The reaction against authority which marked the Reformation period was specially noted for the reaction against the purely verbal education given to the young, whose education, as we learn from Locke, was calculated to teach them "not to believe, but to dispute", and to fit them "for the university, not for the world". On the Continent Rabelais (1483 to 1533) led this realistic movement, which was continued by Montaigne (1533 to 1592) in France, and under the influence of Bacon by Brinsley and Hoole in England, and Ratke and Comenius on the Continent. Up to this time the chief English writers on the subject of education had been Sir Thomas Elyot in his Governour, Roger Ascham in his Scholemaster, and Richard Mulcaster in his Positions.
The intellectual activity which marked in England the closing decades of the sixteenth and the first part of the seventeenth century saw the issue of Milton's Tractate, one of the most famous books on education ever produced. The Tractate discusses only the kind of education that should be given to gentlemen's sons between the ages of twelve and twenty-one, so that it is strictly limited in its application, as it does not deal with the education of the people, nor with the education of women. The ideal which Milton put before him as the aim of "a complete and generous education" was "to fit a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices both private and public of peace and war". Milton in his Tractate discusses studies, exercise, and diet, showing that he clearly understood that education was concerned with the body as well as the mind and spirit.
Towards the close of the seventeenth century Locke, an English physician and philosopher, published (1693) his Thoughts concerning Education, a book which influenced immensely the character and direction of future educational studies. As he informs his readers in his letter to Edward Clarke, he counsels everyone "after having well examined and distinguished what fancy, custom, or reason advises in the case ... to promote everywhere that way of training up youth ... which is the easiest, shortest, and likeliest to produce virtuous, useful, and able men in their distinct callings". He begins his essay with the statement, "A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world", and the suggestions he makes as to the physical, moral, and intellectual training of the young are for the most part sound. He decried a too severe discipline, maintaining that "If the mind be curbed and humbled too much in children, ... they lose all their vigour and industry". On the other hand, he held that if you "Remove hope and fear, there is an end of all discipline"; and he held that, as far as possible, "Childish actions are to be left perfectly free and unrestrained". He applied the science of psychology to the study of child nature, and of the methods to be employed in training it; and so prepared the way for the modern methods of education. "Interest is the secret of Herbart", according to one of his devoted admirers. Locke seems to have anticipated this when he declares that "None of the things they are to learn should ever be made a burden to them, or imposed on them as a task".
Though his attitude towards the universe was utterly opposed to the attitude of Locke, Rousseau drew almost all that was practical in his scheme for the education of the young from the English writer. Rousseau's work, though largely inspired by Locke, was essentially of a revolutionary kind. It held that man is the great corrupter; that "Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Creator; and that man's handling makes everything worse". In effect he said, leave the child as much as possible alone. An attempt constantly to direct him can only result in stupefying him. It is true we receive our education from nature, from men, and from things; but nature must be our guide in determining the use of the other two. As few restraints as possible must be imposed on the child, and the use of books should be prohibited. For the child there should be "no other book but the world", and "no other instruction but facts". The child's education he divides into four stages, infancy, childhood, boyhood, and youth. The first two stages last till the beginning of the thirteenth year, when the boy is supposed to be fit for instruction. From such instruction the teaching of words must disappear, and the teaching of things must take its place. The subjects most suitable for instruction were, Rousseau declared, measuring, drawing, geometry, speaking, and singing. Books, he declares, are useless, are, indeed, altogether harmful. The method he advocates is the method of self-teaching and the use of the senses, which Rousseau held would work to the profit of the intelligence. The child's knowledge should rest
on his own observation, and not on belief in authority, and each child should be taught a manual trade.
At fifteen, according to Rousseau, real education begins; and it is the duty of the teacher to study the subject he has to act upon, in other words, to discover the nature of the pupil, which must in all cases determine the means and the method employed in his education. Two things must be taught. These are the true relations, racial and individual, that exist among men; and how to direct and control the emotions aroused by the environment so that the best results may arise. Here he finds occasion for the use of moral teaching and for instruction in religion. The facts of history must be placed before him; but he must be left to form his own judgment. He is now to be taught religion as a help to the regulation of the passions; but not the religion of any particular sect. His time is to be given up largely to reading and to the acquirement of taste; to the study of history and eloquence; and to attendance at the theatre.
The revolutionary doctrines preached by Rousseau in his Émile and in his other educational works had an immense effect on the Continent, and particularly on the work of one of his most ardent admirers, the Swiss farmer and schoolmaster Pestalozzi, an eccentric, dubbed by his schoolfellows "Harry Oddity of Fools-town". Thinking the education demanded for Émile by Rousseau vastly superior to that which he himself received, he very early became an ardent admirer of the system advocated by the French philosopher, and an eager reformer. Émile and the Contrat Social were condemned by the magistrates of Zurich, and Pestalozzi and some of his fellow-students were imprisoned for the Memorial in which they defended these works. Later Pestalozzi determined to be a farmer. He was married at the age of twenty-three, and started growing madder and vegetables on some poor land near Zurich. On the land he built for himself a house, the Neuhof.
In the winter of 1774 he hit upon the expedient of taking into his house some twenty poor children of the neighbourhood, whom he treated as his own. They worked with him in summer in the fields, and in winter in the house. Improved health for the children, increased intelligence, and a manifest devotion to their benefactor were some of the results speedily displayed, and the experiment drew much attention to itself. Urged on by his love for the children, Pestalozzi took in a larger number, and in a very short time found himself bankrupt. In this period of seeming disaster Pestalozzi turned author. The books which he produced were greedily read on the Continent, and aroused the greatest interest. After some work at Stanz and at Burgdorf, Pestalozzi settled to work in the castle of Yverdun on Lake Neuchâtel, which became in the early years of the nineteenth century a place of pilgrimage for European students and lovers of education. Forced to leave Yverdun in 1815, he continued his work at Clindy till 1824.
Friedrich Froebel spent the years 1807 to 1809 at Yverdun, and so fitted himself to carry on the work Pestalozzi had to some extent made popular. His name, however, is specially associated with the schools for very young children to which he gave the name of Kindergarten, that is, 'gardens of children', places where young children, like young plants, were properly watched and tended. For the children in these schools their employment was to be play, play from which and by which they acquired clear notions regarding themselves and their environment. "Education", he asserted, "should lead and guide man to clearness concerning himself and in himself, to peace with nature, and to unity with God." He held that powers were developed by exercise; that failure to use any part of the body or mind led to the shrinkage of the part, and sometimes even to its complete loss. He held that if we wish to develop the body we must exercise the body, and that, similarly, if we wish to develop the intellect or the emotions they must be exercised. He insists that teachers must be careful to interfere as little as possible; must remember at all times that the aim of teaching is "to bring ever more and more out of man rather than to put more and more into him". He based his system on action; agreed with Montaigne that "children's games were their most serious occupations"; and with Locke that "All the plays and diversions of children should be directed towards good and useful habits". Froebel was not the founder of infant schools. These were first established on the Continent and in Britain with the object of helping mothers. In Britain their establishment is associated with the names of the educational enthusiasts James Buchanan and Samuel Wilderspin.
Nearly ten years before Froebel's stay with Pestalozzi at Yverdun, Herbart, next to Kant and Hegel the most influential of German philosophers, visited the inspired educationist at Burgdorf, and found him employing methods based on the principles which he himself had worked out in his psychology. To both it was clear that there is a definite order in which subjects should be taught to the children, and that this order is determined, not merely by the relation of the subjects to each other, but by their power of satisfying the growing wants and capacities of the child. Pestalozzi had arrived intuitively at a method, and had practically applied it, which Herbart had scientifically