Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/147

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INTRODUCTION—HISTORICAL
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then his rowme to be voyde without he be admytted agayne and pay 4d.”

“Also ye shall fynde hym ware in the winter.”

“Also ye shall fynde hym convenyent bokes to his lernynge.”

The instructions to the masters embody a scheme for an eight-class school. In the lowest class especial attention is to be paid to articulation. In the second, Æsop and Terence may be read, and Lily’s gender rules learned; and so on with successive doses of classics throughout the remainder of the classes. Of special interest is the method indicated for reading one of Terence’s Comedies in the eighth or highest class. The teacher is to commence by prefacing a short account of the author’s life, genius, and manner of writing. He should then proceed to explain the pleasure and profit to be derived from reading a Comedy, and to discourse on the signification and etymology of the word. Next he must give a summary of the story, and an exact description of the metre. Then he should construe in the natural order, and, finally, may indicate to his pupils the more remarkable elegances of style.

Throughout the general scheme no mention is made of arithmetic, though a small concession is made to the mother-tongue. “Sometimes you ought, in the English language, to throw out a slight groundwork for an essay; but let it be somewhat that is elegant.”

In Scotland, religious and educational reform went hand in hand, and the necessity for the establishment of the parish schools, that have existed in that country for three hundred years, was definitely formulated by John Knox. Knox, unlike Luther, wished the school to be dependent on the Church and not on the civil magistrate; but in his desire to put education within the reach of the very poorest, he is essentially at one with the German reformer, and endorses the principle of compulsion. “Of necessitie we judge it, that everie severall Churche have a schoolmaister appointed, suche a one as is able, at least, to teache Grammar and the Latine toung, yf the Toun be of any