Part 41 (2/2)

Loe, here an Exile, who to serve his God, Hath sharply tasted of proud Pashurs Rod Whose learning, Piety, & true worth, being knowne To all the world, makes all the world his owne FQ]

COMENIUS' IDEAS AS TO THE ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOLS In his _Didactica Magna_ Coreat divisions The first concerned the period froe of six, which he called The Mother School For this period he wrote _The School of Infancy_ (1628), a book intended priht and fundamental importance that parents and teachers may still read it with interest and profit In it he anticipated arten of to-day The next division was The Vernacular School, which covered the period froes of six to twelve For this period six classes were to be provided, and the eue This school was to be for all, of both sexes, and in it the basis of an education for life was to be given It was to teach its pupils to read and write the h arithmetic for the ordinary business of life, and the cos by rote; to know about the real things of life; the Catechise of history, and especially the creation, fall, and rederaphy and astronoe of the trades and occupations of life; all of which, says Coue than through the medium of the Latin and Greek In scope this school corresponds with the vernacular school of modern Europe

The next school was The Latin School, covering the years frohteen, and in this Gerht, by improved methods, and with physics and mathematics added This school he divided into six classes, named from the principal study in each, as follows: (1) Grammar, (2) Physics, (3) Mathematics, (4) Ethics, (5) Dialectics, (6) Rhetoric He also later outlined a plan for a six-class _Gy in a seventh year for preparation for the ministry, which was an improvement on the Latin School and very modern in character Had such a school becoht have been a century in advance of where the nineteenth century found it The Latin school was to be attended only by those of ability ere likely to enter the service of Church or State, or who intended to pass on to the University This last was to cover the period frohteen to twenty-four Unlike all educational practice of his time and later, Comenius here provides for an educational ladder of the present-day American type, wholly unlike the European two-class school system which (p 353) later evolved

COMENIUS' WORK IN REFORMING LANGUAGE TEACHING At the ties constituted alreat introductory subject The rammars (Donatus; Alexander de Villa Dei; pp 156, 155) had been so poor that the instruction was difficult and, in consequence, long drawn out Lily's Latin Grammar (p 276), published in 1513, and Melanchthon's Latin Grammar, published in 1525, had represented marked advances Still the subject rerammars Co and studies in educational method, that the ancient classical authors were not only too difficult for boys beginning the study of Latin, but that they also did not contain the type of real knowledge he felt should be taught in the schools He accordingly set to work to construct a series of introductory Latin readers which would forraded introduction to the study of Latin, and which would also introduce the pupil to the type of world knowledge and scientific inforht

His plan eventually eraded series of five books, as follows:

1 The _Orbis Sensualium Pictus_, or the World of Sense Objects Pictured This was an illustrated primer and first reader, which appeared in 1658, and was the first illustrated book ever written for children (R 221)

2 The _Vestibulu of but a few hundred of the most commonly used Latin words and sentences, with a translation into the vernacular in parallel columns This book required about a half-year for its couarues Unlocked

This was the first of the series printed (1631), the _Vestibulu an easy introduction to it, and the _Orbis Pictus_ being the _Janua_ siht thousand Latin words, arranged in simple sentences, with the vernacular equivalent in parallel columns; included inforular Noah's Ark for vocabulary purposes It erammar for a year

4 The _Atrium_ This was an expansion of the _Janua_, and treated the same topics more in detail It was intended to be an advanced reader, based, as was the _Janua_, on studies about the real things of life The vocabulary noas Latin-Latin, instead of Latin-vernacular

5 The _Thesaurus_, which was never coraded extracts from easy Latin authors--Cornelius Nepos, Caesar, Cicero, Sallust, Vergil, Horace, Pliny--to furnish the needed reading material for the three upper years of the Latin School

THE TEXTBOOKS ILlustRATED Beginning in the _Janua_, and afterwards in the _Vestibulum_ and _Orbis Pictus_ as well, Co the best textbooks for instruction in the subject the world had ever known, but he also shi+fted the whole es, and e and useful world information the keynote of his work The hundred different chapters of the _Janua_, and the hundred and fifty-one chapters of the _Orbis Pictus_, were devoted to i infor selections from the chapter titles of the _Orbis Pictus_ illustrate how large a place the new scientific studies occupied in his conception of the school:

