Tag Archives: home schooling

Here’s one more take on Comenius, posted as a newsletter on ct.com:

Christian History Corner: A Protestant Bishop Speaks Out on the Stakes of Public Education
Why concerned parents should read the 17th-century Moravian educational reformer Jan Amos Comenius.
By Chris Armstrong | posted 08/30/2002

This summer, dissatisfaction over America’s education system has been in the news. James Dobson has repeated his public appeal to parents to pull their kids out of public school, and the idea of vouchers has continued to run its political and legislative gauntlets. No one has expressed the stakes involved in schooling our kids more vividly than Jan Amos Comenius, a 17th-century Protestant bishop and the man universally recognized as the “Father of Modern Education.”

Comenius, a member of the persecuted Unity of the Brethren—precursor of the Moravian church—saw the schools of his day as “slaughterhouses of the mind,” places made dull by rote memorization and frightening by draconian discipline.

But he didn’t just talk. He did something. Even as he and his Protestant sect ran for their lives—exiled from their homeland as a result of the Thirty Years War—he launched his lifelong efforts at educational reform. Continue reading →