Comenius' teaching principles are mainly embodied in his educational book On Great Teaching from chapter 16 to chapter 19. The important logical thinking process and characteristics of his educational principles are as follows: firstly, clearly point out the theory of natural laws, and then use the growth laws of natural objects such as birds and trees in nature to assist in the discussion; Then he used examples of activities such as architecture and painting in his life to demonstrate, which he called "imitation" here; Finally, he pointed out and criticized the school's practice of violating the educational laws at that time, and corrected it accordingly. Here, we can learn some argumentation experience when writing articles. On the one hand, we should pay attention to the regularity of nature or society, on the other hand, we should learn to demonstrate our views with typical examples in social practice to enhance persuasiveness.
In Chapter 16-Chapter 19 of Great Teaching Theory, Comenius himself mentioned the principles of convenience, thoroughness, conciseness and rapidity. In order to facilitate understanding, we can combine the contents and principles mentioned in this part with the reality of modern education, select, summarize and summarize them for reference.
First of all, the principle that education conforms to nature is the fundamental guiding principle of Comenius' educational thought, which runs through his educational theory system. The nature referred to in Comenius' educational theory includes external nature and human nature, which mainly refers to external nature, that is, the regularity outside human beings. Therefore, its principle of natural adaptability ignores the logic that everything has its own regularity, exaggerates the role of external nature and ignores people's subjective initiative, which is one-sided in a sense. Moreover, due to the limitation of the times, he failed to really find the universal law of the development of nature, society and human beings. There are mechanical and far-fetched things in his educational discourse, but his thought that education should attach importance to the role of nature is worthy of recognition.
Under the guidance of this principle, Comenius advocates education according to human nature and children's age characteristics, advocates the principle of ability, stimulates students' desire for knowledge, and shows the psychological trend of education. Comenius thinks: "Teachers are the servants of nature, not the masters of nature; His mission is to cultivate, not to change, so if they find that a subject is contrary to the nature of students, they should never force him to study; Because most of what is missing in one aspect will be made up by another. " Therefore, he advocates that teachers should take appropriate measures according to the natural characteristics of students' age and acceptance ability, so that students' intelligence will not be forced to do things that are not naturally inclined. Comenius put it this way: "What will happen if we take a pouting bottle (because we can compare it to a child's intelligence) and pour a lot of water into the bottle violently to stop it from dripping?" There is no doubt that most of the water will flow out of the bottle, and finally the water in the bottle will be less than the water it slowly pours in. ""If a person has no appetite but is forced to eat food, the result can only be illness and vomiting, or at least indigestion and unhappiness. Aeschylus said, "Anyone who is eager to learn will be a learned person." Quintilian said, "Knowledge can only be acquired through the willingness to seek knowledge, which cannot be forced." "Under this principle, teaching must be healthy and enjoyable. So what exactly should the teacher do? Comenius believes that teachers should pay attention to treating students with a gentle, persuasive rather than rude attitude in the teaching process; Teachers should pay attention to praise and praise students frequently, and stimulate students' learning enthusiasm by rewarding them; In addition, he also believes: "If the subjects taught are in line with the age of the students, it will be attractive to young people themselves if they are clearly explained; "This is especially true if the explanation can be adjusted in a humorous, at least less serious tone. It is cruel from the teacher's point of view to let students work hard and lose their temper if they don't succeed. "In this series of teaching methods, we can more clearly realize that teaching is a real art, and those ideas, principles and practices that praise Menius' ability and stimulate students' desire for knowledge are still applicable in today's educational practice. Comenius said: "Some people don't teach students how much they can understand, but teach them as much as they want." In fact, this phenomenon also exists in our education today, and with the development of educational reform, we are increasingly advocating student-oriented education. Therefore, we should be more keenly aware of the law of educational development, so as to make a real breakthrough and development in education.
Comenius believes that "all knowledge begins with sensory perception." Therefore, he advocates the principle of intuition, and thinks intuition is a "golden rule" in teaching. On the one hand, he advocates that teachers should put things in front of students in the teaching process, rather than relying on the works of other writers indirectly. He emphasized the knowledge and experience of exploring world things directly from the things themselves. He mentioned: "Human beings must study things like heaven, earth, oak and beech as much as possible in order to learn to be smart, instead of learning by books;" In other words, they must learn to understand and examine things themselves, not what others observe. If we all acquire knowledge from the source, from the things themselves rather than from other sources, we can follow the footsteps of ancient wise men. " On the other hand, he advocated practical teaching and learned knowledge in direct contact with things and nature. He mentioned: "Young people's study in school is organized, which makes them feel as happy as playing ball all day, and makes school a prelude to real life for the first time. It is extremely useful if the entertainment used to relax students' mood can pay attention to more serious aspects of life and let them be affected when they relax. "For example, give them tools, let them play games, let them play a role and imitate various crafts. Take them to the garden and the countryside. Here, his thought actually embodies the thought of learning and happy education in life, which is similar to Tao Xingzhi's thought that life is education. Similarly, this is also very enlightening to our education today. In our contemporary educational practice, more and more attention is paid to getting students out of school and carrying out a series of practical activities. But Comenius exaggerates the role of objective things and ignores the important role of indirect learning and understanding, which is one-sided in a certain sense.
