What assumptions does Comenius make in the Orbis? How did his Orbis show what he found valuable for children to learn about? In particular, we will ask ourselves what things are visiblein Comenius’s ‘universal’ children’s encyclopedia and what things are invisible. This collection asks us to reflect on Comenius’s Orbis-its aims and supposedly universal scope-and engage with both its world ( orbis) and our world. Ioannes Amos Comenius, Orbis Sensualium Pictus, “Mundus/The World” detail (1685) In the Orbis, young people learned both their native language and Latin on a nature method, one-to-one association between word and image, rather than through rote memorization of charts and paradigms and constant access to a dictionary. And it foresaw Comenius’s own attempt to create a new universal language-his ‘ panglottia’-as a means to achieving lasting peace among European countries. This multilingual approach also served as a forward-thinking language pedagogy (as anticipated in Comenius’s earlier Ianua linguarum reserata, ‘The Gate of Languages Unlocked’). It was first published in a bilingual Latin-German edition, then quickly translated into numerous European languages in following years. The book was explicitly international in its aspirations. He thought that students’ schooling in his time, which relied on rote memorization and rarely engaged children’s senses, made the “work of teaching and learning goeth heavily onward, and affordeth little benefit.” Large woodblock illustrations graced every page, as Comenius aimed for a book that satisfied children’s natural desire for illustration and example. In other words, Comenius thought he could give young people a comprehensive introduction to the world over the course of just a few hundred pages. Ioannes Amos Comenius, Orbis Sensualium Pictus, title page (1685) Jean Piaget, the immensely influential 20 th century Swiss developmental psychologist, said that Comenius was the first to conceive a “full-scale science of education” in the history of European education. The highest UNESCO medal, a large public university in Bratislava, Slovakia, and even an asteroid bear his name. He was an early advocate of formal universal education for all young people, believing that every child could learn and understand with good teaching and access to educational resources. In addition, Cotton Mather, a prominent Puritan clergyperson and prolific writer (notoriously involved in the Salem Witch Trials with his father, Increase Mather) reports in his M agnalia Christi Americana(1702) that Comenius was offered the presidency of a colonial Harvard College in 1654 (which he turned down). He is also one of the most famous thinkers on education in history, immensely influential after his death and during in his lifetime, when he was courted by several European governments to reform their developing educational systems. Orphaned at twelve, Comenius did not attend school until the age of sixteen, was a religious refugee for most of his life and, owing to the sectarian catastrophes of the Thirty Years’ War, his house and possessions were publicly burned on multiple occasions. Jan Amos Komenský (1592-1670 CE), better known by his Latinized name, Ioannes Amos Comenius, was born in the Margraviate of Moravia, one of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown of the Holy Roman Empire in modern-day Czech Republic. In addition, the author thanks Kara Johnson and Sophia Croll of The Newberry Library for their expertise, assistance, and encouragement at every stage. The author would like to acknowledge the kind assistance of Vladimír Urbánek and Tomáš Havelka of the Department of Comenius Studies, Czech Academy of Sciences, who provided helpful bibliographies, suggestions for further research, and access to contemporary Comenius scholarship in the early writing stages of this Digital Collection.
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