SLIKA DETETA I DETINjSTVA U DELU J. A. KOMENSKOG (POVODOM 350 GODINA OD SMRTI VELIKANA PEDAGOGIJE)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to get acquainted with the image of the child and childhood in the work of John Amos Comenius. The authors presented this paper using historical method, with the technique of content analysis. The authors pay attention to the religious-philosoph- ical, soteriological-universal, anthropological, pan-philosophical and pedagogical-didactic assumptions of the Comenius concept of child and childhood, and indicate to the great impor- tance and innovativeness of this concept in relation to the strong stream of Augustinian origin in Western Christianity. Starting from the traditions of the Czech Hussite Protestant Church Unity Fraternally, but also with its own utopian endeavors, Comenius opposes the vision of the child as a creature who is deeply and permanently marked by ancestral sin, as well as being socially useless and invisible. Comenius uses a method of consistent citation of the Bible which is in favor of a high value child as being innocent, unspoiled, to whom Jesus commands the utmost respect and invites adults to be children. Comenius also uses ancient sources (above all M.F. Quinitillian), as well as pedagogical and natural symbolism and provides a picture of a child understood as a germ, plant, bird, cub, which develops in accordance with the natural laws and education to be foreign any violence. With his understanding of the child and child- hood, Comenius became part of that tradition of pedagogical thinkers, who strongly contrib- uted to the establishment of the child’s values and the establishment of childhood as a modern social institution.