Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/162

 Comenius’ title to fame as an educationist rests on the discovery, application, and embodiment in a largeminded treatise on Didactic, of the fundamental principles:

I. That all instruction must be carefully graded.

II. That in imparting knowledge to children the teacher must, to the utmost, appeal to the faculties of sense-perception.

If the reader wishes to realise with any force to what extent the gradation and proper articulation of studies was neglected, or rather unthought of, when Comenius was writing, let him read a few chapters in the Great Didactic and then turn to Milton’s tractate Of Education. In the one he will find a rigorous distribution of the subject-matter of instruction, based on an analysis of the capacity and age of the scholar and on a common-sense estimate of the difficulty of the subject. In the other he meets with breadth of mind, it is true, but with no scheme of gradation whatever. Subjects and authors are dumped down in a heap and are declared suitable for educational purposes, but no effort is made to sort them.

Now to construct a solid pile of subjects of instruction that are really suitable instruments with which to educate the young is no easy task; but a greater difficulty arises when we try to pull the large heap to pieces, and to arrange it in nine or ten smaller heaps, carefully graduated as regards quantity and quality. Both these tasks Comenius undertook and performed; the first with as great success as could possibly be expected, if we consider how ill the several branches of knowledge were then defined, and the second in a manner which, even at the present day, can excite nothing but admiration.

By Comenius the principle of gradation is carried into every department of school management, the result being a careful grading of schools, of boys, and of books. The twenty-four years to be devoted to education are divided into four periods of six years, and to each of these a school is assigned. The first of these, the Mother School, was a totally new conception, and emphasises the necessity of