Pestalozzi as the Successor of Rousseau.—Having outlined the various phases of philanthropic education and surveyed the development of the common school in America, we may now turn again to the more immediate development of the movements that found their roots in Rousseau. It has been noted how Rousseau’s ‘naturalistic’ doctrines logically pointed to a complete demolition of the artificial society and education of the times. A pause at this point would have led to anarchy. If civilization is not to disappear, social destruction must be followed by reconstruction. Of course the negative attitude of the Emile was itself accompanied by considerable positive advance in its suggestions for a natural training, but this advice was often unpractical and extreme and its main emphasis was upon the destruction Development of naturalism of Rousseau by Pestalozzi. of existing education. Hence the happiest educational results of Rousseau’s work came through Pestalozzi, who especially supplemented that reformer’s work upon the constructive side. Pestalozzi became the first prominent educator to develop the negative and somewhat inconsistent ‘naturalism’ of Rousseau into a more positive attempt to reform corrupt society by proper education and a new method of teaching.
Pestalozzi’s Philanthropic and Industrial Ideals.—Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi was born at Zurich in 1746. After the death of his father, he was brought up almost altogether by his mother. Through her unselfishness Example of mother and grandfather, and piety, and the example of his grandfather, pastor in a neighboring village, Pestalozzi was inspired to relieve and elevate the degraded peasantry about him. He first turned to the ministry as being the best way to accomplish this philanthropic purpose, and later took up the and early attempts to elevate the peasantry. study of law, with the idea of defending the rights of his people, but he was not able to succeed in either profession. Then, in 1769, he undertook to demonstrate to the peasants the value of improved methods of agriculture. He took up a strip of waste land at Birr, which he called Neuhof (‘new farm’), but within five years this experiment also proved a lamentable failure. Meantime a son had been born to him, whom he had undertaken to rear upon the basis of the Emile, and the results, recorded in a Father’s Journal, suggested new ideas and educational principles for the regeneration of the masses. He began to hold that education did not consist merely in books and knowledge, and that the children of the poor could, by proper training, be taught to earn their living and at the same time develop their intelligence and moral nature.
His Industrial School at Neuhof and the Leonard and Gertrude.—Hence the failure of his agricultural venture afforded Pestalozzi the opportunity he craved to experiment with philanthropic and industrial education. Toward the end of 1774 he took into his home some twenty of the most needy children he could find. These he fed, clothed, and treated as his own. He gave the boys practical instruction in farming and gardening on small tracts, and had the girls trained in domestic duties and needlework. In bad weather both sexes gave their time to spinning and weaving cotton. They were also trained in the rudiments, but were practiced in conversing and in memorizing the Bible before learning to read Scholastic instruction given while the children were working. and write. The scholastic instruction was given very largely while they were working, and, although Pestalozzi had not as yet learned to make any direct connection between the occupational and the formal elements, this first attempt at an industrial education made it evident that the two could be combined. Within a few months there was a striking improvement in the physique, minds, and morals of the children, as well as in the use of their hands. But Pestalozzi was so enthusiastic over the success of his experiment that he greatly increased the number of children, and by 1780 was reduced to bankruptcy.
Nevertheless, his wider purpose of social reform by means of education was not allowed to languish altogether, for a friend shortly persuaded him to publish his views. His first production, The Evening Hour of a Hermit, After the school was closed, he published his views. embodied most of the educational principles he afterward made famous, but he was advised to put his thought into more popular form, and soon wrote his highly successful story of Leonard and Gertrude (1781). This work, with subsequent additions, gives an account of the degraded social conditions in the Swiss village of ‘Bonnal’ and the changes wrought in them by one simple peasant woman. ‘Gertrude’ reforms her drunkard husband, educates her children, and causes the whole community to feel her influence and adopt her methods. When finally a wise schoolmaster comes to the village, he learns from Gertrude the proper conduct of the school and begs for her continued coöperation. Then the government becomes interested, studies the improvements that have taken place, and concludes that the whole country can be reformed in no better way than by imitating Bonnal.
