On Being Human(e): Comenius’ Pedagogical Humanization as an Anthropological Problem

On Being Human(e)

Comenius’s Pedagogical Humanization as an Anthropological Problem

Jan Hábl

Foreword by Jerry Root

On Being Human(e)

Comenius’s Pedagogical Humanization as an Anthropological Problem

Copyright © 2017 Jan Hábl. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-0056-2

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-0058-6

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-0057-9

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Hábl, Jan | Root, Jerry (foreword writer)

Title: On being human(e) : Comenius’s pedagogical humanization as an anthropological problem / Jan Hábl, with a foreword by Jerry Root.

Description: Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2017 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-0056-2 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-5326-0058-6 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-0057-9 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Comenius, Johann Amos, 1592–1670 | Philosophical anthropology | Education, Humanistic | Christian education

Classification: BV4511 H235 2017 (paperback) | BV4511 (ebook)

Manufactured in the U.S.A. 09/17/15

This book has been supported by the Internal Grant Agency of Jan E. Purkyne University in Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic, Comenius Institute in Prague and Giving Hands in Bonn.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Introduction: Presentation of the Problem

Chapter 1: Theatrum

Chapter 2: The Depths of Safety

Chapter 3: Labyrinth

Chapter 4: Didactics

Chapter 5: Pampaedia

Chapter 6: Conclusion

Appendix 1: Comenius in the Course of History

Appendix 2: Outline of Comenius’s Didactic Fundamentals from the Great Didactic

Appendix 3: Chronology of Comenius’s Life and Works

Appendix 4: Glossary of Special Terms

Bibliography

Foreword

C. S. Lewis scholar Bruce Edwards, writing of Lewis’s approach to literary criticism, observed, For Lewis every critical posture is always an implicit ontology, teleology, and eschatology. For in his implicit view of literacy, the critic is always defining the relationship of mankind not only to texts, but also to ultimate matters: the ground of being, the locus of meaning, and the possibility of transcendence. ¹ Jan Hábl, with a similar degree of precision, looks at the work of Jan Amos Comenius and reminds his readers that sound educational theory must also add a sophisticated grasp of anthropology. By sophisticated I mean avoiding the temptation to see what it is to be human through rose-colored glasses. Educational theory failing to recognize the tragic brokenness evidenced in human history and witnessed to and recorded in literature is not helpful to the educational enterprise. Equally unhelpful is a low view of what it is to be human; such a pessimistic view also lacks in sophistication; it may fail to recognize that the history of humankind is full of the heroic, as well as the tragic. Every age needs an infusion of hope, a willingness to envision for successive generations the possibility that some degree of good can be achieved by every individual and every human endeavor. If one would wrestle with the topic of education well, and in a profoundly nuanced way, it must be admitted that humans possess great dignity, and yet, are capable of great depravity. Any theory of education worth its salt must be rooted in such a complex approach to anthropology. Comenius operated with such a theory. And, Hábl’s work has done a great service for his readers by bringing their attention back to Comenius’s understanding of anthropology and what it means for education.

Fundamental questions arise, how might the ruins of humanity be restored, for certainly the effort is worth it? Furthermore, how might the good of man be cultivated and encouraged? This is the challenge of education. And, again, fundamental to that challenge is the educator’s anthropology. The practice of education must be rooted in principle. It is the tendency of pragmatics, no longer tethered to principle, to become rooted in the self-referentialism of the educator, or the educator’s party, or school of thought, the collective. Comenius was no enemy to a kind of collective, or society; but he longed to have his society, his educational community undergirded by a demonstrable objectivity. This is what Lewis, in his work on educational philosophy, called the Tao, or the doctrine of objective value. It is objective value, he wrote, that provides a common human law of action which can over-arch rulers and ruled alike. A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.² Lewis believed there is an objective world that existed independent of his thoughts about it. Human capacity to perceive and reason indicates a capacity to think about that world, not to mention what it means to be a human living in that world. Educators engaged in the practice of connecting students to the realities of that world can have their misunderstanding of that world corrected whenever there is no reality to sustain their claims. And those whose assertions stand up to scrutiny can make a case for their claim by an appeal to objective reality. Certainly these claims can be attested to by reason, authority, and experience. These are necessary checks and balances that must be employed whenever the educator’s anthropology is mindful of the human potential for dignity and depravity. Sometimes understanding can be accurate and sometimes inaccurate, falsified by human limitation and self-interest. Here again, we see the need for educational theory to be built upon a sophisticated anthropology. Hábl’s study, rooted in Comenius’s anthropology, will not allow his readers to forget.

