Comenius

Biography

His/her father was an extremely religious Master-miller, according to the doctrines of Jean Hus. Become orphan into twelve years, it will integrate into sixteen years the Latin school of Přerov where its professors will notice promising aptitudes and will protect it. It is registered in 1611 at the University calvinist of Herborn in Germany where, under the influence of the theologists Piscator and Asted, it is initiated with the millenarism (makes an attempt of a perfect thousand-year-old kingdom on ground). Its philosophical formation is marked indeed much by the study of the Bible than by the study of atheistic thinkers. In 1613, it is registered with the Faculty of theology of the Université of Heidelberg.

In 1614, it turns over in Moravie where the Unit of the brothers of Bohemian (hussites) entrusts to him the direction of the school of Přerov. In 1616 he becomes Pasteur and in 1618 one entrusts to him the very important parish of Fulneck. This same year, he marries Madeleine Vizovká, of whom he will have two children. In 1621, at the beginning of the War Thirty Year old, the Spanish troops take the town of Fulneck and put at price the life of its Pasteur, Comenius. This one flees in the neighbouring forests, giving up his wife then pregnant and her son. He writes for his wife a treaty of consolation entitled Réflexions on the Christian perfection . Madeleine and her two children die of the plague without Comenius re-examining them.

He lost in a few months his country, his parish, his work and his family. Consequently, he is condemned to the eternal exile - therefore one saw in him a precursor of the European unit. All its life, Comenius will hope for a defeat of the catholic forces and a return of the biblical faith and its fatherland. That will push it to believe prophecies of the tanner Christophe Kotter or the young Christine Poniatowska, one hallucinated 16 years that he will regard as his own daughter, and to be interested in the utopian and esoteric ideas proclamations Rosicrucian brotherhood. It will be besides in correspondence with their presumed author Johann Valentine Andreae, of which it will take up the ideas of Christian Sociétés .

In 1624, it remarie with the girl of Pasteur Cyrille, Dorothée. In 1628, it is established with Leszno in Poland. Starting from 1630, it starts to be interested in pedagogy and extremely becomes a character in sight, listened by the catholics as by the Protestants. From 1651 to 1654, invited by Hungarian prince Sigismund Rakoczi, it resides at Sárospatak, where it tries to set up his teaching ideas. The Cardinal of Richelieu will invite it - without success - in France. He will be established a time in England, then in Sweden of which he will reform the schools, on the invitation of Louis de Geer. One makes him even the proposal go to direct in the New-world the school of Harvard, in the puritan colony of the Massachusetts.

It loses his second wife and Marie third once. In Leszno, in Poland, following an attack of the Polish catholics, Comenius loses his library and all its twenty previous years work. In 1656, the Holland, if generous towards the refugees of the time will accommodate it and the town of Amsterdam, where he will die four years later, will pour a pension of 800 guilders to him.

Analyzes literary

Comenius is before a whole theologist. The philosophers of the Lumières regard Comenius as a metaphysician of rear-guard (a " forgery prophète" , a " moralist with the étroit" spirit; Diderot will write). However, by its utopian and atypical thought, Comenius will have prepared the world protesting to accept rationalism rather antichrétien Lumières. Its work currently makes it regard as the father of modern education; Michelet will call it the Galileo of education . He is also regarded as the inspirer of the Franc-maçonnerie. Comenius meets Rene Descartes in 1642 and the two men, in spite of apparently irreconcilable divergences, have well the same goal of a universal rational science.

The father of pedagogy

For Comenius, the reform of education is the single remedy for the deep cultural crisis which passes through Europe at the time of the Guerre Thirty Year old. This reflection has religious roots. While pleading for a democratization of education, Comenius is made the heir to the levelling message of Christianity: since each human being is an image of God, each one deserves to be educated. Moreover - and it is there one of the claims of the Czech Réforme - an educated population can reach directly the crowned texts, and thus approaches God.

Thus, " all must be taught with everyone " , without reference to richness, of religion or sex. This dimension universalist of the thought of Comenius, contained in the concept of pansophia , or universal wisdom, is its most ambitious aspect. At one time when the inferiority of the women was commonly allowed, Comenius affirms that the girls have the same intellectual abilities as the boys; he also pleads for the best dealt with of the students in difficulty. Remainder, the thought of Comenius rises to some extent of its own childhood: orphan, it owes his rise not with his social situation, but with education.

To affirm that " tout" must be taught does not mean that the pupils must all learn. In Prodromus pansophiae , Comenius scoffs the efforts at the encyclopedists, of which he considers absurd the way of presenting knowledge like a chain of elements juxtaposed rather than like a whole. It is well rather a question of learning how to think well - also the pupils must memorize the least possible.

For Comenius, the education system should not only stick to the activities of the thought, reason ( ratio ), but also with the operatio , i.e. with the manual work, of which he affirms that he is not to in no case ashamed. He considers that the schools should show less interest for the teaching of Latin, and much more for matters like the geography, the history or biology. In particular, he insists much on the importance of artistic education; he judges that art must be made available to all. Thus Comenius, warned musicologist, plead for the generalization of the teaching of the music on all the school levels.

To carry out the " wisdom universelle" , Comenius conceives a system of education rationalized, single for all the young people of the two sexes, and composed of four degrees: nursery school for more small (an idea that it develops particularly), the public school for the children, the secondary school for the teenagers and academies for oldest. However, Comenius considers that education is a process which must last all the life - the entire world is a school.

But what makes of Comenius the pioneer of the Pédagogie, they are especially its reflections on the manner of teaching, and in particular the idea that the teacher must wake up the interest of his pupil. With this intention, Comenius recommends the use of images. Thus its handbook Orbis sensualium Pictus has as an ambition to learn Latin with the children by associating a word with an image. Comenius defends also the role of the plays, in particular of the plays of group; nothing such as learning while having fun. The teacher must also encourage the participation of the pupils. In parallel, the practice of the corporal punishment is vigorously disadvised. For Comenius, the man does not need to be under the constraint to learn; it wishes it naturally.

