The Teaching Worldview of Comenius
The Real Oldest Profession
A snide saying says that the world's oldest profession is prostitution. This is utterly wrong. The oldest profession is teaching, if only because there have to be teachers applying a regularized curriculum in order for professions to exist in the first place. But there is more to it than that. God Himself offers the primal example as to why teaching must be the true "world's oldest profession." God rules over nature directly, by force of Might,
"He shall have dominion also... unto the ends of the earth." (Ps 72:8)
But God gave us a transcendent gift, that of reason. Arbitrary measures are not appropriate for creatures capable of reasoning. Therefore the divine method with intelligent beings is not to force but to teach. God instructs us how to rule over the lower orders of creation in a duly benevolent and responsible manner. In order to do this, God turns stewardship of His garden over to human hands,
"I shall give thee... the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." (Ps 2:8)
God cedes sovereignty, albeit temporarily, because that is how you teach. A good teacher does not just pontificate; he or she assigns active exercises to allow students to learn by doing. When we doctor and order the lower levels of creation we learn through our mistakes. When we finally do learn how to take our rightful place in the divine order, then,
"All the ends of the world shall turn unto the Lord." (Ps 22:27)
Comenius in the Panorthosia often refers to these three citations from the Psalms. In the above I tried to string them together so as to sum up very briefly his worldview. In short, teaching is not just a job for Comenius; it is the very purpose of creation. As we attune ourselves to the divine teaching method we will learn to do what every good teacher does for his students, show them how to pay attention to essentials and cast aside whatever might distract or confuse.
"... the ultimate changes which we seek through this Reform of the World should be necessary, not frivolous; that is to say, we must cut out the countless side-issues in our affairs and pre-occupations which obsess and divide and strangely perplex all the orders of human society, economic, political, religious, and educational, and even involve individual men in a thorny tangle of useless theories, ambitions and intrigues. ... This way to Universal Reform warns us that the world must be recalled from multiplicity to simplicity, and bids us to regard all side-issues as snares and nuisances." (Panorthosia II, Ch. 10, para 14, 157-158)
This reminds me of my favourite definition of a teacher: someone who saves his or her students' time. Teachers save time by doing just what Comenius describes here, by showing an example of being well organized themselves, by eschewing wasted time on dead ends, and by demonstrating how to organize the mind and the world for effective practice. Comenius was indisputably one of the greatest educators in history; he is often called the "father of modern education." As one would expect, he was supremely well-organized. His reform program in Panorthosia compresses all areas of knowledge into three simple parts.
God provides humanity, he says, with three "books" which in combination are sufficient for all purposes, the book of the physical world, the book of the human mind and the book of Revelation, the direct "thought" of God. (Pampaedia 6:2, Panorthosia, pp. 111-2, Introd. p. 9). We read these "books" by means of three disciplines, politics, philosophy (science) and religion. These three are not to be confused with the narrow subject areas that politicians, philosophers and priests are experts in. Rather everybody with a trade or calling in life has to "read" the three books and teach lessons from them effectively before their apprenticeship is complete.
Unlike dogmatic theologians, Comenius did not place the "book" of divine revelation over everything, discounting the lesser books of mind and of the world. Although scripture holds the thought of God, the other two books, the mind and the material world, are there for good reason. But he did place faith first among them, as does the Baha'i Faith, I think. This is axiomatic: every real change has to start with a change in worldview. For Comenius religion must be the fundamental impetus behind reform, as taught by a verse he often cites, "Behold, I make all things new." (Revelations 21:5).
The Comenian reform program looks forward to the prophesied Second Eden where all believers in God, Christians, Jews and Muslims, will come together in harmony and agree upon a common platform of beliefs. That is, he envisaged what Baha'u'llah called "one common cause, one universal faith" for the entire human race.
"... it would be most desirable ... to make the whole world (1) a School of God, whereas the hidden schools of the world, the flesh, and the devil are everywhere made to perish; (2) a Kingdom of Christ, including particular kingdoms and states converted to the cause of Christ; (3) a single Temple of God, and a single worship of one God under one Universal Religion, (4) finally, that the whole world should become a house accessible to all, and all the inhabitants of the earth one family of God, linked by the common bond of a universal language, with particular languages either ceasing to be spoken or blending with the common language.." (Panorthosia II, Ch. 5, para 21, p. 96)
Christian triumphalism aside, this proposed goal of Comenius is startlingly similar to the Universal House of Justice's recent book "One Common Faith," which aims at establishing common ground among all major world faiths so that basic religious teachings will be common knowledge. That is, one day the true fundamentals of religion will be taught in all schools from primary on up in the same way that certain basics of mathematics and science are already taught.
Unfortunately these three "books," faith, science and politics, have been divorced for centuries. The inclination of reformers since Comenius is to leave religion aside as a lost cause and take a secular approach that excludes the "book" of scripture completely from reforms. Since 9-11 there has been wider recognition that we cannot get by just with the two "books" of the mind and the physical world. People of faith are needed to be actively involved in solving the crises that threaten our future. If that is ever to happen, sooner or later the world's religions must bury the hatchet and come together to form a world parliament of religion very like the "Ecumenical Consistory" that Comenius proposes in the eighteenth chapter of the Panorthosia.
Why is such an institution so necessary? Because even those who reject religion still live on faith and end up speaking in religious terms, albeit in a degraded form. That is because every world embracing issue is framed by our view of the world. So, if faith is unavoidable why not make sure that we all have access to the best that religious thought can offer? A religious parliament would do just that. Comenius explains the problems of confusion that such an institution would solve at the end of the seventh chapter of Panorthosia,
"Therefore we must abandon all the labyrinths of our own wisdom, will, and intrigue, and we must abolish every counterfeit that falsely pretends to follow the wisdom, will and works of God. Finally we must stamp out all the stupidity of disregarding God and His thoughts, purposes, and works, or in a word WE MUST UNIVERSALLY CEASE TO DEAL RECKLESSLY WITH GOD. And then at last we shall have removed the supreme obstacle and hindrance to true reform of ourselves and our affairs." (Comenius, Panorthosia II, Ch. 7, para 15, p. 108)
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