inductive elsewhere. senses or by reason. It is sufficient merit that Comenius, for the first time in history, applied anything like inducbut more fully tion to teaching. Moreover, in the application of his general method to the specific teaching of various lines, -sciences, reading, writing, singing, languages, morality, and piety, he utilized more fully the induction of Bacon. For example, after showing the necessity for careful observation in obtaining a knowledge of the sciences, he gives nine useful precepts for their study that are clearly the inductive result of his own experience as a teacher. Likewise, he insists that, in teaching the sciences, in order to make a genuine impression upon the mind, one must deal with realities rather than books. The objects themselves, or where this is not possible, such representations of them as can be conveyed by copies, models, and pictures, must be studied. After the same principle he formulates inductive rules and methods for instruction in the other subjects. Popularity of The Influence of Comenius upon Education. Thus the work of Comenius was based primarily upon sense realism, but he added many modifications and new elements of his own. He may in the fullest sense be considered the great educational theorist and practical reformer of the seventeenth century. His practical ability his Latin text- is especially shown in the series of Latin text-books, which far excelled the works of several contemporaries on similar lines. The Janua was translated into a dozen European, and at least three Asiatic languages; the Orbis Pictus proved even more popular, and went through an almost unlimited number of editions in various tongues; and the whole series became for many generations the favorite means of introducing young people books, ignorance of dactic, which was direct basis of tion to the study of Latin. But the remarkable theoretical work of Comenius had little effect upon the schools of but the period, and until about the middle of the nineteenth the Great Dicentury the Great Didactic was scarcely known. At that time, when this treatise of Comenius was brought to light by German investigators, it was discovered that the old realist of the seventeenth century had been the first to deal with education in a scientific spirit, and work out its problems practically in the schools. And the principles of Comenius were at the time unconsciously taken up by others and indirectly became the basis of modern education. His spirit appeared not only in the the inideas of subsequent theorists-Francke, Rousseau, Base- modern educadow, Pestalozzi, Herbart, Froebel-but even in the actual curricula and methods of educational institutions. Realistic Tendencies in Elementary Schools. While the effect of sense realism upon the schools seems to have been slow and indirect, the movement was obvious even in the seventeenth century. In Germany there came a decided tendency throughout the elementary schools to increase instruction in the vernacular, as recommended Slow and inby Ratich and Comenius, and to learn first the German vernacular and grammar rather than the Latin. With this movement science introwas joined the increase in universal and compulsory education urged by the reformers, and an introduction of elementary science, in addition to reading, writing, arithmetic, religion, and singing. At Weimar in 1619, through a pupil of Ratich, a new school system was organized; and in 1642, under the order of Duke Ernst, Andreas Reyher prepared a new course for Gotha, which afforded elementary instruction in the natural sciences, as well as the rudiments and religion. This work included teach direct, but the elementary duced. ing the children to measure with the hour-glass and sun-dial, to observe the ordinary plants and animals, and to carry on other objective studies of a simple character. Many other attempts at instruction in science were made elsewhere in the German states, both in private and public education, and the same tendency appeared in the states of Italy, and in France, Holland, and England. Secondary Schools.-But the new realistic tendencies appeared also in secondary education. While in Germany it was not until the eighteenth century that there were any evidences of sense realism in the gymnasia, languages of neighboring countries and considerable Science in the science appeared in the Ritterakademien (see p. 157) by the middle of the seventeenth, and toward the end of the century in the schools of Francke and other 'pietists' at Halle were embodied all the realistic elements of Comenius. While the pietists adopted these ideas largely for their religious side, as a protest and reaction to the rationalistic Ritterakademien, they did not hesitate also to stress the science content and the study of the vernacular. In the secondary school known as the Pädagogium, Pädagogium, which he had started for well-to-do boys, Francke included training in the vernacular, mathe Ritterakade mien, matics, geography, natural science, astronomy, anatomy, and Realschule, and materia medica; and the Realschule, established by his colleague, Semler, went even more fully into the vernacular, mathematics, and the sciences, pure and applied. This realistic instruction of the pietists was brought by Hecker to Berlin, where he started his famous Realschule in 1747, and similar institutions soon spread and in gram- throughout Prussia. In England, while very few of and academies. the grammar and public schools (see p. 120) as yet intro mar schools duced even the elements of science into their course, the academies (see p. 157) were rich in sciences, mathematics, and the vernacular. This was also true of the academies that sprang up in America (see p. 158). Sciences in universities, and Cam The Universities. The universities were slower in responding to the movement of sense realism. As the result of its pietistic origin, however, the University of Halle was realistic almost from its beginning in 1692. Göttingen, the next institution to become hospitable gen, and other to the tendency, did not start it until 1737. But soon afterward the movement became general, and by the end of the eighteenth century all the German universities —at least, all under Protestant auspices-had created professorships in the sciences. While the English universities, Oxford and Cambridge, were much slower than and in Oxford those of Germany in adopting the new subjects, and it bridge. was a century and a half before these institutions became known for their science, during the professorship of Isaac Newton (1669-1702) considerable was done toward making Cambridge mathematical and scientific, and in the course of the eighteenth century several chairs in the sciences were established. Besides formulating the law of gravitation, Newton lectured and wrote Great work of at Cambridge upon calculus, astronomy, optics, and the spectrum. He became one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists the world has known, and he did much to create a scientific atmosphere in other educational institutions, as well as Cambridge. America also felt the scientific impulse in its higher institutions. Some study of astronomy, botany, and physics was possible Science in at Harvard even in the seventeenth century, and during colleges. the eighteenth Yale, Princeton, King's (afterward Colum Newton. American bia), Dartmouth, Union, and Pennsylvania all came to offer a little work in physics, and at times in chemistry, geology, astronomy, and biology. In his proposals for the prospective 'seminary' in New York (1753), which was destined to become Columbia University, and in the actual course of the academy at Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania), over which he presided, Dr. William Smith put a most progressive program of sciences, including the rudiments of mechanics, physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, botany, zoology, and physiology. But for half a century after this American institutions did little with the sciences as laboratory studies. SUPPLEMENTARY READING Graves, During the Transition (Macmillan, 1910), chap. XVIII; and Great Educators of Three Centuries (Macmillan, 1912), chaps. II, IV, and VI; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 461-501. The following works are standard for the authors mentioned: Adamson, J. W., Pioneers of Modern Education (Macmillan, 1905), chap. III (Bacon); Barnard, H., German Teachers and Educators, pp. 343-370 (Ratich); Fowler, T., Bacon's Novum Organum (Oxford, Clarendon Press); Laurie, S. S., John Amos Comenius (Bardeen, Syracuse, 1892); Monroe, W. S., Comenius (Scribner, 1900); and Quick, R. H., Educational Reformers (Appleton, 1896), chap. IX (Ratich) and X (Comenius). An account of sense realism is afforded by Adamson, op. cit., chap. I, and of its effect upon the schools by Barnard, op. cit., pp. 302-317, and by Paulsen, F., German Education (Scribner, 1908), pp. 117-133. |