Publications

Comenius is especially known by the small work entitled: Janua linguarum reserata or the Key of the languages (Lesna, 1631): it gathered there in 1000 sentences all the usual words, so as to give at the same time, in a time très-court, the knowledge of the words and that of the things. This work had an extraordinary success: it was often reprinted and is translated in almost compartments the languages.

Comenius supplemented this work by giving Orbis sensualium pictus , Nuremberg, kind of encyclopedia where the words are accompanied by images which explain them; Grammatica janualis ; lexicon januale , collection where all the radicals are joined together in followed sentences.

One joined together his most important treaties under the title of Opera didactica , Amsterdam, 1657. He moreover wrote on the history, the religion, philosophy. Some of its works are written in Czech language.

Below, an quasi-exhaustive list of its works:

Problemata miscellanea , 1612 - a philosophical treaty
Grammaticae facilioris praecepta (Precepts of a easier Grammar), 1616 - handbook of grammar, today lost
Divadlo veškerenstva věcí (Theater of the universality of the things), 1616 - an incomplete project for the first Czech encyclopedia
Retuňk proti Antikristu has svodům jeho , 1617-18 - a proclamation against the pope
Listové C nebe , 1619 - a criticism of the social injustice
O poezii české (Of Czech poetry), 1620 - Czech handbook of poetry
Přemyšlování O dokonalosti (Reflections on the perfection), 1622 - a work dedicated to his wife
Nedobytelný hrad jméno Hospodinovo , 1622
Truchlivý (Sad), 1622-1651
Labyrint světa has ráj srdce (the labyrinth of the world and the paradise of the heart), 1623-1631
O sirobě , 1624
Přes boží , 1624
Centrum securitatis čili hlubina bezpečnosti , 1625
Carte of Moravie, 1627, Amsterdam
Česká didaktika (Didactic Czech), 1627-1632 - teaching work founder
Informatorium školy materské , 1630 - on the education of the young children in nursery schools
Ianua linguarum reserata (the open door on the languages), 1631 - Latin handbook
Navržení krátké O obnově škol v království českém (Short proposals for the reform of the schools of the Kingdom of Bohemia), 1632 - reform proposal of the school system of Bohemia
Haggaeus redivivus , 1632 - critical of the oppression of the company and Habsburg
Pozoun milostivého léta , 1632 - expresses the hope of a nearest return into Bohemian
Vestibulum , 1633 - Latin handbook, more accessible than Ianua linguarum reserata
Physicae synopsis , 1633, Leipzig - handbook of physics
Conatuum Comenianorum praeludia , 1637, Oxford
Prodromus pansophiae (Prelude to universal wisdom), 1639, London
Via lucis (the way of the light), 1642 and 1668 - opinions on education and the school system
Pansophiae diatyposis , 1643, Danzig
Methodus linguarum novissima , 1649 - handbook of languages
Historia persecutionum Ecclesiae Slavonicae , 1647 - request with the European Protestants to help the Czechs
Kšaft umírající matky, bratrské Jednoty , 1650 - disappointment because of peace of Westphalia
Rebita Laucus , 1650
Independentia aeternarum confusionum origo , 1650
Schola pansophica (the pansophic school), 1651
Sermo secretus Nathanis AD Davidem , 1651 - request with Hungarian prince Sigismund Rákóczi to fight Habsburg
Gentis congratulated , 1659, Amsterdam - exhortation to fight Habsburg
Schola ludus , 1654
Panegyricus Carolo Gustavo (Panegyrical of Charles Gustave), 1655 - request with king de Suède to reform Poland
Opera didactica omnia (Works didactic complete) (1657) - a collection of its teaching writings
Lux in tenebris (the light in darkness), 1657
Orbis sensualium pictus , 1658, Nuremberg - imagier for the training of Latin
Kancionál , a 1659 - a collection of hymns
Ecclesiae Slavonicae brevis historiola , 1660, Amsterdam - history of the Slavic Church
Of rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica , 1662 - its most imposing work, a philosophical work divided into 7 parts, including 4 unfinished
Lux E tenebris , 1665 - supplements Lux in tenebris
Clamores Eliae , 1665-1670 - ideas on the improvement of the world and the international cooperation
Angelus pacis (the angel of peace), 1667 - exhortation with peace
Unum necessarium , 1668 - a kind of will philosophical
Continuatio admonitionis fraternae , 1669 - polemic

Quotations

“ When the general education of youth starts with the good method, it nobody will miss any more

what is necessary to think for him well and act well. ”

“ Plus many is the problems on which one reflects, more one is likely to include/understand none of it. ”

The Comenius project

The Comenius project is an European project sponsored by the European Union and launched in 2002. It is a project which extends from the nursery school to the secondary. He addresses to all the actors educational life: teachers, pupils, parents of pupils, associations of parents of pupils, ONG and territorial collectivities inter alia.

Goals and aimed

He aims promoting the co-operation within the European framework between the participating establishments, encouraging the relations between pupils and the mobility of the teachers, at developing the open-minded and the tolerance, keys of solid Europe, but also to the use and perfection of the various languages. The project stresses the assistance at the disadvantaged categories, the fight against school failure and the prevention of exclusion.

The choice of Comenius

Education was for Komensky a peremptory necessity. This last recommended to adapt the transmission of the knowledge to each pupil. It was for a common school, without discrimination of sex or condition. It also had the idea of grants, data to the children resulting from underprivileged mediums. It is one of the pioneers of pedagogy, in particular differentiated. For this reason the Project bears its name.

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