The History of Education / Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

II. GERMAN ATTEMPTS TO WORK OUT A NEW THEORY

INFLUENCE OF THE ÉMILE IN GERMAN LANDS. The Émile was widely read, not only in France, but throughout the continent of Europe as well. In German lands its publication coincided with the rising tide of nationalism—the "Period of Enlightenment"—and the book was warmly welcomed by such (then young) men as Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Richter, Fichte, and Kant. It presented a new ideal of education and a new ideal for humanity, and its ideas harmonized well with those of the newly created aristocracy of worth which the young German enthusiasts were busily engaged in proclaiming for their native land. The ideal of the perfected individual, strong in the consciousness of his powers, now found expression in the new "classics of individualism" which marked the outburst of the best that German literature has ever produced. As Paulsen [2] well says:

Rousseau exercised an immense influence on his times, and Germany was stirred perhaps even more deeply than France. In France Voltaire continued to be regarded as the great man of his time, whereas, in Germany, his place in the esteem of the younger generation had been taken by the enthusiast of Geneva. Kant, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, all of them were roused by Rousseau to the inmost depths of their natures. He gave utterance to the passionate longing of their souls: to do away with the imitation of French courtly culture, by which Nature was suppressed and perverted in every way, to do away with the established political and social order, based on court society and class distinctions, which was felt to be lowering to man in his quality as a reasonable being, and to return to Nature, to simple and unsophisticated habits of life, or rather to find a way through Nature to a better civilisation, which would restore the natural values of life to their rightful place and would be compatible with truth and virtue, sincerity and probity of character.

The great German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), was so deeply stirred by the Émile that the regularity of his daily walks and the clearness of his thinking were disturbed by it. Goethe called the book "the teacher's Gospel." Schiller praised Rousseau as "a new Socrates, who of Christians wished to make men." Herder acclaimed Rousseau as a German, and his "divine work" as his guide. Jean-Paul Richter confessed himself indebted to Rousseau for the best ideas in his Levana. Lavater declared himself ready for a Reformation in education along the lines laid down by Rousseau.

[Illustration: FIG. 64. BASEDOW (1723-90)]

BASEDOW AND HIS WORK. Perhaps the most important practical influence exerted by the Émile in German lands came in the work of Johann Bernard Basedow and his followers. Basedow was a North German who had been educated in the Gymnasium at Hamburg, had studied in the theological faculty at Leipzig, had been a tutor in a nobleman's family, and had been a teacher in a Ritterakademie in Denmark and the Gymnasium at Altona. Deeply imbued with the new scientific spirit, in thorough revolt against the dominance of the Church in human lives, and incited to new efforts by his reading of the Émile, Basedow thought out a plan for a reform school which should put many of Rousseau's ideas into practice. In 1768 he issued his Address to Philanthropists and Men of Property on Schools and Studies and their Influence on the Public Weal, in which he appealed for funds to enable him to open a school to try out his ideas, and to enable him to prepare a new type of textbooks for the use of schools. He proposed in this appeal to organize a school which should be non-sectarian, and also advocated the creation of a National Council of Education to have charge of all public instruction. These were essentially the ideas of the French political reformers of the time. The appeal was widely scattered, awakened much enthusiasm, and subscriptions to assist him poured in from many sources. [3]

In 1774 Basedow published two works of more than ordinary importance. The first, a Book of Method for Fathers and Mothers of Families and of Nations, was a book for adults, and outlined a plan of education for both boys and girls. The keynotes were "following nature," "impartial religious instruction," children to be dealt with as children, learning through the senses, language instruction by a natural method, and much study of natural objects. The ideas were a combination of those of Bacon, Comenius, and Rousseau. The second book, in four volumes, and containing one hundred copper-plate illustrations, was the famous Elementary Work (Elementarwerk mit Kupfern) (R. 266), the first illustrated school textbook since the Orbis Pictus (1654) of Comenius. This work of Basedow's became, in German lands, the Orbis Pictus of the eighteenth century. By means of its "natural methods" (R. 265) children were to be taught to read, both the vernacular and Latin, more easily and in less time than had been done before, and in addition were to be given a knowledge of morals, commerce, scientific subjects, and social usages by "an incomparable method," founded on experience in teaching children. The book enjoyed a wide circulation among the middle and upper classes in German lands.