Hábl keeps in the forefront of our minds that Comenius is still hailed as one of the greatest educators of all time. And, as Hábl point out, one feature that made Comenius’s pedagogy so effective was this clarity about what it means to be human. Hábl reminds his readers that Comenius saw pedagogy as a means of transformation in those places where proper human development is needed. There is also awareness here that human kind is broken and in need of mending. Education has a role to play in the mending process. Again, Lewis voices a similar belief when he observes, For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue.³ In this very approach there is also implied recognition of the greatness of humankind. Efforts directed towards an objective approach to education are likely to have in mind an anthropology that believes that men and women possess dignity and energies directed towards their benefit are a worth the effort. Again, humans possess dignity and depravity. And theories of education that neglect this fact are destined to fail because they lack anthropological soundness.

Furthermore, Comenius’s anthropology cannot be divorced from his faith. It was the integrating principle for all of his work. And, like all things Christian, thinking about any matter must not be inert. Christian thought, Christian theology, and Christian anthropology should always be in various stages of development. Humans are in a process of development. Reality is iconoclastic. An image once held, and helpful, must give way to a more robust understanding or it becomes an idol. Change is necessary. But the kind of change needed in any given situation requires a degree of wisdom and guidance. Is the change needed one of kind? Do we chop down the old tree and make it into a table? Or, is the change one of degree? The tree does not have to give up its interior rings just because it adds new ones; but if it does not add new rings it dies. The Bible was a source of inspiration for Comenius. He studied it in the days before schools of Higher Criticism existed. His views were rooted in a tradition, and they were fined tuned by Brethren applications. The Scriptures, as Comenius would have encountered them, exhibited what I would call theological trajectories of thought. In the book of Exodus the law was given at the beginning of Israel’s forty years in the wilderness. At the end of those wilderness days the book of Deuteronomy is given and the law is nuanced further. What is an interpreter to make of this? Was the omniscient God in heaven coming up with new ideas? Did he leave some things out of the original rendering of the law and later sought to correct his error? Or, did God give the law, and with it time for the Israelites to wrestle with its applications; to think about it. This implies a high view of anthropology. Furthermore, when the daughters of Zelophehad object to the manner in which the property of Canaan was to be distributed, God affirmed their concerns and reinforced their new applications by encouraging critical thinking about the objective revelation just given. So it is, throughout biblical history, coordinates are revealed and a trajectory of thought is encouraged along the lines of those coordinates. The greatest coordinate being the Incarnate Christ. Here too, anthropology is in view. Furthermore, though the Scriptures were given in an agrarian age, they still have application in an industrial age, and in a technological age, and whatever ages come next. In such a tradition it is no wonder that Hábl points out Comenius’s pedagogy, influenced by his faith and tethered to his anthropology, is a developing one. Furthermore, we should not be surprised, as Hábl points out, of its ongoing relevancy given its roots.

Lastly, it is good to remember that educational theory, influenced by faith and tethered to an understanding of what it means to be human, has a long history. Comenius is a unique voice, but he is supported by a choir of others who have been equally influenced in ways similar to him. Education in a fallen world will always be engaged in repairing the ruins. Examples are not hard to find. Dante Alighieri wrote in the Inferno: Consider your origin; ye were not made to live as brutes, but to pursue virtue and knowledge.⁴ Similarly, John Milton, in his essay Of Education, wrote, The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love Him, to imitate Him, to be like Him as we may the nearest, by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith, makes up the highest perfection.⁵ Furthermore, French Physicist and Philosopher, Blaisé Pascal wrote in the Pensees, Man is obviously made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now the order of thought is to begin with self, and with its Author and with its end.⁶ Philosopher and Mystic, Evelyn Underhill, also wrote explicitly

Now the very object of education is to interpret life to the child: to bring some order into the confused mass of objects and experiences which besiege the awakening consciousness, and so put the growing human creature more fully in touch with the world in which it finds itself. The ultimate aim is gradually to set up a full, true relation between pupil and environment; and for Christians, the ultimate fact about that environment is, that it is the work of God, indwelt by God, and a means of serving, knowing and glorifying God."⁷

And lastly, the English woman of letters, Dorothy Sayers, mystery writer, and translator of Dante, wrote, Christian Education is based on a coherent philosophy interpreting all experience: That is, it educates a child to be: a) a man, b) among men, c) in a universe which makes sense.⁸ The thread that holds these pedagogical opinions together is a shared and common Christian faith, and a common view of humankind, such as we find in Comenius. Hábl has serves his readers well guiding us through the terrain of Comenius’s anthropology and its effects on his theories of education.

