![]() ![]() ![]() Every where and no where.” Even if the Orbis is devoted to showing the world visually, its discussion of God is abstract and opaque. In his personality, Three.” They learn that He is “A Light inaccessible and yet all in all. Chapter 2 presents children with a crash course in theological metaphysics, where they learn that God is “in his Essence Spiritual, and One. Instead, the Orbis abruptly shifts to the philosophical and the invisible, perhaps hoping that a firm grasp of ducks and mice is sufficient for understanding the divine. The teacher explains that first the student must learn “the plain sounds…which living creatures know how to make, and thy tongue knoweth how to imitate.” After mastering these noises, the student and teacher “will go into the World, and we will view all things.”īut after learning how to quack and how to squeak, the children do not “go into the World,” and they do not actually view anything either. This introduction to animal noises is familiar territory for modern educational toys, as any trip to Toys R’ Us confirms. These two pages are a trove of Latin onomatopoetic verbs and peculiar renderings of animal sounds: cats cry out “nau nau” instead of “meow meow,” and we learn that “the Duck quacketh” (anas tetrinnit), “the Hare squeaketh” (lapus vagit), and “the Crow crieth” (cornix cornicatur). The first chapter of the Orbis looks to the third of these goals in what reads like an early version of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” Children learn how “to speak out rightly” by imitating animal noises. The student asks, “What doth this mean, to be wise?” His teacher answers, “To understand rightly, to do rightly, and to speak out rightly all that are necessary.” When we turn to the first page of the Orbis, we find an opening sentence that would seem peculiar in today’s children’s books: “Come, boy, learn to be wise.” We see above the text a teacher and student in dialog, the former holding up his finger and sporting a cane and large hat, the latter listening in an emotional state somewhere between awe and anxiety. In his Didactica Magna, for example, he advocates for equal educational opportunities for all: boys and girls, rich and poor, urban and rural.ĭespite his progressive aims and lasting educational influence, Comenius does not come off as a thoroughly modern schoolmaster. Even if he is less celebrated today by name, his innovative ideas about education are still influential. His portrait was painted by Rembrandt, and according to an 1887 edition of the Orbis, Comenius was even “once solicited to become President of Harvard College” (although he never came to Harvard, one can still find his name engraved on the western frieze of Teachers College at Columbia University). At one point, it was the most used textbook in Europe for elementary education, and according to one account, it was translated into “most European and some of the Oriental languages.” Its author John Comenius, a Czech by birth, was also well-known throughout Europe and worked in several countries as a school reformer. Unlike treatises on education and grammatical handbooks, it is aimed directly at the young and attempts to engage on their level. This approach centered on the visual was a breakthrough in education for the young, as was the decision to teach the vernacular in addition to Latin. John Comenius’ Orbis Sensualium Pictus (or The World of Things Obvious to the Senses Drawn in Pictures) is, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “the first children’s picture book.” Originally published in 1658 in Latin and German, the Orbis-with its 150 pictures showing everyday activities like brewing beer, tending gardens, and slaughtering animals-is immediately familiar as an ancestor of today’s children’s literature. ![]()
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