Comenius' School of Infancy

Front matter

HEATH'S PEDAGOGICAL LIBRARY

—27

COMENIUS’

Dedication

To

PIOUS CHRISTIAN PARENTS, GUARDIANS, TEACHERS, AND ALL UPON WHOM THE CHARGE OF CHILDREN IS INCUMBENT,

GREETING:

Introduction

INTRODUCTION.

“May the guiding star and rudder of our didactic be this: to search out and discover a rule in accordance with which teachers teach less and learners learn more; the school contain less noise and confusion, but more enjoyment and solid progress; the Christian state suffer less from an all pervading gloom, discord, and derangement, but find more order, light, peace, and tranquillity,” thus wrote John Amos Comenius, the evangelist of modern pedagogy, nearly three hundred years ago.

Comenius believed that education would regenerate the race; accordingly all children, rich and poor, high and low, boys and girls, were to be educated. Instruction must begin in early youth and follow the course of nature. For this purpose, he outlined an ideal scheme which extended from the birth of the child to the age of twenty-four years. This system of education provides for four grades of schools: 1. The Mother school, which shall cover the first six years of the child’s life, laying the foundation for all that he is to learn in the later life. He is to be given simple lessons in objects, taught to know stones, plants, and animals; the names and uses of the members of his body; to distinguish light and darkness and colors; the geography of the cradle, the room, the farm, the street, and the field; trained in mod , purity, and obedience, and taught to say the Lord’s prayer. In the first school the mother is to be the teacher. 2. The Primary school, which is to occupy the years from six to twelve; this is peculiarly a school of the mother tongue. Here the child is to be taught “to read; to write well; to reckon as far as ordinary life will require; to measure; to sing common melodies by rote; the catechism; the Bible; a very general knowledge of history, especially of the creation, the fall of man and the redemption; a beginning of cosmography, and a knowledge of trades and occupations.” 3. The Latin school, occupying the years from twelve to eighteen, during which time Latin, Greek, and Hebrew shall be taught. Physics must be studied before abstract mathematics, because addressed to the sense, and therefore easier for beginners. Ethics, dialectics, and rhetoric are also included in the course of study for the Latin school. 4. The University, where every department of knowledge shall be taught by men learned each in his own department. “The learned men shall bind themselves to use their united powers to promote the sciences and to make new discoveries.” How far these elaborate schemes have been realized, may be seen by comparing the plans of Comenius with the public school systems in our own country and Germany.

It was as a guide to mothers during the years of opening intelligence that Comenius wrote the School of Infancy; but one finds in this quaint old book not only a guide for mothers, but as well for teachers and all others engaged in the high and holy mission of training little ones. Comenius loved children. His faith in the possibility of training the young into useful men and women was bounded only by the blue dome of heaven. What higher tribute to childhood than this paragraph: “Whoever has within his house youth exercising themselves in piety, morality, and knowledge, possesses a garden in which celestial plantlets are sown, watered, bloom, and flourish; a studio, as it were, of the Holy Spirit in which he elaborates and polishes these vessels of mercy, these instruments of glory, so that in them, as living images of God, the rays of his eternal and infinite power, wisdom, and bounty may shine more and more. How inexpressibly blessed are such parents!”

The School of Infancy was written between 1628 and 1630, during the time that Comenius was pastor of the Moravian church and teacher in the Brethren’s school at Lissa, Poland. It was written in the Bohemian language, translated into German, and first printed in 1633 at Lissa. The year following an edition appeared in Leipzig, and two years later a third German edition was printed at Nuremburg. Subsequently Polish, Bohemian, and Latin translations appeared; and Joseph Müller of Herrnhut, Germany, in a very accurate and complete bibliography () of the writings of Comenius, mentions an English edition of 1641. I have found no other reference to an English translation so early. Comenius was well known in England to Milton, Hartlib, and others high in authority; and the fact that most of his other writings were early translated into English, gives credence to Mr. Müller’s statement. In 1858, Daniel Benham published in London an English translation () of the School of Infancy, to which was prefixed an extended and well written account of the life of Comenius. Benham’s translation has long been out of print, and this excellent book, in consequence, inaccessible to the English reader.

