What does it mean to love God? How are we to love Him? What are we to love about Him? What parts of ourselves are we to employ in this endeavor? 

It has become popular in church circles today to emphasize loving God through the heart, the seat of our desires, affections, and emotions. Scholars such as James K.A. Smith promote recalibrating these desires through implementing intentionally formative habits, liturgies, and rituals. This whole-body approach to worship, Smith teaches, will form over time our desires to long for God’s kingdom above all else.

Smith is writing in response to what he believes has become a key error in the western church today: an overemphasis on human rationality. Smith does not deny that the human capacity to think, remember, and understand is essential to being human. But, Smith contends, it is not sufficient. Therefore, a full-orbed approach to discipleship and education will include the intentional formation of the heart, specifically through encountering beauty in communities through art, music, poetry, nature, and feasts.

In general, I agree with Smith and have interacted closely with his writing, such as here. A human is more than a brain on a stick. At the same time, it is important for Christians today to not swing to the other side of the pendulum and ignore human rationality altogether. In 1994, Mark Noll, who taught at Wheaton College before Notre Dame, famously wrote The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Spoiler alert: The scandal Noll refers to essentially is that, at the time of the publication of the book, there was not much of an evangelical mind. Conservative, Bible-believing Christians too often settled for tweet-length quips (before Twitter), proof texting, and feel-good theology as an alternative to quality research. 

Similarly, in 2018, Jonathan Haidt, an agnostic social psychologist at New York University, wrote The Coddling of the American Mind to raise the alarm that many Americans today have exchanged a rigorous pursuit of truth for group think and emotional reasoning. As a result, we have sidelined the mind from doing the intellectual work God intended it to, specifically the task of thinking through complex topics with lucidity and care.

In this second article in my ongoing series on the life of the mind, I want to dig deeper into Jesus’ command in the gospels to love God with the mind, alongside heart, soul, and strength. According to Jesus, one’s intellectual life is not spiritually neutral. What we think about, how we think, and our approach to learning itself all contain import for the way we know and love God. A key aspect of Christian discipleship, therefore, becomes cultivating the life of the mind for a vibrant love of God to grow. Let us now explore how this might be.

Jesus‘ Pursuit of Wisdom From the Past

One distinctive characteristic of the Christian classical education renewal movement is an enthusiasm for gleaning wisdom from the past. This knowledge of ancient wisdom provides students with a broader context for the history of ideas and helps them better discern truth from falsehood in their own day. 

To illustrate this insight, C.S. Lewis uses the metaphor of a clock. He writes, “If you join at eleven o’clock a conversation which began at eight you will often not see the real bearing of what is said…Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeking certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period” (“Introduction” to On the Incarnation, p. 4). 

When we read the teachings of Jesus, we find that our Lord shared this deep appreciation for wisdom from the past. As a faithful Jew, Jesus was a faithful follower of the Old Testament Law, which he believed was wisdom revealed by God himself. In Luke 10:25-28, a legal expert approaches Jesus with the goal to put this knowledge of the Law to the test. With a striking blend of authority and compassion, Jesus showcases his commitment to the Law while counter-testing the legal expert with his own question.

The Shema with Two Additions

The legal expert’s test question is about how to inherit eternal life, the answer of which both he and Jesus agree is found in the Law. Quoting the Pentateuch, the expert recites to Jesus, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” (Deut. 6:5). Without pause, he continues “and [love] your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18).

It is important to note that the Deuteronomy passage is one of the most well-known in Jewish history and culture. It begins with the injunction, “Hear, O Israel,” which becomes the inspiration for the passage’s name, Shema (the word for “hear” in Hebrew is “Shema”). For faithful Jews, the Shema is handwritten on a small parchment and placed at shoulder height on the doorposts of observant Jewish homes (see Joel B. Green’s The Gospel of Luke of the New International Commentary series for further background on this passage). This practice is in accordance with Moses’ command in the passage to teach the words of the Law to Hebrew tradition throughout all facets of everyday life.

Interestingly, in Jesus’ conversation with the legal expert, there are two notable additions to the Shema. One is the neighbor-love command. The other is the inclusion of the mind to the list of ways humans are commanded to love God. (In the Shema, Moses lists heart, soul, and might, but not mind because the heart in Hebrew anthropology includes one’s rationality.) While both additions are worth exploring, in this article, I will focus only on the second, the addition of the mind as a pathway for loving God.

Love’s Four-Fold Structure

In his new book The Life We’re Looking For (Penguin Random House, 2022), author Andy Crouch references the Shema to offer a biblically-informed summary of what being fully human involves: “Every human person is a heart-soul-mind-strength complex designed for love” (33). 

Crouch distills these four categories as follows:

• Heart: the seat of desire and emotion
• Soul: the depth of self that is distinctive to each person

• Mind: the capacity and inclination to better understand our experience of God and this world

• Strength: the ability to work and play with all our being 

Together, this four-fold structure of what it means to be human finds its underlying goal to love, first and foremost, God, and also our neighbor. Crouch writes, “Most of all, we are designed for love–primed before we were born to seek out others, wired neurologically to respond with empathy and recognition, coming most alive when we are in relationships of mutual dependence and trust. Love calls out the best in us–it awakens our hearts, it stirs up the depths of our souls, it focuses our minds, it arouses our bodies to action and passion (35). 

