JOHN AMUS COMENIUS (1592-1670)

Jan Amos Comenius (in Czech, Komenský) was born on March 28, 1592 in Moravia, region
of the current Czech Republic. Considered the founder of modern pedagogy. He was the
youngest of five children and the only male in a wealthy family of farmers. His parents
belonged to the Union of Moravian Brothers (also called Bohemian Brothers, or Moravian
Church). After completing his studies in Germany, he returned to his native country. Later, at
the age of 24, he was ordained a priest of the Moravian Brothers' Union. In 1618, Comenius
was placed in front of the small parish of Fulnek, a city located about 240 kilometers east of
Prague. At that time, the Catholic Counter-Reformation, aimed at combating Protestantism,
was in full swing in Europe. The religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants reached
its peak with the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648).

After a decade of struggle, the Catholic religion was declared the only legitimate confession
in Moravia. Comenius and the members of the upper classes were given the opportunity to
choose: convert to Catholicism or leave the country. Since Comenius was not willing to give
up, he moved his family to the small town of Leszno, an important center of the Moravian
Brothers' Union in Poland. That marked the beginning of an exile that would last forty-two
years and deprive him of returning to his homeland. Comenius was employed as a Latin
teacher at the Gymnasium in Leszno, a school for pre-university students. However, soon he
felt dissatisfied with inappropriate teaching methods, and with good reason. The school
system of the time was in a deplorable state. For example, only men were considered worthy
of education, although those born in poverty were excluded. Classroom instruction consisted
mainly of filling the students' heads with Latin syntax, words and phrases. For what reason?
Because the Catholic Church controlled most of the medieval schools, and since the liturgy
was celebrated in Latin, the teaching of this language was essential to ensure a constant
supply of future priests. In addition, no attention was given to setting specific learning
objectives, nor did the education students received helped them to progressively move from
simple to complicated. The discipline was severe, sometimes even cruel, and the moral
environment degraded. Comenius was not the first to defend the need for educational
reform.

In England, Francis Bacon had condemned the insistence on Latin and had advised to
resume the study of nature. In Germany, Wolfgang Ratke and Johann Valentin Andreä,
among others, had also tried to make improvements, although none of them obtained the
favor of the State for their projects. Comenius proposed a program to make education
enjoyable and not tedious, and he called it pampaedia or pansophy, which means "universal
education" (everything should be taught to everyone).

Its purpose was to establish a progressive teaching system that everyone could enjoy. He
said that children should be taught gradually, naturally linking elementary concepts to more
complex concepts. He also advocated the use of the mother tongue during the first years of
schooling instead of Latin. However, education should not be confined to adolescence, but to
cover the entire life of the individual. Comenius wrote that the study had to be "completely
practical, completely pleasing, so that it made the school a real fun, that is, a pleasant
prelude to our lives." He also believed that the school should focus not only on the formation
of the mind, but on the person as a whole, which would include moral and spiritual
instruction.

METHOD
For Comenio, teaching is due to an arrangement of three things: time, object and method.
Just as nature is unique, just like God, so also the method as imitation of nature must be
unique, unfolding between teaching-learning, reading-writing, words-things.
To learn and teach, he recommended to proceed from the known to the unknown, from the
simple to the complex, etc.
He criticized the teaching methods based on punishment and threat, which only aroused the
terror of the boys towards knowledge and impeded creativity and ingenuity. Comenius
proposes a practical method of learning in which knowledge is gently infused into souls,
bringing to the understanding the true essence of things and instructing about the
foundations, reasons and ends of the most important things that exist and are created. Urges
to first form the understanding of things, after memory and finally the tongue and hands.
He broke with the usual practice in schools of basing the discourse of knowledge on the
classics, and placed the child and the youth as observers of nature, from which they learned,
also using their own mother tongue and not Latin.

METHODOLOGY:
For Comenio, teaching is due to an arrangement of three things: time, object and method.
Just as nature is unique, just like God, so also the method as imitation of nature must be
unique, unfolding between teaching-learning, reading-writing, words-things.

To learn and teach, he recommended to proceed from the known to the unknown, from the
simple to the complex, etc.

He criticized the teaching methods based on punishment and threat, which only aroused the
terror of the boys towards knowledge and impeded creativity and ingenuity. Comenius
proposes a practical method of learning in which knowledge is gently infused into souls,
bringing to the understanding the true essence of things and instructing about the
foundations, reasons and ends of the most important things that exist and are created. Urges
to first form the understanding of things, after memory and finally the tongue and hands.

He broke with the usual practice in schools of basing the discourse of knowledge on the
classics, and placed the child and the youth as observers of nature, from which they learned,
also using their own mother tongue and not Latin.

APPROACH
There are three fundamental aspects of his teaching:
1.- Proceed in stages.
2.- Examine what has been learned personally, without giving in to the authority of adults.
3.- Act personally “autopraxis”.

The development of a student, or of any person should be through exercises and activities
that are done for interest and not for obligation, that do something that excites them. Another
important aspect for school education should be that the student seeks to expand the
concepts on some subject, in a nutshell, that does not think that the concept given by a
teacher is the only one; but look for other definitions.
To have a permanent assimilation of knowledge, it is necessary to develop skills through
procedures. The mastery of the subject makes possible and desirable, the applied
assimilation of the discipline by teacher and student.

TEACHING ACTIVITIES
What is known as the Modern School is based largely on what was written by Comenius four
hundred years ago and which refers to education in childhood and early youth. Among other
things, Comenius postulated the following:
• A single teacher must teach a group of students.
• That group must be homogeneous with respect to age.
• That all youth of both sexes should be gathered in schools (Chapter IX of Magna Didactics)
• That the students of the school should be distributed by degrees of difficulty, beginners,
middle and advanced.
• That each school cannot be completely autonomous, but simultaneous school education
systems must be organized.
• That all schools must begin and end their activities on the same day and at the same time
(a single school calendar).
• That teaching must respect the precepts of ease, brevity and solidity.
• Recommendations for teachers: 1st to teach in the mother tongue, 2nd to know things and
then to teach them, and 3rd to eliminate violence from school.
• That the most appropriate means to learn to read is a book that combines: age-adapted
readings with graphics and images, etc.
• Learning should be a game, children go to school with joy and parents visit to school, a
party.
• Designed an architecture of how schools should be built: with courtyards, gardens and
cheerful and open spaces.