It cannot be said that the influence of humanism on
education was wholly good. Henceforth the Greek and Latin languages and
literatures became the chief instruments of culture. Educators neglected the
great world of nature and of human life which lay outside the writings of the
ancients. This "bookishness" formed a real defect of Renaissance
systems of training.
COMENIUS, 1592-1671 A.D.
A Moravian bishop named Comenius, who gave his long life
almost wholly to teaching, stands for a reaction against humanistic education.
He proposed that the vernacular tongues, as well as the classics, should be
made subjects of study. For this purpose he prepared a reading book, which was
translated into a dozen European languages, and even into Arabic, Persian, and
Turkish. Comenius also believed that the curriculum should include the study of
geography, world history, and government, and the practice of the manual arts.
He was one of the first to advocate the teaching of science. Perhaps his most
notable idea was that of a national system of education, reaching from primary
grades to the university. "Not only," he writes, "are the children
of the rich and noble to be drawn to school, but all alike, rich and poor, boys
and girls, in great towns and small, down to the country villages." The
influence of this Slavic teacher is more and more felt in modern systems of
education.
