from his home and country, he became a scholar of the world

While a student at the University of Nassau, at the age of twenty, he read and was deeply ianuht, made a still deeper impression upon his of the educational reformers of his time in all European lands He traveled extensively, and e correspondence with the scholars of his tie of twenty-two to twenty-four, when he was ordained as a pastor of the Moravian Church Eight years later, in 1632, he was banished, with all Protestant ministers, froe of a school at Lissa, in Poland Here he worked out, in practice, the great work on method which he later published In 1638 he was invited to reforland, in connection with a plan for the organization of all knowledge; he spent the next eight years working at school refore of a school at Saros-Patak, in Hungary, where he worked out his fae; he was consulted with reference to the presidency of Harvard College, in 1654; the same year he returned to Lissa, and once more lost his books and manuscripts and was made a homeless exile; and finally he found a patron and asylue of seventy-nine The verse beneath his portrait seems an especially appropriate commentary on his life

COMENIUS AND EDUCATIONAL METHOD While teaching at Lissa, in Poland, Co school instruction, as he saw it, in a lengthy book which he called _The Great Didactic_ [5] The title page (R 218) and the table of contents (R 219) will give an idea as to its scope In this work Comenius formulated and explained his two fundaraded and arranged to follow the order of nature, and that, in ie to children, the teacher h sense-perception to the understanding of the child We have here the fundamental ideas of Bacon applied to the school, and Comenius stands as the clearest exponent of sense realis up to his tiious by nature and training, Co and end of all learning; to know God aright he held to be the highest aim; and with true Protestant fervor he contended that the education of every hu was a necessity if ious inheritance, and piety, virtue, and learning were to be brought to their fruition Unlike those ere enthusiasts for religious education only, Comenius saw further, and held an ideal of service to the State and Church here below for which proper training was needed Still s sis, and not merely for salvation, as Luther had held

Comenius was the first to for the new lines uide hireat idea with him was that we should study and follow nature, and this led him to the conclusions that education should proceed froeneral to the special, and the known to the unknown, and that the great business of the teacher was i the memory These conclusions seem comenius three hundred years ago To select the subject-matter of instruction carefully and on the basis of utility, to eliminate needless materials, not to attempt too much at a time, to use concrete examples, to have frequent repetitions to fix ideas, to advance by carefully graded steps, to tie neledge to old, to learn by observing and doing, and to learn by use rather than by precept--were still other of the present-day commonplaces which Cona_ [6] His plea for a entle discipline in place of the brutality of his time, his emphasis of the vernacular and the realities of life, his conception as to the iradation of the school, and his ability to see the usefulness of Latin without over-e its importance--all stamp him as a capable and practical schoolmaster who saw deeply into the nature of the educational process

[Illustration: PLATE 10 JOHN AMOS COMENIUS (1592-1671) The Moravian Bishop at the age of fifty (After an engraving by Glover, printed as a frontispiece to Hartlib's _A Reformation of Schooles_

London, 1642)