Observations placeholder
Comenius - Didactica Magna - Avoid specialisation
Identifier
020661
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
One may need to specialise to do a job, but Comenius believed that specialisation in education was wholly negative in its effects – at whatever stage or age.
Just before I added this section to the site, I was in battle with a theoretical physicist through TED. He knew no other subject than theoretical physics and much of that knowledge was based around current theory [and Science as religion].
I quoted alternative theories, past theories, philosophers, poets, mystics, geniuses. He had never heard of them and was actually not prepared to hear their words, so tenuous was his hold on information, I hesitate to call it knowledge.
He was also insulting, but insult is often born of fear and fear stems from ignorance.
A description of the experience
It is a mistake to teach the several branches of science in detail before a general outline of the whole realm of knowledge has been placed before the student, and that no one should be instructed in such a way as to become proficient in any one branch of knowledge, without thoroughly understanding its relation to the rest.