The World Birds Weaving Philosophy The Heavens Cattle Tailor Prudence Fire Fish Barber Diligence Wind Parts of Man Schoolmaster Temperance Water Flesh and Bowels Shoemaker Fortitude Clouds Chanels and Bones Carpenter Humanity Earth Senses PotterJustice Fruits Deforuinity Metals Husbandry Geo Herbs Butchery Eclipses A Burial Flowers Cookery Europe Religious Fors 126, 127) reveal the nature of the text-books he prepared (See also R 221 for four additional pages of illustrations from the _Orbis Pictus_)

[Illustration: FIG 126 A SAMPLE PAGE FROM THE ”ORBIS PICTUS”

The illustration and Latin text is frolish translation frolish edition of 1727]

The success of these textbooks was ireat Within a short time after the publication of the _Janua_ it had been translated into Flearian, Italian, Latin, Polish, Spanish, and Swedish, as well as into Arabic, Mongolian, Russian, and Turkish The _Orbis Pictus_ was an even greater success [8] It went through es; stood without a competitor in Europe for a hundred and fifteen years; and was used as an introductory textbook for nearly two hundred years An Aht out in New York City, as late as 1810

[Illustration: FIG 127 PART OF A PAGE FROM A LATIN-ENGLISH EDITION OF THE ”VESTIBULUM”]

Thousands of parents, who knew nothing of Coht the book for their children because they found that they liked the pictures and learned the language easily from it [9]

PLACE AND INFLUENCE OF COMENIUS Comenius stands in the history of education in a position of co importance He introduces the whole modern conception of the educational process, and outlines many of the modern movements for the improvement of educational procedure What Petrarch was to the revival of learning, what Wycliffe was to religious thought, what Copernicus was to modern science, and what Bacon and Descartes were to modern philosophy, Co (R 222) The gerhteenth- and nineteenth- century educational theory is to be found in his work, and he, more than any one before him and for at least two centuries after him, made an earnest effort to introduce the new science studies into the school Far lican or Catholic contemporaries, he planned his school for the education of youth in religion and learning and to fit them for the needs of a modern world

Unlike the textbooks of his time, and for more than a century afterward, his were free frolooe

Yet Comenius lived at an unfortunate period in the history of huress The early part of the seventeenth century was not a tiressive and liberal- anywhere in western Europe The shock of the contest into which western Christendoe of Luther had been felt in every corner of Europe, and the cul, with all the bitterness and brutality that a religious motive develops Christian Europe was too filled with an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust and hatred to be in any mood to consider reforms for the improve changes in ht impression on his contemporaries; his attempt to introduce scientific studies awakened suspicion, rather than interest; and the new nored and the book itself was forgotten for centuries His great influence on educational progress was through the refor of Latin, and the slow infiltration into the schools of the scientific ideas they contained As a result, many of the fundamentally sound reforms for which he stood had to be worked out anew in the nineteenth century It is sad to conteht have been advanced in its educational organization and scientific progress, by the close of the eighteenth century, had it been in a mood to receive and utilize the reforms in aims and methods, and to accept the new scientific subject-hted Moravian teacher Religious bigotry has, in all lands and ages, proved itself one of the ress

IV REALISM AND THE SCHOOLS

THE VERNACULAR SCHOOLS The ideas for which the realists just described had stood were adopted in the people's schools but slowly, and ca The final incorporation of science instruction into elementary education did not corowth of the reform work of Pestalozzi on the one hand, and the new social, political, economic, and industrial forces of a modern world on the other

The Peace of Westphalia (1648), which closed a century of bitter and vindictive religious warfare, was followed by another century of hatred, suspicion, and narrow religious intolerance and reaction All parties now adopted an extreion and education, and the protection of orthodoxy becaion, a little counting and writing, and, in Teutonic lands, music, came to constitute the curriculum of such eleious Prireat school textbooks The people were poor, much of Europe was i-continued religious strife, the common people still occupied a very low social position, there were as yet no qualified teachers, and no need for general education aside fro more than a thousand years the Church had established the tradition of providing free education, and when the governing authorities of the States which turned to Protestantism had taken from the Church both the opportunity to continue the schools and the wealth hich toto tax themselves to set up institutions to continue the work forardless of Protestant educational theory as to the need for general education, but little progress in providing vernacular schools was hteenth centuries