Professor Jerry Root, Ph.D. Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois

1. Edwards, Rhetoric of Reading,

110

.

2. Lewis, Abolition of Man,

16

,

43

.

3. Ibid.,

45

.

4. Alighieri, Inferno,

39

.

5. Milton, Of Education,

59

.

6. Pascal, Pensees (Great Books),

200

.

7. Underhill, Collected Papers,

220–22

.

8. Sayers, Foreword, vii.

Introduction

Presentation of the Problem

Humanity and Humanization in Current Pedagogical Discourse

Thus nothing about human affairs is working. The state of thought, piety, and politics among all people is out of order. Many people and in some cases whole nations neither know God nor think about His interests, nor have they experienced their humanity, living their brutal lives like the cattle of the field. And could it even be said that the very things which make us most human, are in confusion and decay?

Obecná porada [General Consultation], Panegersia,

5

.

34

⁹

The school must be a humanitas officinae, that is, a workshop of humanity, a relatively young Comenius wrote in his early Didactics. In his later work, reflecting his most mature thought, A General Consultation on the Restoration of Human Affairs [ Obecná porada o nápravě věcí lidských ], he spoke similarly when he clarified the meaning of his lifelong pedagogical and corrective efforts: they were to help man become truly humane (Pampaedia, 2 . 8 ). If one is to become what one should be, it’s necessary that she be knowledgeable, and therefore, educated. The obvious question then arises: What, exactly, is a human being? And what ought one to be? Salt should be salty. A river should be clear. A knife should be sharp. But what ought people to be? In what does their nature, or essence, consist? What makes them human? And how should that be cultivated? In other words, in this book I will enquire into the ontological and moral character of human beings, in connection with so-called pedagogical humanization. ¹⁰

Humanization was one of the key principles in the transformation of the educational systems in the second half of the twentieth century in Europe.¹¹ Its importance arose from the specific situation in which European society found itself in the post-war period, and specifically in the post-totalitarian period in the Eastern part of Europe. Humanity is a precious commodity; the more intensely we feel the lack of something, the more precious it becomes. It is true that during the last century, in the area of the techno-scientific revolution, Western civilization has recorded extraordinary advances which have brought unprecedented power and affluence. Humanity, however, has lagged behind, even so far as to be in crisis. The culture of excess and prosperity contrasts sharply with the reality of the poverty of millions of hungry, destitute, illiterate, and marginalized individuals and nations of the third world, which the civilized world does not dare to civilize anymore, recognizing it has lost the right because of the profusion and persistence of its own problems.¹² Its advanced technocracy has generated a series of dehumanizing side-effects such as the alienating individualization, indifference, and depersonalizing of human relationships. Instead of the hoped-for progress of humanity, sociologists point to the reality of a decrease in moral literacy, a dramatic decline in social capital (nobody trusts anyone), the global threat of self-destruction, conflicts of civilizations, various forms of extremism and the like.¹³ Human beings are even considered to be an endangered species.¹⁴ In the spirit of Erich Fromm: despite the techno-scientific saturation, humanity in our world is under-nourished. Naděžda Pelcová commented on the precarious anthropological situation thusly:

The more we know about ourselves—our biological processes, metabolism, psychological activities, motivation for decision-making, history, the social groups we join—the more unable we are to answer the question of who we are.¹⁵

In response to this situation the concept of a so-called new humanism has emerged in pedagogical circles, say the educational experts. The question of humanism has re-appeared with a new intensity in the last decade of the twentieth century, says, for example, Jarmila Skalková.¹⁶ Pedagogical literature has abounded with various innovative plans and proposals whose crystalizing themes of transformational change should be—in the words of Štefan Švec—the very idea of humanization.¹⁷ Skalková even sees the demand for educational humanization as a world movement that permeates every sphere of contemporary life.¹⁸ Likewise Vladimíra Spilková says unequivocally: The idea of humanization is one of the key principles of transformation in the contemporary educational system.¹⁹ Features of authoritarian pedagogy, such as directive policies, uniformity, monotony and the like, which deform humanity, must be replaced by new alternative approaches, whose task is, in Skalková’s words, to put in place a new climate for teaching founded on spontaneity and the joy of teaching . . . , individual freedom for teaching and learning, space for creative work, imagination, the forming of conditions to promote the physical and psychological development of the individual.²⁰

