§ 35. Most boys and girls in every community would stop at the vernacular school; and as this school is a very distinctive feature in Comenius’s plan, it may be worth while to give his programme of studies. In this school the children should learn—1st, to read and write the mother-tongue _well_, both with writing and printing letters; 2nd, to compose grammatically; 3rd, to cipher; 4th, to measure and weigh; 5th, to sing, at first popular airs, then from music; 6th, to say by heart, sacred psalms and hymns; 7th, Catechism, Bible History, and texts; 8th, moral rules, with examples; 9th, economics and politics, as far as they could be understood; 10th, general history of the world; 11th, figure of the earth and motion of stars, &c., physics and geography, especially of native land; 12th, general knowledge of arts and handicrafts. § 36. Each school was to be divided into six classes, corresponding to the six years the pupil should spend in it. The hours of work were to be, in school, two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon, with nearly the same amount of private study. In the morning the mind and memory were to be exercised, in the afternoon the hands and voice. Each class was to have its proper lesson-book written expressly for it, so as to contain everything that class had to learn. When a lesson was to be got by heart from the book, the teacher was first to read it to the class, explain it, and re-read it; the boys then to read it aloud by turns till one of them offered to repeat it without book; the others were to do the same as soon as they were able, till all had repeated it. This lesson was then to be worked over again as a writing lesson, &c. In the higher forms of the vernacular school a modern language was to be taught and duly practised. § 37. Here we see a regular school course projected which differed essentially from the only complete school course still earlier, that of the Jesuits. In education Comenius was immeasurably in advance of Loyola and Aquaviva. Like the great thinkers, Pestalozzi and Froebel, who most resemble him, he thought of the development of the child from its birth; and in a singularly wise little book, called _Schola materni gremii_, or “School of the Mother’s Breast,” he has given advice for bringing up children to the age of six.[74]