In America, where teachers are beginning to study the literature of their calling, the book has been in demand for several years; and the present edition has been prepared with the hope that it may, in some measure, meet this grow- ing demand, and, at the same time, add to the awakened interest in educational classics. In the present edition, Benham’s translation has been to some extent followed, the editor, however, making frequent translations from the German editions (Leipzig, 1875 and 1891) by Julius Beeger and Albert Richter. The of Comenius is from an engraving by W. Hollar, the Bohemian artist, who doubtless took it from life.

The footnotes by the editor show to some extent the origin of Comenius’ educational ideals and the influence of his writings on later educators. Mr. Quick () is entirely right in declaring that Comenius was the first to treat education in a scientific spirit. Monsieur Compayré () says: “He determined, nearly three hundred years ago, with an exactness that leaves nothing to be desired, the division of the different grades of instruction. He exactly defined some of the laws of the art of teaching, and he applied to pedagogy, with remarkable insight, the principles of modern logic.”

There are in English so many excellent accounts of the life of Comenius that a biographical sketch in this connection seems unnecessary. The life by Laurie () and the sketches in Barnard’s American Journal of Education (), Compayré’s History of Pedagogy (), and Quick’s Educational Reformers () are commended to the reader. The editor has also appended a bibliography of the Comenian literature to which he has had access. Monatshefte der Comenius-Gesellschaft (), a monthly magazine published at Leipzig, now on its fourth volume, will be found a mine of rich Comenian lore.

Famous in his own day; enjoying the friendship of the great scholars and the confidence of royal personages; the author of one hundred and thirty-five educational and religious books and treatises which were translated during his lifetime into all the languages of Europe and most of the Asiatic languages; bishop of the Moravian church,—Comenius and his writings were forgotten, and his name practically unknown, for two hundred years. Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler (), in likening him unto the stream that loses itself in the arid desert and then reappears with gathered force and volume to lend its fertilizing power to the surrounding country, says: “Human history is rich in analogies to this natural phenomenon, but in Comenius the history of education furnishes its example. The great educational revival of our century, and particularly of our generation, has shed the bright light of scholarly investigation into all the dark places, and to-day, at the three hundredth anniversary of his birth, the fine old Moravian bishop is being honored wherever teachers gather together, and wherever education is the theme.”

Banished from his native Bohemia in early life by religious fanatics, he passed all his years in exile: now a teacher in Poland; now writer of pedagogical treatises for the educational department of Sweden; now adviser to the English parliament on educational topics; and now superintendent of schools in Transylvania (Hungary). Whether he taught in twenty cities, as Michelet maintains, and whether he was called to the presidency of Harvard College, as Cotton Mather asserts (but which the editor seriously doubts), does not concern the limits of this introduction. But that he was a great man in his own day, “a noble priest of humanity,” as Herder so aptly characterizes him, no one familiar with the history of pedagogy in the seventeenth century will for a moment gainsay. He had the ears of kings and princes in nearly every country in Europe; his books were translated into Latin, Greek, Bohemian, Polish, Swedish, Dutch, English, Spanish, Italian, French, Hungarian, and the Asiatic languages of Turkey, Arabia, and Persia; the governments of England, France, Hungary, Holland, and Sweden all invited him to come and live among them, and reconstruct their educational systems.

On the two hundredth anniversary of his death there was founded at Leipzig a national pedagogical library in his memory which now numbers over sixty-six thousand volumes. Besides the review (Monatshefte der Comenius Gesellschaft) already noted, there are in many German cities Comenian societies which have for their object the study of his educational theories and practices. On the 28th of March, 1892, the three hundredth anniversary of his birth, educators the world over met to honor his memory and reflect upon the vast significance of his life and teachings. At the same time there was erected at Naärden, Holland, a modest but appropriate monument. It stands in a little park that is tastefully ornamented with shrubs and flowers, and consists of a pyramid of rough stones, with two marble slabs containing beautiful gold furrowed inscriptions in Latin, Dutch, and Slavonic. Here in this quiet little Dutch town, where he passed his closing days in exile, hundreds of educators come annually from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Poland, Sweden, and other European countries to pay willing homage to the memory of a great teacher and a good man. That an American edition of his School of Infancy may do something towards contributing to this interest, is the sincere hope of the editor.

