Expanding Narration’s History with Comenius: Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 2 – The Great Didactic

If you’ve been following Educational Renaissance for some time, you might remember my history of narration series from last year. During the third article of the series I had a short section on narration in John Amos Comenius’ work, relying primarily on Karen Glass’s brief quotations in Know and Tell. At the time I was only beginning to read Comenius’ The Great Didactic in full, and I had not yet procured his Analytical Didactic. Now I have read and digested both, coming away with more narration gems to add to the history. Even then I wrote that “more remains to be said on Comenius and narration,” and now I am excited to expand that section on Comenius into an article or two of its own.

Returning to this topic is timely for me because the week before last I trained both my own faculty at Coram Deo Academy, and the faculty of The Covenant School of Dallas (what a privilege!) using this stunning passage on narration from Comenius’ The Great Didactic. So the practical application of it in our modern classical schools is fresh on my mind.

The great Czech educational reformer, philosopher, pastor and theologian, John Amos Comenius, sometimes called the father of modern education, represents the next stage after Erasmus in the history of narration’s rebirth during the Renaissance and Reformation era. The opening statement of his stunning work on teaching methods, Didactica Magna or The Great Didactic, promises much in terms that are familiar to advocates of narration:

“Let the main object of this, our Didactic, be as follows : To seek and to find a method of instruction, by which teachers may teach less, but learners may learn more; by which schools may be the scene of less noise, aversion, and useless labour, but of more leisure, enjoyment, and solid progress; and through which the Christian community may have less darkness, perplexity, and dissension, but on the other hand more light, orderliness, peace, and rest.”

John Amos Comenius, preface to The Great Didactic

As I have noted before, activities like narration that turn students into active learners are more likely to produce flow, thereby attaining for the student both “enjoyment” and “solid progress”.

Charlotte Mason found in narration an ideal “method” for realizing Comenius’ golden key of education: teachers teaching less and learners learning more. Whether consciously or unconsciously, she likely drew some of the details of the practice itself from him (in addition to other sources like John Locke).

As well, Comenius’ profoundly irenic Christian vision of how Christian education might contribute to healing the immediate wounds of Christendom’s strife and divisions (like the Thirty Years War) accords well with Mason’s educational leadership and the classical Christian education movement’s high hopes for renewal in the church. Education is not just for the training of individual Christians, but for the benefits experienced in families, churches and communities.

Rivulets Flowing Out

Comenius’ use of narration has a number of unique features and a flexibility and philosophical completeness that is hard to find in other educational thinkers. Therefore, it is likely to him that we owe the fundamental shift from narration as a progymnasmata or preliminary training exercise for rhetoric to a central learning method or strategy. He states the principle in global terms, while at the same time practically endorsing modern techniques like partner-narration:

Whatever has been learned should be communicated by one pupil to the other, that no knowledge may remain unused. For in this sense only can we understand the saying, ‘Thy knowledge is of no avail if none other know that thou knowest.’ No source of knowledge, therefore, should be opened, unless rivulets flow from it.”

John Amos Comenius, The Great Didactic, “Thoroughness in Teaching and Learning”, 155

This entire section on thoroughness in teaching and learning is essentially a tribute to narration, or more particularly the classical principal identified by Chris Perrin of Classical Academic Press through the Latin phrase docendo discimus (“By teaching we learn”) in his course Introduction to Classical Education. (I wonder where Perrin himself derived this Latin phrase from…. Was it from Comenius or an earlier thinker in the tradition? Or is it a phrase he himself quipped to represent a traditional conception?) Similarly, I have often referred to the classical principle of self-education (see my SCL presentation from 2020), citing Charlotte Mason’s quip that there is no education but self-education and Dorothy Sayers’s remarks about students learning how to learn in “The Lost Tools of Learning”.

The imagery of a fount of knowledge, a spring, being opened up and rivulets naturally flowing out to surrounding streams is evocative. Comenius is claiming that knowledge must be shared; it is a communal inheritance passing from one mind to another. For him it is as if there were a sacred commandment inscribed into the nature of the cosmos that knowledge is no mere personal possession, but a social trust.

On its own this claim holds the teacher to a high standard with regard narration and narration-like activities. Not a single source of knowledge opened (!), Comenius says, without students at least telling one another what they have learned. And yet how much “material” is “covered” by the average teacher without an opportunity for the student to become the teacher, in this splendidly ironic transformation that Comenius envisions as part and parcel of learning.

