The notion of childhood in Great Didactic of Comenius

Abstract

This article discusses the implications of the concept of childhood inside the Great Didactic. It doesn’t share an historical perspective, but a genealogic inspiration motivated in Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy. In this way, it accompanies the didactic principles of the Moravy clergyman with the intention of analyze the evaluative weight that such proposal exercised on
the childish. It checks the mystical-theological character of that concept, as well as its worldwide through the standardization of the teaching methods. It also tries to emphasize the use of
images in the internalization process of a conscience, eternal dependent and unfi nished, such as of the subject in modernity. Finally, it is constituted in the tentative of unveiling the symbolic character of the education principles of an odd work in the scenery of Education History and, above all, of the childhood.;

Key words: childhood, Great Didactic, Comenius.