Will S. Monroe.

Books for Mothers and Teachers

BOOKS FOR MOTHERS AND TEACHERS.

The following list of books has been prepared by the editor for the use of mothers and teachers interested in the literature of child study, the kindergarten, and primary education.

a. Child Study.

b. Kindergarten.

c. Primary Education.

Chapter 1

SCHOOL OF INFANCY.

CHAPTER I.

CLAIMS OF CHILDHOOD.

1. That children are an inestimable treasure the Spirit of God, by the lips of David, testifies, saying: “Lo, the children are the heritages of the Lord; the fruit of the womb His reward; as arrows in the hand, so are children. Blessed is the man who has filled his quiver with them; he shall not be confounded.” David declares those to be happy on whom God confers children.

2. The same is also evident from this, that God, purposing to testify His love towards us, calls us children, as if there were no more excellent name by which to commend us.

3. Moreover, He is very greatly incensed against those who deliver their children to Moloch. It is also worthy our most serious consideration that God, in respect of the children of even idolatrous parents, calls them children born to Him; thus indicating that they are born, not for ourselves, but for God, and, as God’s offspring, they claim our most profound respect.

4. Hence, in Malachi, children are called the seed of God, where arises the offspring of God.

5. For this reason the eternal Son of God, when manifested in the flesh, not only willed to become the participator of the nature of children, but likewise deemed children a pleasure and a delight. Taking them in His arms, as little brothers and sisters, He carried them about, and kissed them and blessed them.

6. Not only this, He likewise uttered a severe threat against any one who should offend them, even in the least degree, commanding them to be respected as Himself, and condemning, with severe penalties, any who offended even the smallest of them.

7. Should any one wish to inquire why He so delighted with little children, and so strictly enjoined upon us such respectful attention to them, many reasons may be ascertained. And first, if at present the little ones seem unimportant to you, regard them not as they now are, but as, in accordance with the intention of God, they may and ought to be. You will see them, not only as the future inhabitants of the world and possessors of the earth, and God’s vicars amongst His creatures when we depart from this life, but also equally participators with us in the heritage of Christ, a royal priesthood, a chosen people, associates of angels, judges of devils, the delight of heaven, the terror of hell—heirs of the most excellent dignities throughout all the ages of eternity. What can be imagined more excellent than this?

8. Philip Melanchthon, of pious memory, having upon one occasion entered a common school, looked upon the pupils therein assembled, and began his address to them in these words: “Hail, reverend pastors, doctors, licentiates, superintendents! Hail, most noble, most prudent, most learned lords, consuls, praetors, judges, prefects, chancellors, secretaries, magistrates, professors, etc.” When some of the bystanders received these words with a smile, he replied: “I am not jesting; my speech is serious; for I look on these little boys, not as they are now, but with a view to the purpose in the Divine mind, on account of which they are delivered to us for instruction. For assuredly some such will come forth from among the number, although there may be an intermixture of chaff among them as there is among wheat.” Such was the animated address of this most prudent man. But why should not we with equal confidence declare, in respect of all children of Christian parents, those glorious things which have been mentioned above? since Christ, the promulgator of the eternal secrets of God, has pronounced that “of such is the kingdom of Heaven.”

9. But if we consider only their present state, it will at once be obvious why children are of inestimable value in the sight of God, and ought to be so to their parents; in the first place, they are valuable to God, because, being innocent, with the sole exception of original sin, they are not yet the defaced image of God, by having polluted themselves with actual guilt, and are “unable to discern between good and evil, between the right hand and the left.” That God has respect to this is abundantly manifest from the above words addressed to John, and from other passages of sacred writ.

10. Secondly, they are the pure and dearly purchased possession of Christ; since Christ, who came to seek the lost, is said to be the Savior of all, except those who by incredulity and impenitence shut themselves out from being participators in His merits. These are the purchased from among men, that they may be the first-fruits unto God and the Lamb; having nob yet defiled themselves with the allurements of sin; but they follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. And that they may continue 80 to follow, they ought to be led, as it were, with the hand by a pious education.