Comenius also attaches great importance to the practical principle. In many expositions, he mentioned that teaching should only teach useful subjects and eliminate all meaningless content. He said: "Some subjects have changed over time, and when the demands of life are getting higher and higher, they will definitely be forgotten. What's the point of learning them? Our life is short, even if we don't waste time on worthless subjects, we are busy enough. Therefore, schools must be organized in such a way that students can learn nothing but valuable things. There is a lot of space, and a dictionary containing every new word in a language is one of these obstacles. Because most new words are never used, why force all children to learn them, thus increasing the burden of memory? The school specializes in teaching meaningless and unimportant classes. " Actually, I have a question. What is useful knowledge? Comenius advocated encyclopedic universal education. Does this contradict his point of view? The utility of education in China is obvious now. Under the background of exam-oriented education, it is generally believed that practical knowledge is helpful to the exam. In basic education, Chinese, physics and chemistry are considered as practical knowledge, while history and politics are not. The author thinks that, on the one hand, China's basic education does exist the phenomenon that Comenius said that the space is heavy and the classes taught in schools are meaningless. Therefore, when dealing with this problem, we should attach importance to the practical principle; On the other hand, based on our psychology that exam-oriented education in China today regards exams as a practical standard to measure knowledge, we should not overemphasize the practical principle, because it may even make the utility of education more obvious. The author believes that practicality and utility are actually neutral words, which will have positive effects if used well. On the other hand, if it is not used well, it will deviate from the correct direction of education. Our first task is to clarify the goal of talent training and change the stubborn system of exam-oriented education. The real realization of education is to teach students moral personality and learning ability, not to instill knowledge.
In addition, Comenius put forward the principle of systematic and gradual education. Systematic, mainly reflected in: first, he emphasized the internal relationship between subject knowledge; Second, the organization of teaching materials should let students see the connection between knowledge; Third, the curriculum should follow a certain order, and what you learn in front will definitely lay the foundation for what you learn later. The principle of gradual progress is mainly embodied in: first, when a person is doing something, he should do it one by one in order, from easy to difficult; Second, the steps should be gradual. Not only gradually, but also gradually. He said: "every language, science or art must first teach its simplest principles, so that students can have an idea of it." The second step is to put rules and examples in front of him to further develop his knowledge. Then he can study that subject systematically. " Comenius's view that "students only learn one thing in a certain period of time, absolutely obey the teaching time and subject arrangement, and there must be no omission or inversion" and "students only learn one thing in a certain period of time" have the defects of mechanization and simplification. However, the core principle of systematization and gradual progress advocated by it conforms to the law of educational development and is worth learning and practicing by any educator.
Based on the principle of systematization and gradual progress, Comenius advocates the principle of consolidating and understanding teaching. He believes that if teachers don't understand teaching, "they make students exhausted, just like a person wants to cut a piece of a tree, not with a knife, but with a stick or a wooden hammer." They will not explain these subjects thoroughly to the children they teach, but they will endlessly ask them to remember them. "This teaching is not good. He believes that teachers' teaching should be an orderly process. Children should use their senses first, then remember, then understand and finally judge. And in the teaching process, we should pay attention to the fact that everything taught to students should have sufficient reasons to avoid being easily questioned or forgotten. When teaching students, it is necessary to teach them to apply their knowledge to practice, just like teaching languages in spoken language, and it is not just a matter of brains. He pointed out that students should constantly review and practice to consolidate their study, which is a process of asking questions, writing them down and then teaching others. Here, he attaches great importance to the "teaching" of students. He believes: "Because not only reviewing from time to time can indelibly imprint a fact on your mind, but" teaching "itself can also produce a deeper understanding of the subjects taught. "This has great enlightenment for our teachers' teaching and students' learning. We have always opposed cramming and rote learning methods. In the new era, we are also actively looking for diversified teaching methods such as situational teaching to improve the efficiency of classroom teaching and promote the development of practical teaching.
The Great Teaching Theory systematically embodies Comenius' educational thought and marks the emergence of pedagogy as an independent discipline. However, there are some defects and deficiencies in the generalization and division of some teaching principles, such as the content of each principle is too complicated, the content is overlapping and repetitive, and some different contents are also included in the same principle. Therefore, we should combine China's times and reality, critically study and absorb it, so as to grasp the law of educational development and solve practical educational problems.