large, short or long, narrow or broad; thin or thick; likewise what is an inch, a foot, a yard, etc. 4. The child’s music will be to sing from memory some little verses from the Psalms or hymns. 5. As to the mind and hand, the beginning of every labor or work of art is to cut, to split, to carve, to arrange, to tie, to untie, to roll up, and to unroll, such things as are familiar to all children.[1]
11. As to language, propriety is obtained by grammar, rhetoric, and poetry. 1. The grammar of the first six years in question will be that the child should be able to express in his own language so much as it knows of things, even though it speak imperfectly;[2] yet let it be to the point, and so articulated as that it may be understood. 2. Their rhetoric will be to use natural actions, and, in case they hear, to understand and repeat a trope or a figure. 3. Their rudiments in poetry will be to commit to memory certain verses or rhymes.
12. Care must be taken as to the method adopted with children in these things, not apportioning the instruction precisely to certain years or months (as will afterwards be done in the other schools), but in general only, for the following reasons: 1. Because all parents cannot observe such order in their homes as prevails in public schools, where no unusual matters disturb the regular course of things. 2. Because in this early age all children are not endowed
- ↑ Comenius was one of the first to recognize the educational value of manual training. “Learn to do by doing,” was one of his cardinal maxims. Locke and Rousseau accepted this maxim. The former wrote: “I cannot forbear to say, I would have my gentleman learn a trade, a manual trade.”
- ↑ Ascham quaintly remarks in the Schoolmaster (London, 1864): But if the childe miss, either in forgetting a worde or in changing a good with a worse or in misordering a sentence, I would not have the master either frowne or chide with him, if the childe have done his diligence and used no frowardship therein.”