A Loving Mind

The question, then, is how do we love God with our minds? What does a loving mind look? How do we hold together the deep affections of the heart with the activities of the mind? I will continue this inquiry in my next article, but for now, I will leave readers with three potential categories for how we might answer the question.

What we think about

Paul writes in Philippians 4:8 that Christians are to think about “…whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise.” It seems to me that one way we love God is by filtering the attention and content of our minds on what is good, true, and beautiful, all of which comes from God Himself.

How we think

While the mind is often connoted with cold rationality, I want to suggest that there is an artistry to mental activity that can be warm, elegant, and connective. When humans learn to think wisely according to the broader vision of wisdom as described in the Book of Proverbs, they flourish in a way that aligns with how God created the world. Proverbs 8 provides clues, specifically, for how the pursuit of wisdom connects to loving God with our minds.

Our approach to learning

In modern society, learning has been stripped of its relational qualities in service of utilitarian ends. Knowledge is power, or at least, the avenue for getting into college. But what if the pursuit of knowledge is meant to be primarily a relational enterprise? We form relationships with whom and that which we know. We can love God with our minds when we seek knowledge about Him that our love for Him may abound.

Join the Conversation

These are preliminary ideas that I will pick up in my next article. For now, I would be curious to hear what you think. How can we love God with our minds? Please comment below and join me in this exploration.

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In today’s blog, I will make a different argument in support of classical education. Rather than arguing for its practical benefits, I will make the case for something even more important: it is an education in truth. Why send your children to a classical school? Because they will be taught to seek and contemplate what is objectively true. They will gain knowledge of the real world, whether it is practical or not, because one of the surest antidotes to the cacophony of confusion today is to realign ourselves with something as old as the universe itself: the Truth.

A Culture of Dissent

Our dissenting culture is surprised, at best, and angered, at worst, by this talk of objective truth. Skeptics retort, “Given everything we know about all the different religions and cultures in the world, how can you be so arrogant to believe that any one religion or morality is true and not merely useful, culturally constructed fiction?”.¹ As Christian educators, it is our responsibility to respond to this question, not with timid capitulation, but with confident assurance.

If the project of modernism was overly optimistic about human reason’s ability to access truth, postmodernism has fallen off the other side of the horse. Objective truth, we are told, if it exists at all, is out of reach and, frankly not worth the hassle. Enough blood has been shed and wars fought over misplaced forms of righteousness crusading for “the truth.”

Amidst this milieu, students growing up in western countries today need to be reassured that truth exists and the pursuit is worth it. Christ himself declared to be the the way, truth, and the life. Our students need an injection of confidence that our Creator God wove into the very fabric of the universe a sense of order and proper function. The pursuit of wisdom, which is ultimately a journey toward truth, can be understood as an education in how the universe works.

[Read more about the craft of teaching and orienting students toward truth by downloading my free eBook.]

Convenience Over Truth

Unfortunately, research is showing that even amongst Christians, we often choose convenience over truth if given the option. In a recent blog post, author Trevin Wax explores this idea as he interacts with current sociological research on Christian parenting. The research, conducted by Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk, suggests that many parents raise their children to be religious, not because it is true, but because it is useful. Their primary objective in religious instruction, whether they would admit it or not, is to help their children thrive socially and morally. The upshot is that parents and children inadvertently conceptualize of religion as yet an additional way to practice self-expression rather than a devout exercise in aligning oneself with what is true.

Trevin Wax offers a helpful insight for the problem of this way of thinking:

Not surprisingly, once religion is no longer connected to transcendent truths about the world and is judged primarily by its helpfulness, other priorities easily eclipse religious devotion. Sports, homework, preserving family peace and unity—these activities often take precedent when they come into conflict with religious adherence, even for religious parents in stricter traditions (28). Religion is a useful tool in the life you design for yourself. It can be discarded or relegated to a lower priority once it no longer fulfills or actually detracts from that purpose.

This is a disturbingly accurate observation of common life, especially in suburbia. When we exchange the truth of religion for its usefulness, it becomes yet another item on the menu for us to select or decline based on our present appetite. In order for our students to view their Christian faith and their education, in general, as something other than a menu item, they need to be taught the importance of truth. Their religion, their politics, their interactions with others, their hobbies–all of it stands in relation with truth.

The farther removed from truth we become, the more susceptible we become to falsehoods. As historian Felip Fernandez-Armesto puts it,

Once truth has been devoured, people swallow falsehoods whole. Without confidence in the concept of truth, listeners are disarmed against lies.

Our students need mentoring and training in order to resist the temptation to view the pursuit of knowledge as a mere exercise in utility. They must learn to the love truth and treasure it for all it is worth.

