TITLE:
Book Review on Comenius’s School of Infancy
AUTHORS:
Zhaohao Nian
KEYWORDS:
Boom Review, Comenius, Preschool, Education
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.8 No.6,
June
10,
2021
ABSTRACT: The author of the book School of Infancy is John Amos Comenius, a distinguished Czech educator. As for the purpose of the book, Comenius points out in his another book The Great Didactic: “As educators, we should write a handbook for parents and put their responsibilities in white and black, and put them in front of them. This handbook should give a brief description of the various subjects that children should learn, and should point out the most appropriate time to teach each subject, and instill the best words and gestures that they should use. The name of this book is the School of Infancy”. In the book The School of Infancy, Comenius discusses the value of preschool education, the responsibilities of parents, and the transition from preschool to school education, which is not the usual sense of school, but it means to educate by the mother’s side. The book also has a special illustrative subtitle: on the careful education of children under 6 years old. This shows that this is a monograph on children’s family education. There are ten chapters in the book. Comenius emphasizes the nature of children in the first four chapters, and chapter five to nine focus on children’s physical education, intellectual education, and moral education. The following chapters also discuss how parents should help their children prepare for school. In this book, Comenius proposes that through encyclopedia-like enlightenment education for children, the most preliminary foundation of various aspects of knowledge can be laid for children.