The Millennial Meaning of Universal Schools
Series: Comenius On Education
By John Taylor; 2009 Aug 07, Kamal 06, 166 BE
As we have seen, the 16th chapter of John Comenius's Panorthosia discusses the College of Light, a sort of ministry of education for planetary governance. In Comenius's universalist view, a world government would have three branches, each independently elected, the College of Light, plus an interfaith religious body and a political parliament. Each of these institutions has a distinct task.
"Scholars should enlighten men, Churchmen should make them holy, and Politicians should protect all men from Confusion, including themselves." (Panorthosia, Ch. 10, para 35, p. 166)
Later, in the 22nd chapter, he goes into the "particular" reform of schools, the specific ways to make schools more efficient. Schools must be reformed first because they will immediately be tasked with making up a world curriculum, including the choice of a world language, which they then will teach to the entire human race. Even ignoring this tremendous task, he held in this chapter that it is essential in principle to reform schools before anything else.
"The first argument for putting school reform in the fore-front of Universal Reform is that schools are the factories of light. Moreover, the light or darkness of the intellect, and knowledge or ignorance of the natural world, is surely the first motive of any private or public reform and the original cause of order or confusion in human affairs generally." (Panorthosia, Ch. 22, para 3, p. 39)
The image of schools and universities as "factories of light" implies that positive knowledge comes before the elimination of error. "Therefore truth must be taught before errors are untaught." (Ch. 18, para 16, p. 246) The main goal of schools, then, is not to spread propaganda or indoctrinate in any specific ideology but rather to spread wisdom and enlightenment. Wisdom can save humanity from the confusion of imitation and plug minds directly into the original source of enlightenment.
"You must understand that education must be reformed first and true wisdom instilled into the minds of men; then we must reform religion, and lastly politics. The reason for this order is that mankind cannot possibly reach agreement within its own ranks before agreeing with God, and this in turn is impossible until it agrees about the natural world, which comes from God, exists with God, and is related to God. But man cannot even agree truly about Nature until each individual agrees within himself and knows how to know and apply himself, and this is attained by the light of true wisdom." (Panorthosia, Ch. 19, para 13, pp. 14-15)
We are in a climate crisis now because the world is confused and gets more contorted the more knowledge we discover. The intellectual, instead of seeking universal wisdom scrabbles for second hand information, trying to mine the thoughts of others instead of the truth within. The result is imitation, the mental equivalent of greenhouse gases. Comenius saw this starting up in its early stages.
"(Some) work strenuously towards a knowledge of serious matters, but fall short in their effort at examining them. For although they never rest from considering, grasping, and exploring things by themselves, they only attach themselves as camp-followers to other thinkers, accepting their every statement as valid. These are men who seek to gain wisdom only from books, and browse through libraries, filling their minds with other men's opinions about things. I say that they are looking at things through the eyes of others, and behaving exactly like one who wears various spectacles in the hope of increasing his power of vision. (Panorthosia II, Ch. 9, para 5, p. 145)
When all three branches of this world government cooperate in their three respective tasks, enlightenment, inspiration and protection, the result will be childhood's end. In wisdom and light, each individual will come of age and collectively we will think in mature ways. This maturity will mark the consummation of what the prophets of old predicted for the human race. In the last chapter of Panorthosia Comenius points to the high spiritual significance of the founding of "universal schools."
"If we are given universal schools, (which will mean the introduction of universal education, so that all men are taught to read and understand the books of God) the extension of light to all men will be universally possible, so that all men shall know the Lord, from the least of them unto the greatest of them (Jeremiah XXXI, 34), and 'the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea' (Isaiah XI). There shall be no more thence an infant of days' (Isaiah LXV, 20), but 'all will come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, that henceforth they be no more children' (Ephesians IV, 13, 14). (Comenius, Panorthosia, Ch. 26, para 5, p. 156)
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