Collection, Digestion and Distribution

Comenius solidly anticipates the modern research that supports retrieval practice, spaced practice and mixed practice, but he does so through his prevailing method throughout The Great Didactic of drawing analogical wisdom from the created order:

From this it follows that education cannot attain to thoroughness without frequent and suitable repetitions of and exercises on the subjects taught. We may learn the most suitable mode of procedure by observing the natural movements that underlie the processes of nutrition in living bodies, namely those of collection, digestion, and distribution. For in the case of an animal (and in that of a plant as well) each member seeks for digestion food which may both nurture that member (since this retains and assimilates part of the digested food) and be shared with the other members, that the well-being of the whole organism may be preserved (for each member serves the other). In the same way that teacher will greatly increase the value of his instruction who 

(i.) Seeks out and obtains intellectual food for himself.

(ii.) Assimilates and digests what he has found.

(iii.) Distributes what he has digested, and shares it with others. (156)

If we pair Comenius’ call for “frequent and suitable repetitions” of the subject matter with The Great Didactic’s opening principle of teachers teaching less and learners learning more, then it becomes clear that by repetitions he is not envisioning a simply review process where the teacher goes over the facts again before a test. Instead, it is the students who will be repeating the content back, and as becomes clear later in the passage, not just in summary, but in full detail.

At first, the analogy from nature about the collection, digestion and distribution of “intellectual food” may seem to have awkwardly shifted topics. Now we are talking about the teacher grazing for knowledge himself? But in the following paragraphs Comenius will zero in on that third part, distribution, to detail his full method of narration. In the meantime, we can note that Charlotte Mason’s favorite metaphor about the mind feeding on living ideas is not, in fact, of her own coinage. For Comenius too there is a process of assimilation of knowledge that involves narration. But he stresses it as a communal endeavor, with teachers serving as the honeybees gathering sweet pollen for the production of honey and distribution to the younger members. Charlotte Mason, by contrast, is more inclined to minimize the collection and digestion process of the teacher (though she did write a stirring appeal to her ‘bairns’ encouraging them to foster their own intellectual life through avid reading), in keeping with her own focus upon the “living books” curriculum that she herself carefully selected.

But this contrast between Mason and Comenius could be overplayed, given Comenius’ ironic twist of the student becoming the teacher. So while teachers themselves should engage in the collection, digestion and distribution of knowledge, Comenius immediately shifts this application to the student-become-teacher through recourse to a well-known Latin couplet:

44. These three elements are to be found in the well-known Latin couplet:–

To ask many questions, to retain the answers, and to teach what one retains to others;

These three enable the pupil to surpass his master.

Questioning takes place when a pupil interrogates his teachers, his companions, or his books about some subject that he does not understand. Retention follows when the information that has been obtained is committed to memory or is written down for greater security (since few are so fortunate as to possess the power of retaining everything in their minds). Teaching takes place when knowledge that has been acquired is communicated to fellow-pupils or other companions.

With the two first of these principles the schools are quite familiar, with the third but little; its introduction, however, is in the highest degree desirable. The saying, ‘He who teaches others, teaches himself,’ is very true, not only because constant repetition impresses a fact indelibly on the mind, but because the process of teaching in itself gives a deeper insight into the subject taught. Thus it was that the gifted Joachim Fortius used to say that, if he had heard or read anything once, it slipped out of his memory within a month; but that if he taught it to others it became as much a part of himself as his fingers, and that he did not believe that anything short of death could deprive him of it…. (157)

Comenius’ main point is the incredible power of teaching others as a learning tool. Where Comenius has recourse to the anecdote of Joachim Fortius for support, modern research can confirm through studies the value of retrieval practice combined with the elaboration necessary for the act of teaching. This effortful combination of research-informed strategies essentially makes for the most durable and flexible learning, such that the new knowledge has become part of oneself.

Repeated Narrations of the Teacher’s Explanations with Corrections

This brings us to Comenius’ specific recommendations for narration, which are unmistakably surprising to those who are only familiar with Charlotte Mason’s advice. Note as we go the focus on the teacher’s lecture or explanation (just as with Erasmus), but also the repetitions and corrections. (We can observe as well that Comenius does not have our modern scruples about politically correct descriptions of students who struggle….)

