The Image of a Child, Childishness and Childish Nature as Perceived by Jan Amos Comenius – Theoretical Sources I.

Abstract

The Image of a Child, Childishness and Childish Nature as Perceived by Jan Amos Comenius – Theoretical Sources I. – From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century gradually a new perception of what is a child and what is its role in the realm of human and super-human intentions took place. The move towards a child, as this change is indicated in professional literature, has its roots in the efforts of pedagogical geniuses Jan Amos Comenius and Jean Jacques Rousseau. The author analyses their focus on a child and its specific value on the background of philosophical concepts of both thinkers. The evaluation of childhood and attendance to it is connected to reformatory aspirations of these men. While Comenius strived for rectification of human matters, the lifelong yearning of Rousseau was an attunement to the order of nature. Childhood in the vision filed of emendation – Rousseau’s or Comenius’s – disposes of so needed flexiblity: possiblity of opening towards new, good, i.e. disposes of relatively the greatest attunement to longed-for possitive change.