A Statue in the Name of Pluralism

While our contemporary culture may be unique in its dissent for objective truth, it is not the first culture to contest biblical truth. In a recent blog, I observed that in the Book of Daniel, Daniel and his friends received what we might call a Babylonian classical education. They were fed a rich diet of Babylonian literature, the very best mythological potluck the ancient world could offer at the time. The purpose was to enculturate and indoctrinate the young Jewish nobles into the Babylonian way of thinking and living.² 

After resisting the lure to break with their Jewish dietary customs, a few chapters later, the young Jewish men were put to the test again. The king erected a statue in the city for all inhabitants to worship. Interestingly, the biblical text does not give the name or description of the statue. While in the ancient world, it very well could have been a depiction of the king or of a god, the text does not specify. In fact, it does not have to. The point the author seeks to make for his Jewish audience is that the Babylonian statue stands in opposition to everything monotheistic Jews stood for: the sovereignty of Yahweh, the exclusivity of God’s people, and the truth of Torah. It was a statue in honor of the supremacy of the transnational and transreligious Babylonian empire over and against the kingdoms, cultures, and religions it had conquered.

For the purposes of this blog article, we can say that the statue becomes a test in truth. The edict did not require Daniel and his friends to abandon their faith wholesale or to recant a core doctrine. Rather, the edict was an exercise in pluralism. They were permitted to keep “their truth” so long as they yielded to the truth of Babylon. 2,500 years before the religious pluralism we experience today, we can see that God’s people were already being tested to stand up for the truth.

Three Types of Theories About Truth

With all this talk of truth and its importance, it is paramount to take time to consider what we mean by the term. While I will ultimately endorse what is known as the classical correspondence theory of truth, considering alternative theories will strengthen our own understanding.

Philosophers typically differentiate between three types of theories about truth.³ The first type of theory is metaphysical. These theories hold that truth is a property of a proposition. Propositions are rendered true or false depending on their relationship with facts about the world. Truth, in this sense, is the relationship between a proposition and the way the world works, that is, whether it corresponds with reality. On this account, the proposition “the tree is a maple” is true if and only if the tree is, in fact, a maple. 

There are also epistemic theories about truth. Like metaphysical theories, these theories conceive of truth as a property of a proposition, but the focus differs. Instead of focusing on a proposition’s relationship with reality, epistemic theories focus on a proposition’s warranted assertability. That is, a proposition is true on the basis of one’s reasons, or justification, for believing it to be true. On this account, the proposition “it will rain tomorrow” is true if only true if one has it on good evidence that it will rain tomorrow.

Finally, there are deflationary theories about truth. These theories deny that truth is a property of propositions at all. Instead, these theories hold that assertions about truth are either redundant or mere affirmations of a proposition’s usefulness. Thus, truth is determined by what we want to achieve with the proposition. On this account, the proposition “gravity is an invisible force that pulls objects toward each other” is true insofar as it is useful in say, predicting the behavior of the motion of objects with mass.

Correspondence Theory vs. Relativism

While the length of this blog article prevents me from a full philosophical evaluation of the three theories, I will put forward what I believe to be the theory that is most compatible with a Christian worldview: the correspondence theory of truth. This theory is of the metaphysical type, that is, it offers a definition of truth as a property of a proposition. It holds that a proposition bears the property of truth insofar as it corresponds to reality. To put it differently, a proposition is true if, what it asserts to be the case, is the case.

In contrast to the correspondence theory, a common way to think about truth today is that it is relative. That is, a proposition’s truth value is not assigned by its correspondence with reality, but by whether it is believed for the right reasons. In contemporary culture, “the right reasons” most typically promote the free expression of the individual self. This way of thinking about truth is what allows people to make claims like “my truth,” “your truth,” and “what is true for you may not be true for me.”

Needless to say, a Christian worldview leaves no room for a relative view about truth. Either God created the world or He didn’t. Either Christ is Lord or He isn’t. And less significantly, either I am correct that it is Friday evening or I am not. The litmus test for determining the truth value of a proposition is not how sincerely I believe it, but whether my belief corresponds with the reality God created.

A Compass Pointing Truthward

This past week I led an extended discussion with high school students on the question “Why do bad things happen to good people?”. We contemplated the question for almost two hours, debating various points and embarking on too many tangents we foolishly believed would aid the discussion in some miraculous way.

At one point in the discussion, students began to debate whether the eventual answer would only be a matter of perspective. If secularists believe one thing, and Christians another, can we really say that one perspective is right and the other is wrong? While older generations may grimace at this question, I must report that these are the questions Gen Z young men and women are really dealing with. They are bombarded with messages from popular culture that seek to deconstruct the idea that there is objective truth. They are encouraged to embrace the idea of differing and equally valid perspectives.

While respecting varying perspectives is important for charitable dialogue, we must remember that truth does exist. There is a right answer and presumably many wrong ones. We need to encourage students that truth is out there and that it is knowable. My humble conclusion: students need guidance in thinking about truth and I hope this blog article can serve a first step for educators to begin this important work.

Endnotes

1. Garrett J. DeWeese and J.P. Moreland. Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult: A Beginner’s Guide to Life’s Big Questions. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2005. 9.
2. Tremper Longman III and Raymond B. Dillard. “Daniel” in An Introduction to the Old Testament. 2nd Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006.
3. DeWeese and Moreland. Pp. 58-62.

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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

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