Schools

Comenius accepted without question the tradition of the Unity of Brethren that the responsibility for the education of children was primarily with the home and church but that special provision in schools was essential. He himself had the normal experience of a son of a devout member of the Brethren although his schooling was interrupted by the death of his parents. He commends ‘the wise habit of giving over children to select persons’ and the collecting of children for common instruction in places destined for this purpose. Formal schooling is justified on grounds of expediency ‘since human occupations have multiplied so that it is rare to find men who have either sufficient knowledge or sufficient leisure to instruct their children’. In fact formal schooling has a very long history and Comenius cites the patriarch Shem as being its founder and the Emperor Charlemagne as an example of one who saw the value of schools for establishing Christianity. ¹ There is also a positive value in bringing children into contact with each other ‘since they will mutually stimulate and assist each other’ ² and ‘although parents can do much, children of the same age can do more’. ³ The analogy of agriculture was a common one in the seventeenth century as an argument for the institution of schools ‘as fishponds are dug for fish and orchards laid out for fruit trees’. ⁴ It was used in England in 1642 in support of universal education by a pamphleteer who urges Parliament ‘carefully to plant Orchards of young stockes, meaning nurseries of general Schooling throughout the land’. ⁵