This was sheer exaggeration, and was putting too little value on the personal effort and merit of teachers. On this score, it would be useless to found normal schools. Pestalozzi, moreover, has given in his own person a striking contradiction to this singular theory; for he owed his success in teaching much more to the influence of his living speech, and to the ardent communication of the passion by which his heart was animated, than to the methodical processes which he never succeeded in combining in an efficient manner.
502. The Socratic Method.—Pestalozzi recommends the Socratic method, and he indicates with exactness some of the conditions necessary for the employment of that method. He first observes that it requires on the part of the teacher uncommon ability.
“A superficial and uncultivated intelligence,” he says, “does not sound the depths whence a Socrates made spring up intelligence and truth.”
Besides, the Socratic method can be employed only with pupils who already have some instruction. It is absolutely impracticable with children who lack both the point of departure, that is, preliminary notions, and the means of expressing these notions, that is, a knowledge of language. And as it is always necessary that Pestalozzi’s thought should wind up with a figure of speech, he adds:—
“In order that the goshawk and the eagle may plunder eggs from other birds, it is first necessary that the latter should deposit eggs in their nests.”
503. Word, Form, and Number.—A favorite idea of Pestalozzi, which remained at Yverdun, as at Burgdorf, the principle of his exercises in teaching, is that all elementary knowledge can and should be related to three principles,—word, form, and number. To the word he attached language, to form, writing and drawing, and to number, computation.
“This was,” he says, “like a ray of light in my researches, like a Deus ex machina!” Nothing justifies such enthusiasm. It would be very easy to show that Pestalozzi’s classification, besides that it offers no practical interest, is not justifiable from the theoretical point of view, first because one of the elements of his trilogy, the word, or language, comprises the other two; and then because a large part of knowledge, for example, all physical qualities, does not permit the distinction of which he was superstitiously fond.
504. Intuitive Exercises.—What is of more value is the importance which Pestalozzi ascribes to intuition. An incident worthy of note is that it is not Pestalozzi himself, but one of the children of his school, who first had the idea of the direct observation of the objects which serve as the text for the lesson. One day as, according to his custom, he was giving his pupils a long description of what they observed in a drawing where a window was represented, he noticed that one of his little auditors, instead of looking at the picture, was attentively studying the real window of the school-room.
From that moment Pestalozzi put aside all his drawings, and took the objects themselves for subjects of observation.