BASEDOW'S PHILANTHROPINUM. In 1774 Prince Leopold, of Dessau, a town in the duchy of Anhalt, in northern Germany, gave Basedow the use of two buildings and a garden, and twelve thousand thalers in money, with which to establish his long-heralded Philanthropinum, which was to be an educational institution of a new type. Great expectations were aroused, and a widespread interest in the new school awakened. Education according to nature, with a reformed, time-saving, natural method for the teaching of languages, were to be its central ideas. Children were to be treated as children, and not as adults. Powdered hair, gilded coats, swords, rouge, and hoops were to be discarded for short hair, clean faces, sailor jackets, and caps, while the natural plays of children and directed physical training were to be made a feature of the instruction. The languages were to be taught by conversational methods. Each child was to be taught a handicraft—turning, planing, and carpentering were provided— for both social and educational reasons. Instruction in real things— science, nature—was to take the place of instruction in words, and the vernacular was to be the language of instruction. The institution was to have the atmosphere of religion, but was not to be Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, or Jewish, and was to be free from "theologizing distinctions." Latin, German, French, mathematics, a knowledge of nature (geography, physics, natural history), music, dancing, drawing, and physical training were the principal subjects of instruction. The children were divided into four classes, and the instruction for each, with the textbooks to be used, was outlined (R. 265).

The school opened with Basedow and three assistants as teachers, and two of Basedow's children and twelve others as pupils. Later the school came to have many boarding pupils, drawn from as far-distant points as Riga and Spain. In 1776 a public examination was held, to which many distinguished men were invited, and the work which Basedow's methods could produce was exhibited. These methods seem to have been successful, judging from the rather full accounts which have been left us. [4] The school represented a new type of educational effort, and was frankly experimental in purpose. It was an attempt to apply, in practice, the main ideas of Rousseau's Émile. Basedow tried the plan of education outlined by Rousseau with his own daughter, whom he named Émilie.

[ILLUSTRATION: FIG. 165 IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804)]

As a promising experiment the school awakened widespread interest, and Basedow was supported by such thinkers of the time as Goethe and Kant. The year following the "Examination" Kant, then professor of philosophy at the University of Königsberg, contributed an article to the Königsberg Gazette explaining the importance of the experiment Basedow was making. Still later, in his university lectures On Pedagogy, he further stated the importance of such a new experiment, in the following words:

It was imagined that experiments in education were not necessary; and that, whether any thing in it was good or bad, could be judged of by the reason. But this was a great mistake; experience shows very often that results are produced precisely the opposite to those which had been expected. We also see from experiment that one generation cannot work out a complete plan of education. The only experimental school which has made a beginning toward breaking the path was the Dessau institution. This praise must be given to it, in spite of the many faults which may be charged against it; faults which belong to all conclusions based upon such undertakings; and which make new experiments always necessary. It was the only school in which the teachers had the liberty to work after their own methods and plans, and where they stood in connection, not only with each other, but with men of learning throughout all Germany.

BASEDOW'S INFLUENCE, AND FOLLOWERS. Basedow, though, was an impractical theorist, boastful and quarrelsome, vulgar and coarse, given to drunkenness and intemperate speech, and fond of making claims for his work which the results did not justify. In a few years he had been displaced as director, and in 1793 the Philanthropinum closed its doors. The school, nevertheless, was a very important educational experiment, and Basedow's work for a time exerted a profound influence on German pedagogical thought. He may be said to have raised instruction in the Realien in German lands to a place of distinct importance, and to have given a turn to such instruction which it has ever since retained. [5] The methods of instruction, too, worked out in arithmetic, geography, geometry, natural history, physics, and history were in many ways as revolutionary as those evolved by Pestalozzi later on in Switzerland. In his emphasis on scientific subject-matter Basedow surpassed Pestalozzi, but Pestalozzi possessed a clearer, intuitive insight into the nature and purpose of the educational process. The work of the two men furnishes an interesting basis for comparison (R. 271), and the work of each gave added importance to that of the other.

From Dessau an interest in pedagogical ideas and experiments spread over Europe, and particularly over German lands. Other institutions, modeled after the Philanthropinum, were founded in many places, and some of Basedow's followers [6] did as important work along certain lines as did Basedow himself. His followers were numerous, and of all degrees of worth. They urged acceptance of the new ideas of Rousseau as worked out and promulgated by Basedow; vigorously attacked the old schools, making converts here and there; and in a way helped to prepare northern German lands for the incoming, later, of the better-organized ideas of the German-Swiss reformer Pestalozzi, to whose work we next turn.