Similarly, Karel Rýdl explains humanization as the process of improving and humanizing training and education in the sense of bringing it closer to the needs and expectations of the individual.²¹ Moreover this "pedocentrism of the new generation, as Zdeněk Helus calls it, constitutes an optimistic educational position which believes in the possibility of improving and self-developing the individual as the highest good, as the measure of all things and the complete person."²²

However, in spite of the humanistic rhetoric and intentions, the coveted humanization has still not appeared. Admittedly it is true that contemporary pedagogy does relatively well in terms of the so-called preparation of the individual for life.²³ It knows how to equip pupils with the given amount of useful information and the pragmatic skills or competencies needed for successful self-assertion (usually in the marketplace), but it fails in the formation and cultivation of that human dimension of personality that would guarantee a humane—in current terminology—pro-social use of all of the school acquired equipping, and it fails in spite of a significant (and more or less alternative) didactic arsenal. Pavel Floss notes, for example, that despite the humanistic language of official documents, current education continues to remain essentially functionalistic, that is, it produces efficient workers and experts in various fields, but fails to cultivate the whole person.²⁴ Skalková likewise says that the current process of educating and training and also managing internal school activities does not leave any room for cultivating individual abilities and talents, for ethics, aesthetics and emotional development, for the development of interpersonal relationships, or for the self-fulfillment of the individual.²⁵ Ever since Rousseau it has been proclaimed that the ultimate goal of modern education is kalokaghatia, that is, a harmonically and versatilely developed human being who will, together with other such human beings, comprise a harmonic society. The failure to achieve this goal does not have to be argued, because the problematic state of contemporary western society can be observed by the naked eye.²⁶

The critical question then is, why? Why, in spite of the great amount of theoretical and practical efforts, has this humanization not occurred? Does the problem lie in inadequate pedagogical methodology? In a lack of financial resources? Or perhaps in human resources—that is, in inadequate motivation, scholarship, or competence of teachers? Or is the problem structural, pedagogical, political, economic, or something else?

Goals and Methodology

In this work I do not want to question the importance of seeking adequate answers to the above questions, because the problem is clearly complex. However, I believe that one of the key reasons for the failure of humanizing efforts is primarily philosophical: specifically, anthropological. As the title of this book suggests, in the search for answers for authentic humanization I will turn to the works of Jan Amos Comenius, and for good reason. Comenius’s pedagogical system—whose significance and value there is no need to demonstrate—contains a specific anthropological dimension which has disappeared in modern pedagogical discourse, yet which, I believe, is indispensable for the pedagogical formation of authentic humanity. It is as follows: Comenius believed that humans are ontologically, that is, in their very being, good, noble, valuable, endowed with innate dignity. Morally, however, we are twisted, fallen into evil. This is the source of the fundamental ambivalence of human nature. In Comenius’s words, humans are by nature the noblest of all creatures, however in their actions they are often like an animal, as if they weren’t even human. Or said another way, our humanity is fine, our humaneness, however, is depraved, as is evident by all the inhumane things a person is capable of doing. From now on I will refer to this concept of Comenius as anthropological realism.²⁷ This specific configuration of the ontological and moral aspect of human nature may seem trivial, but we will see that for the question of pedagogical humanization it is crucial.

The educational importance of this concept of anthropology is well demonstrated if we consider the competitive alternatives: What would humanization look like if it was based on the assumption that a person has no ontological value? Or has neither ontological nor moral value (anthropological pessimism)? Or the opposite, what would it look like if it was based on the assumption that people are wholly good—both ontologically and morally (anthropological romanticism)? In the history of anthropological discourse these alternatives have appeared regularly, and in various mutations still circulate—see Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and others.²⁸ I intend to demonstrate that the uniqueness of Comenius’s project for the pedagogical remedy of human affairs is situated, among other things, in his specific anthropology containing the ontological and moral differentiation of human nature. It is the primary objective of this work. I also want to present the argument that this very concept of anthropology is one of the most inspiring initiatives for solving the problem of pedagogical humanization.²⁹

I will, however, approach Comenius’s work critically, because Comenius’s anthropology presents a specific exegetical problem. To the question of how Comenius understood human beings, or what his anthropology was, it is not possible to give a simple answer because we find more than one anthropology in his work. We will see that the development of Comenius’s philosophy was markedly dynamic. His conceptions were changed by both external and internal situations—sometimes partially,