John A Comenius - Collected Quotes

"All explanations should be given in a language that pupils understand." (John A Comenius)

"Education that associates learning with doing will replace the passive education of imparting the learning of others." (John A Comenius)

"[Education carries an impact] as long as the student has a need for it and applies it to some situation of his own. Every new idea should be worked out in application." (John A Comenius)

"It is by working that we learn how to work, just as we learn how to act by acting." (John A Comenius)

"It is impossible to find a remedy until we have discovered the real cause of the disease." (John A Comenius)

"It is never as easy to fulfill requirements in practice as it is to lay them down in theory." (John A Comenius)

"Languages should not be learned from grammar, but from real-life authors." (John A Comenius)

"Learners should first exercise their senses; then the memory; then the comprehension; and finally their judgment." (John A Comenius)

"Let us now speak of teaching, as the shipwright first sketches the blueprint of a ship in outline, laying down the lines of the keel before beginning construction, so we lay down here the blue-print for the voyage through life." (John A Comenius)

"Master the problems of experience, not the piling up of information." (John A Comenius)

"Mathematics should be learned through recreational games, the way the Egyptians do, through amusement and pleasure." (John A Comenius)

"Only in education - never in the life of farmer, sailor, merchant, physician, or laboratory experimenter- does knowledge mean primarily a store of information aloof from doing." (John A Comenius)

"Proceed from what is easy to what is more difficult. The subject matter should be so arranged that the learners first get to know that which lies nearest their mental vision, then that which lies moderately near, then that which is more remote, and lastly, that which is farthest off." (John A Comenius)

"Recognition of the natural course of development always starts with situations involving learning by doing." (John A Comenius)

"Schools are unfortunately better adapted, as John Stuart Mill said, to make disciples rather than inquirers." (John A Comenius)

"Students shall themselves seek, discover, discuss, do, and repeat by their own efforts, examine everything themselves without abdicating to the teacher's authority. The teacher should be left with the task of seeing that the task is completed." (John A Comenius)

"Teach everything through the medium of the senses. Show learners pictures of the things that they must learn. The illustrations should be derived from the events of everyday life. For all knowledge begins with sensuous perception. By appealing to the ear, the eye, and the hands (real world applications) what is learned is thoroughly impressed on the eyes, the ears, the understanding, and the memory." (John A Comenius)

"The desire to know should be excited in learners in every possible manner." (John A Comenius)

"The educational process is its own end, one of continually reorganizing, reconstructing, transforming."(John A Comenius)

"The method of instruction should lighten the drudgery of learning: relieve explanations through a humorous or less serious tone." (John A Comenius)

"The more the teacher 'teaches,' the less the student learns." (John A Comenius)

"The psyche, is characterized by three basic functions: knowing, feeling, will-to-action" (John A Comenius)

"The scientific interest which requires personal observation, reflection, and experimental activity will be added." (John A Comenius)

"The young always do better when the learning process is divided into brief but frequent intervals."(John A Comenius)

"To seek and to find a method of instruction by which teachers may teach less, and learners may learn more." (John A Comenius)

"To set forth a universal method of learning with such certainty that the desired result must of necessity follow. This is my goal." (John A Comenius)

"Unless goals are set, means provided to reach them, and a proper system devised for application of those means, it is easy for something to be omitted and for failure to step in." (John A Comenius)