Protestant Origins of Public Education

I started re-reading Charles Silberman's book "Crisis in the Classroom" as a part of a mental exercise program called Edsanity. Mental Actin and Myosin. Yes, Virginia there is a history of education!! At any rate- started reading page one and I immediately encountered and had to research the quote from the 16th century. Here it is in part.
"the education I propose is one in which all men who are born into this world should share.....Our first wish is that all men should be educated to full humanity; .... Our second wish is that every man should be wholly educated"

Move over  Horace Mann and John Dewey. The author of the quote above was 2 centuries before you "Fathers". In fact of matter, John Amos Comenius was not the wonderful secularist that present contemporaries like to brag on. He was a Moravian Church (Czech) leader whose theology extended back to John Hus. Unity of the Brethren a small but influential protestant group in the 16th century. Protestants advocating public education?

A contemporary of Galileo, Descartes, Rembrandt, and Milton, Comenius contributed greatly to the Enlightenment. He was the first to use pictures in textbooks (The Visible World In Pictures, 1658), and believed in what might be called a holistic concept of education. He taught that education began in the earliest days of childhood, and continued throughout life. He advocated the formal education of women, an idea which was unheard of in his day. His philosophy of Pansophism (meaning 'all knowledge') attempted to incorporate theology, philosophy, and education into one. He believed that learning, spiritual, and emotional growth were all woven together. What Comenius referred to as the Via Lucis, or 'way of light,' was the pursuit of higher learning and spiritual enlightenment bound together. His educational thought was profoundly respected in Northern Europe. He was called upon to completely restructure the school system of Sweden, and there is some evidence he was asked to become the first President of Harvard, an honor he declined because of his leadership of the troubled Moravian Church.  

http://comeniusfoundation.org/pages/why-comenius/comenius-biography.php