11. Finally, God so embraces children with abounding Jove that they are a peculiar instrument of divine glory, as the Scriptures testify, “From the lips of infants and sucklings thou hast perfected praise, because of thine enemies; that thou mayest destroy the enemy and avenger.” How it comes to pass that God’s glory should receive increase from children, is certainly not at once obvious to our understanding; but God, the discerner of all things, knows and understands, and declares it to be so.

12. That children ought to be dearer and more precious to parents than gold and silver, than pearls and gems, may be discovered from a comparison between both of these gifts from God: for first, gold, silver, and such other things, are inanimate, being only somewhat harder and purer than the clay which we tread beneath our feet; whereas children are the lively image of the living God.

13. Secondly, gold and silver are rudimentary objects produced by the command of God; whereas children are creatures in the production of which the all-sacred Trinity instituted special council, and formed them with His own fingers.

14. Thirdly, gold and silver are fleeting and transitory things; children are an immortal inheritance. For although they yield to death, yet they neither return to nothing, nor become extinct; they only pass out of a mortal tabernacle into immortal regions. Hence, when God restored to Job all his riches and possessions, even to the double of what he had previously taken away, he gave him no more children than he had before; namely, seven sons and three daughters. This, however, was the precise double; inasmuch as the former sons and daughters had not perished, but had gone before to God.

15. Fourthly, gold and silver come forth from the earth, children from our own substance; being a part of ourselves, they consequently deserve to be loved by us, certainly not less than we love ourselves; therefore God has implanted in the nature of all living things so strong an affection towards their young that they occasionally prefer the safety of their offspring to their own. If any one transfer such affections to gold and silver, he is, in the judgment of God, condemned as guilty of idolatry.

16. Fifthly, gold and silver pass away from one to another as though they were the property of none, but common to all; whereas children are a peculiar possession, divinely assigned to their parents; so that there is not a man in the world who can deprive them of this right or dispossess them of this inheritance, because it is a portion descended from heaven and not a transferable possession.

17. Sixthly, although gold and silver are gifts of God, yet they are not such gifts as those to which He has promised an angelic guardianship from heaven; nay, Satan mostly intermingles himself with gold and silver so as to use them as nets and snares to entangle the unwary, drawing them as it were with thongs, to avarice, haughtiness, and prodigality; whereas the care of little children is always committed to angelic guardianship, as the Lord himself testifies. Hence he who has children within his house, may be certain that he has therein the presence of angels; he who takes little children in his arms may be assured that he takes angels; whosoever, surrounded with midnight darkness, rests beside an infant, may enjoy the certain consolation that with it he is so protected that the spirit of darkness cannot have access. How great the importance of these things!

18. Seventhly, gold, silver, and other external things do not procure for us the love of God, nor, as children do, defend us from His anger; for God so loves children, that for their sake He occasionally pardons parents; Nineveh affords an example, inasmuch as because there were many children therein, God spared the parents from being swallowed up in the threatened judgment.

19. Eighthly, human life does not consist in abundance of wealth, as our Lord says, since without God’s blessings neither food nourishes, nor plaster heals, nor clothing warms; but His blessing is always present with us for the sake of children, in order that they may be sustained. For, if God liberally bestows food on the young ravens calling on Him, how much more should He not care for children, His own image? Therefore, Luther has wisely said: “We do not nourish our children, but they nourish us; for because of these innocents God supplies necessaries, and we aged sinners partake with them.”

20. Finally, silver, gold, and gems afford us no further instruction than other created things do, namely, in the wisdom, power, and beneficence of God; whereas children are given to us as a mirror, in which we may behold modesty, courteousness, benignity, harmony, and other Christian virtues, the Lord himself declaring, “Unless ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven.” Since, then, God has willed that children should be unto us in place of preceptors, we judge that we owe to them the most diligent attention.

COLLATERAL READING.

Fénelon’s Education of Girls, Chaps. I. and II.; Herford’s Student’s Fröbel, Chap. I.; Malleson’s Early Training of Children, Chap. I.; Marwedel’s Conscious Motherhood, Chap. I.; Necker de Saussure’s Progressive Education, Book I., Chaps. I., II., and III.; Rousseau’s Émile, Book I.

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II.

OBLIGATIONS OF PARENTS.