His School at Stanz and Beginning of His Observational Methods.—In 1798 he was given an opportunity to carry on his philanthropic and industrial ideals in education through the orphan home and school at Stanz, of which he was put in charge. Here he found it impossible Having no other facilities, he instructed through ‘observation’ in to obtain any assistants, books, and materials, but he felt that none of these conventional aids could be of service in the work he desired to do. Hence he sought to instruct the children rather by experience and observation than by abstract statements and words (Fig. 33). This was the real beginning of his teaching through ‘observation,’ and, while at Stanz he further developed his correlation of intellectual with manual training, his observational methods were thereafter destined to be morals, more stressed. Religion and morals, for example, were never taught by precepts, but through instances that arose in the lives of the children he showed them the value of self-control, charity, sympathy, and gratitude. In a similarly concrete way the pupils were instructed number, language, and other subjects, in number and language work by means of objects, and in geography and history by conversation rather than by books. While they did not learn their natural history primarily from nature, they were taught to corroborate what they had learned by their own observation. About this method he said: “According to my experience, success depends upon whether what is taught to children commends itself to them as true through being closely connected with their own observation. As a general rule, I attached little importance to the study of words, even when explanations of the ideas they represented were given.”
In connection with his observational method, Pestalozzi at this time began his attempt to reduce all reducing perception to its lowest terms. perception to its lowest terms, ‘the A B C of observation,’ as he afterward called it. It was while at Stanz, for example, that he first adopted his well-known plan of teaching children to read by means of exercises known as ‘syllabaries.’ These joined the five vowels in succession to the different consonants,—‘ab, eb, ib, ob, ub,’ and so on through all the consonants. From the phonetic nature of German spelling, he was able to make the exercises very simple, and thus to furnish a necessary practice in basal syllables. In a similar way he hoped to simplify all education to such an extent that schools would eventually become unnecessary, and that each mother would be able to teach her children and continue her own education at the same time.
Continuation of His Methods at Burgdorf, and How Gertrude Teaches Her Children.—From these experiments and concrete methods that Pestalozzi started at Stanz gradually developed all his educational contributions. But before the close of a year he was forced by circumstances to remove to Burgdorf. Here, on account Suspension of combination of industrial with intellectual elements. of the social position of many of his pupils, he had to suspend his experiment of combining industrial with intellectual training, although, as will later be seen, his special efforts in this direction were greatly enlarged and perpetuated by Fellenberg. He now devoted himself to his ‘A B C of observation,’ and further ‘Syllabaries’ and other language exercises, worked out and graduated his ‘syllabaries.’ Language exercises were also given his pupils by means of examining the number, form, position, and color of the designs, holes, and rents in the wall paper of the school, and expressing their observations in longer and longer sentences, arithmetic, which they repeated after him. For arithmetic he devised charts upon which were placed dots or lines concretely representing each unit up to one hundred. By means of this ‘table of units’ ([Fig. 34]), the pupil obtained a clear idea of the meaning of the digits and the fundamental processes in arithmetic. The geometry, and other studies. children were also taught the elements of geometry by drawing angles, lines, and curves, and the development of teaching history, geography, and natural history by this method of observation was likewise continued.
Despite a want of system and errors in carrying out Success of the school. his method, Pestalozzi seems to have produced remarkable results from the start. Pupils poured in; a number of progressive teachers came to assist him; many persons of prominence visited the school and made most favorable reports upon its methods; and during the following three years and a half the Pestalozzian views on education were systematically developed and applied. While at Burgdorf also, he undertook a detailed statement of his method by the publication of his How Gertrude Teaches Her Children (1801). This work does not mention Principles in his How Gertrude. Gertrude, but consists of fifteen letters to his friend, Gessner. Like all of Pestalozzi’s works, it is quite lacking in both plan and proportion, and is filled with repetitions and digressions, but the following portion of the summary of its principles, made by a biographer of Pestalozzi, may serve to give an idea of his educational creed:
“1. Observation is the foundation of instruction.
“2. Language must be connected with observation.
“3. The time for learning is not the time for judgment and criticism.
“4. In each branch, instruction must begin with the simplest elements, and proceed gradually by following the child’s development; that is, by a series of steps which are psychologically connected.
“5. A pause must be made at each stage of the instruction sufficiently long for the child to get the new matter thoroughly into his grasp and under his control.
“6. Teaching must follow the path of development, and not that of dogmatic exposition.”
