Some Aspects of the World Curriculum Proposed by Comenius
By John Taylor; 2009 Aug 19, Kamal 19, 166 BE
The twenty-second chapter of John Amos Comenius's Panorthosia, "The Particular Reform Of Schools," discusses why the reform of education should be undertaken first and some ways to remove corruption in schools. Finally, it tackles the problem of replacing corruption with improvements, and how to turn these changes into permanent reforms.
In an extended after note to this chapter Comenius also discusses how to improve textbooks and other course materials. Here he notes that the purpose of learning materials is to direct the attention of students to what is most important, "... unless we are to suffer forever from the old complaint 'We do not know the essentials because we are learning nonessentials.' (Seneca, Epistle 66) (Panorthosia, Note on the Reform of School Text Books, pp. 53-54) In devising a world curriculum, how can an entire society, especially a multicultural one, decide what is essential and what is not? This chapter, written by one of the first world federalists as well as a major educational theorist, offers many helpful clues.
Comenius starts explaining why education must be the first priority for reformers. We can change at any age, but our malleability is at its greatest in early years. Any corruption that sets in in our youth is all but impossible to remove later on. The longer our contact with corruption the greater the likelihood that we will catch it (paragraph 6). The religious doctrine of original sin itself, Comenius implies, is a metaphor for the early onset of corruption in human development.
"Moreover, of all the instruments for corrupting the tender age of youth none serve (Satan's) purpose better than parental indulgence and faulty education, which is a far more damaging affliction than some wicked Fury ... In my view faulty education is the greater evil inasmuch as the Soul is more sublime than the body ... and since he who passes the best part of his life very badly (through cowardice, licentiousness, idleness, and luxury) loses his whole life as a result. As a rule it is true to say that the end depends upon the beginning and all things bear the stamp of their early existence. 'The jar will retain the Smell of the first contents which it held when new'." (Horace, Epistles I, II, 69, also quoted ... by St. Augustine in Civitas Dei 1, 3) (Panorthosia, Ch. 22, para 4, p. 39)
On the other hand, any improvements we can make in our teaching methods will also have a decisively potent effect in improving the lives of children, since they have the longest time to apply the lesson. This is why teachers devote most of their time and effort to teaching children and young people.
Unfortunately, teachers themselves tend to be corrupt, a situation that Christ warned against when he asked, if the light in you becomes dark, what hope is there? In order to counteract this danger Comenius suggests an elaborate system of outside inspections and surprise inspections by expert instructors and outside guests. Quality control in the human resources of education begins first of all in the critical faculties of every individual, and especially in those who teach. Teachers, principal and school governors who fail to live an exemplary life should either change or be dismissed from their post. It would be hypocritical to expect a high standard of students but not of their models and instructors.
"As for pupils, the utmost care must be taken to prevent them from lapsing into bad temper, laziness, or indifference (for the earliest age-group is made of wax and can be moulded for better or worse).'" (para 15, pp. 43-44)
Religion and Education
As a religious leader as well as an educational reformer, Comenius understood that the educator has to depend upon the support of religion in conveying the all-important moral dimensions of what they seek to instil in young people.
"... the Schools will be put right by means of a strict moral discipline, so that pupils destined for heaven, whose learning on earth is confined to the things which must continue to be known in heaven, should show themselves wise and endued with knowledge by good conversation with meekness of wisdom (James III, 13)." (Comenius, Panorthosia, Ch. 22, para 25, pp. 49-50)
For their part, faith groups should regard it as their main duty to offer their full resources to support the mission of educators.
"But now we must see that the classroom is a place where the church gives birth to the sons of God and where it will be a pleasure for teachers to perform the kindly task of the midwife and to nurse the infant offspring of wisdom." (para 18, p. 45)
In his childhood Comenius had been beaten and abused by authority figures from both school and religion. In reaction, he thought that the removal of cruelty and bullying should be a central mission for both religion and education. Teachers and the faithful should learn always to be kind and nurturing, and especially when they teach young children.
Science and Education
Centuries before renewable energy sources became a central concern, Comenius compared this technical change to the removal of abuse in schools.
"Of course, it is generally hard to give up bad habits and by no means easy to see their disadvantages once we have grown accustomed to them, but it is my considered opinion that most of our previous schools have really been places of drudgery, workshops of sweated labour under the rod and the lash. Would it not be a welcome change to convert them into automatic mills powered by the wheels of nature? The schools of the past have been like sculptors' workshops where master-masons found it necessary to teach their toilsome craft by using the hammer and the chisel to vent their spleen and try the endurance of their pupils." (para 18, p. 45)
Slavery, then, is not confined to menial labour, it is endemic in academe. Instead, he says, learning should be like a mill running automatically, using the energy of the river running beside it. Instead of weeding students out by regurgitating theory and second hand thoughts in mindless examinations, teachers should expect students to demonstrate competence first hand, by actually doing what they have been taught. The teacher's motto, then, should be: "Let them prove it." Because it is one of Comenius's most brilliant strokes of genius, I will cite this passage in full. If educators had taken this advice to heart, today the world of science and education would not be dilly-dallying in the face of climate change, it would have been solved before it came to this perilous point of no return.
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Let Them Prove It
"Thirdly, the method of transplanting wisdom from books into minds should be kindly and pleasant, but solidly effective through an attractive course in which the individual is seeing and saying and doing things himself, as described at some length in my 'Universal Education.' As for the Academies, I should like them to be renowned for Wisdom like that of Solomon to the exclusion of reading contests, disputations, and rhetorical exercises.
Things should preferably be taught in a realistic way. For when men expound each other's opinions they incidentally pass on their errors from one hand to another; and so long as they seek after knowledge in human handbooks instead of in the textbooks of God, they are only disputing without proving anything.
The cult of vain pagan wisdom should cease, and we should begin to advance towards wisdom like that of Solomon. Real things should be looked at individually and in their own context as arranged with divine skill in the fabric of the world, the structure of the human Mind, and the eloquence of the word of God.
The academies in their wisdom should speak of trees, from the cedar tree even unto the hyssop, also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes (I Kings IV, 33 and Job X11, 7). They should teach about how the world was made, and the operation of the elements; the beginning, ending, and midst of the times; the alterations of the turning of the sun, and the change of the seasons; the circuits of years, and the positions of stars; the natures of living creatures, and the furies of wild beasts; the violence of winds and the reasonings of men, Wisdom VII, 17-20; and finally they should know how to teach all such things as are either secret or manifest, being taught by wisdom, which is the worker of all things.
In a word, brutish imitation should cease in schools all over the world, and lively contemplation begin. Tricky disputations should cease, and firm proofs begin, and this would be a source of lasting benefit to all who receive school education.
For every pupil would see that he is learning real things instead of nebulous opinions, and so would become an industrious collector of wisdom for himself; and a self-reliant teacher instead of a rigid admirer of wisdom at second hand.
Therefore our Academies should constantly observe the motto `GIVE THEM THE CHANCE TO PROVE IT'.
For example, if anyone claims to be a doctor, let him prove it by healing the sick, and then, and only then, grant him the right to practise medicine; or to put it in philosophical terms, nothing should be admitted unless it has been proved beyond the possibility of contradiction so that the Christian population consists not of silly women, ever learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth (II Timothy 3:7), nor of children forever but of men who put away childish things (I Corinthians 8:11).
(para 24, pp. 48-49)
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