1. Should it enter the mind of any one to inquire why it pleased the Divine Majesty to produce these celestial gems not at once in the full number which He purposed to have for eternity, as He did the angels, such inquirer will discover no other reason than that, in doing so, he honors human kind by making them as it were his coadjutors in multiplying creatures. Not, however, that from that source alone they draw pleasure, but that they may exercise their zeal in rightly educating and training them for eternity.

2. Man accustoms the ox for plowing, the hound for hunting, the horse for riding and driving, because for these uses they were created, and they cannot be applied to other purposes; man, however, being more noble than all those creatures, ought to be educated for the highest objects, so that as far as possible he may correspond in excellences to God, whose image he bears. The body, no doubt, being taken from the earth, is earthy, is conversant with the earth, and must again be turned into earth; whereas the soul, being inspired by God, is from God, and ought to remain in God and elevate itself to God.

3. Parents, therefore, will not fully perform their duty, if they merely teach their offspring to eat, to drink, to walk about, to talk, and to be adorned with clothing; for these things are merely subservient to the body, which is not the man, but his tabernacle only; the guest (the rational soul) dwells within, and rightly claims greater care than its outward tenement. Plutarch has rightly derided such parents as desire beauty, riches, and honors for their children, and endeavor to promote them in these respects, regarding very little the adornment of the soul with piety and virtue, saying: “That those persons valued the shoe more than the foot.” And Crates the Theban, a Gentile philosopher, vehemently complaining of the madness of such parents, declared, as the poet relates:—

“Were I permitted to proclaim aloud everywhere, I should denounce all those infatuated and shamefully wicked, Whom destructive money agitates with excessive zeal. Ye gather riches for your children, and neither nourish them with doctrine, Nor cherish within them intellectual capability.”

4. The first care, therefore, ought to be of the soul, which is the principal part of the man, so that it may become, in the highest degree possible, beautifully adorned. The next care is for the body, that it may be made a habitation fit and worthy of an immortal soul. Regard the mind as rightly instructed which is truly illuminated from the effulgence of the wisdom of God, so that man, contemplating the presence of the Divine Image in himself, may diligently observe and guard that excellence.

5. Now there are two departments of true celestial wisdom which man ought to seek, and into which he ought to be instructed. The one, a clear and true knowledge of God and all of his wonderful works; the other, prudence,—carefully and wisely to regulate self and all external and internal actions appertaining to the present and future life.

6. Primarily as to the future life, because properly speaking that is life, from which both death and mortality pass into exile, since the present is not so much life as the way to life; consequently, whosoever has attained so much in this life as to prepare himself by faith and piety for a future life, must be judged to have fully performed his duty here.

7. Yet, notwithstanding this, inasmuch as God, by bestowing longevity upon many, assigns them certain duties, places in the course of their life various occurrences, supplying occasions for acting prudently. Parents must by all means provide for the training of their children in the duties of faith and piety; so must they also provide for the more polite culture in the moral sciences, in the liberal arts, and in other necessary things; to the end that when grown up they may become truly men, prudently managing their own affairs, and be admitted to the various functions of life, which, whether ecclesiastical or political, civil or social, God has willed them to fulfill, and thus, having righteously and prudently passed through the present life, they may, with the greater joy, migrate to the heavens.

8. In a word, the purpose for which youth ought to be educated is threefold: (1) Faith and Piety; (2) Uprightness in respect of morals; (3) Knowledge of languages and arts. These, however, in the precise order in which they are here propounded, and not inversely. In the first place, youth must be exercised in piety, then in the morals or virtues, finally in the more advanced literature. The greater the proficiency the youth makes in the latter, the better.

9. Whosoever has within his house youth exercising themselves in these three departments, possesses a garden in which celestial plantlets are sown, watered, bloom, and flourish; a studio, as it were, of the Holy Spirit, in which He elaborates and polishes those vessels of mercy, those instruments of glory, so that in them, as lively images of God, the rays of His eternal and infinite power, wisdom, and bounty, may shine more and more. How inexpressibly blessed are parents in such a paradise!

COLLATERAL READING.

Malleson’s Early Training of Children, Chap. II.; Marwedel’s Conscious Motherhood, Chap. II.; Necker de Saussure's Progressive Education, Book II., Chaps. I., II., and III.; Rousseau’s Émile, Book I.

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.

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.” 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.

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 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.