This would certainly be of use to many and could easily be put into practice if the teacher of each class would introduce this excellent system to his pupils. It might be done in the following way. In each lesson, after the teacher has briefly gone through the work that has been prepared, and has explained the meanings of the words, one of the pupils should be allowed to rise from his place and repeat what has just been said in the same order (just as if he were the teacher of the rest), to give his explanations in the same words, and to employ the same examples, and if he make a mistake he should be corrected. Then another can be called up and made go through the same performance while the rest listen. After him a third, a fourth, and as many as are necessary, until it is evident that all have understood the lesson and are in a position to explain it. In carrying this out great care should be taken to call up the clever boys first, in order that, after their example, stupid ones may find it easier to follow. (158)

The teacher’s explanation here becomes the rich or living text, complete with examples in a particular order. The students are transformed into teachers, endeavoring to reproduce as exactly as they can the full substance of the teacher’s explanation. To make clear that he intends this as a global practice or central learning strategy, Comenius deliberately begins his description of the method with the phrase “in each lesson”. Instead of avoiding corrections during the narration, as Mason recommended, Comenius has the teacher actively correcting and expecting other students to get all the details right in subsequent narrations. While this is clearly not a word-perfect memorization, it edges in that direction and away from Mason’s insistence on a single reading and letting the students take what they do but trusting the process over time.

Interestingly, in commending the “exercises” and “repetitions” of narration, Comenius hits upon a few of the same rationales that Mason would later borrow to commend her practice of narration (e.g., the habit of attention; supporting “dull” students, to use Mason’s term; the love of learning; and self-possession in public speaking):

46. Exercises of this kind will have a fivefold use.

(i.) The teacher is certain to have attentive pupils. For since the scholars may, at any time, be called up and asked to repeat what the teacher has said, each of them will be afraid of breaking down and appearing ridiculous before the others, and will therefore attend carefully and allow nothing to escape them. In addition to this, the habit of brisk attention, which becomes second nature if practised for several years, will fit the scholar to acquit himself well in active life.

(ii.) The teacher will be able to know with certainty if his pupils have thoroughly grasped everything that he has taught them. If he finds that they have not, he will consult his own interest as well as that of his pupils by repeating his explanation and making it clearer.

(iii.) If the same thing be frequently repeated, the dullest intelligences will grasp it at last, and will thus be able to keep pace with the others; while the brighter ones will be pleased at obtaining such a thorough grip of the subject.

(iv.) By means of such constant repetition the scholars will gain a better acquaintance with the subject than they could possibly obtain by private study, even with the greatest intelligence, and will find that, if they just read the lesson over in the morning and then again in the evening, it will remain in their memories easily and pleasantly. When, by this method of repetition, the pupil has, as it were, been admitted to the office of teacher, he will attain a peculiar keenness of disposition and love of learning; he will also acquire the habit of remaining self-possessed while explaining anything before a number of people, and this will be of the greatest use to him throughout life.” (158)

Comenius is happy to use social pressure as a motivator to improve students’ learning, especially since he has abandoned the widely accepted corporal punishment of his day. Students’ natural desire not to appear “ridiculous” before their peers is arguably a more powerful and immediate spur to the effort of learning than an abstract symbol system like a grade. And while not wanting to seem foolish may not be the highest of ideals it does go some way toward creating a culture of learning among human beings as socially embedded and embodied creatures.

It is clarifying to hear Comenius indicate “several years” as the appropriate timeline for training students in this habit of “brisk attention” that will fit them for an “active life”. Likewise, the help afforded the teacher through opportunities to clarify and re-explain accords well with the real challenges of communicating effectively to students. Comenius gives every indication of having practiced what he is preaching, discerning the ins and outs of teaching and learning through philosophical reflection and practical experience.

As with Erasmus, it may be that the teacher is here supplementing or acting as the mediator between the students and the curriculum books. We might imagine a generally older set of students than Mason envisions, but he is undeniably more focused on the teacher as the initial distributor of knowledge. The repetitions seem designed to help students understand hard truths or difficult and complex ideas that are not easily grasped on a first hearing. Corrections, then, might be justified as a necessary safeguard to prevent students from confusing one another with incorrect explanations. We might ponder as well whether Mason’s advice not to “tease [young students] with corrections” focused more upon style and grammar, i.e. not attacking the endless string of ‘and’s that children often start out with. Perhaps she would have sympathized with corrections on matters of fact, when other students might become confused by another student’s misleading explanation.

As stated, Comenius’ variant on narration embodies the golden key of his Great Didactic by turning the student into the teacher after a teacher’s “demonstration” or “exposition”. It thus follows Erasmus in focusing on a spoken lecture or explanation by the teacher rather than a text. The new development present in Comenius is to emphasize the ironic transformation of student into teacher. In a future article we will look at material from Comenius’ Analytical Didactic to see how he developed his recommendations for narration later in life.

“Why the History of Narration Matters” series:

Part 1: Charlotte Mason’s Discovery?

Part 2: Classical Roots

Part 3: Narration’s Rebirth

Part 4: Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration in Historical Perspective