Comenius, Rousseau, and, in fact, all the realists from Bacon to Herbert Spencer, have emphasized the thought that education should follow the order and method of nature; though, as Professor Payne suggests, it is not always easy to form a clear notion of what they mean by nature, when they say that education should be natural, and that teachers should follow the method of nature. The key-note of Rousseau’s theory, as expressed in the opening paragraph of the Émile, is that “everything is good as it comes from the hands of the author of nature, but everything degenerates in the hands of man.” Mr. Davidson points out in his study of Rousseau that the air was full of nature panaceas during the middle years of the eighteenth century, and that these were applied alike to social, political, and educational institutions. He says: “The chief of these notions were (1) a state of nature as man’s original condition—a state conceived sometimes as one of goodness, peace, freedom, equality, and happiness, sometimes as one of badness, war, slavery, inequality, and misery; (2) a law of nature independent of all human enactment, and yet binding upon all men; (3) a social contract, voluntarily and consciously made, as the basis of justification for civil society and authority—a contract by which men united for the protection of rights and the enforcement of laws which had existed already in the state of nature; (4) false inequality among men, as due to private property, or the usurpation by some of what, by natural right, belonged to all; (5) a peaceful, untroubled, unenterprising, unstruggling existence as the normal form of human life.”
While less sane, less practical, less comprehensive in his educational views than Comenius, it can scarcely be said that he was less influential. Differing in many important particulars, a common ideal permeates the writings of the two reformers—an unbounded faith in the possibilities of youth, and a deep conviction that it is the business of teachers to view the world and nature from the standpoint of young and growing children, and to cling with less tenacity to points of view established by antiquity and convention.
Basedow[42]
While resembling Rousseau more than Comenius in temperament and character, as well as in educational ideals, there is yet much in Basedow’s educational scheme that recalls the Moravian reformer. Born at Hamburg, in 1727, he experienced, like Rousseau, an unhappy childhood, and, like Comenius, received a belated education. He prepared for the University of Leipzig at the Hamburg gymnasium; but at both institutions he rebelled against the traditional methods of instruction. After completing the course in theology at Leipzig, it was found that he had grown too heterodox for ordination, and he engaged himself as a private tutor to a gentleman in Holstein. Remarkable success attended his labors as a teacher. He studied his children, adapted subject-matter to their capacities, and made extensive use of conversational methods. This experience secured him an appointment in Denmark, where he taught for eight years. But his essays on Methodical instruction in natural and Biblical religion disturbed alike the serenity of the Danish clergy and schoolmasters, and he was released and called to the gymnasium at Altoona, where he encountered opposition no less pronounced.
Rousseau’s Émile appeared at this time, and it influenced him powerfully. He renewed his attacks on contemporary educational practices; charged universal neglect of physical education and the mother-tongue; criticised the schools for devoting so much time to the study of Latin and Greek, and for the mechanical and uninteresting methods employed in teaching these languages; and admonished society for neglecting to instruct the children of the poor and middle classes. Raumer, who is no admirer of Basedow, admits the justice of the charges. He says: “Youth was in those days for most children a sadly harassed period. Instruction was hard and heartlessly severe. Grammar was caned into the memory; so were portions of Scripture and poetry. A common form of school punishment was to learn by heart the One Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm. Schoolrooms were dismally dark. No one conceived it possible that the young could find pleasure in any kind of work, or that they had eyes for aught but reading and writing. The pernicious age of Louis XIV had inflicted on the children of the upper class hair curled by the barber and messed with powder and pomade, braided coats, knee breeches, silk stockings, and a dagger by the side—for active, lively children a perfect torture.”
The publication, in 1774, of his Elementary book with plates and his Book of methods for parents and teachers, formulated and brought to public notice his views on education. The Elementary book with plates followed closely the lines of Comenius, and it has often been called the Orbis pictus of the eighteenth century. The purpose of the book was clearly encyclopædic. As stated by himself, his aims were: (1) elementary instruction in the knowledge of words and things; (2) an incomparable method, founded upon experience, of teaching children to read without weariness or loss of time; (3) natural knowledge; (4) knowledge of morals, the mind, and reasoning; (5) a thorough and impressive method of instructing in natural religion, and for a description of beliefs so impartial that it shall not appear of what belief is the writer himself; (6) knowledge of social duties and commerce. The work was published in four volumes and illustrated by one hundred plates.
The Book of methods presents the root-ideas of Comenius and Rousseau. In it he says: “You should attend to nature in your children far more than to art. The elegant manners and usages of the world are, for the most part, unnatural. These come of themselves in later years. Treat children like children, that they may remain the longer uncorrupted. A boy whose acutest faculties are his senses, and who has no perception of anything abstract, must first of all be made acquainted with the world as it presents itself to the senses. Let this be shown him in nature herself, or, where this is impossible, in faithful drawings or models. Thereby can he, even in play, learn how the various objects are to be named. Comenius alone has pointed out the right road in this matter. By all means reduce the wretched exercises of the memory.”
The institution which carried Basedow’s educational theories into practice was the Philanthropinum at Dessau, which became both famous and notorious in the days of the founder, and exercised, withal, a powerful influence on the pedagogy of Germany and Switzerland during the last quarter of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century. Whatever may have been its faults, it had the merit of looking at education from a more modern standpoint. With the conviction that the final word had not been spoken on pedagogy, Basedow boldly determined to find new methods of approach to the child’s mind. As an experiment the Philanthropinum was both interesting and suggestive. Kant, who recognizes this aspect of its utility, says: “It was imagined that experiments in education were not necessary; 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 experiments that one generation cannot work out a complete plan of education. The only experimental school which has made a beginning toward breaking the path is the institution at Dessau. Whatever its faults, this praise must be given it: It is the only school in which teachers have had the liberty to work out their own methods and plans, and where they stood in connection, not only with each other, but with men of learning throughout all Germany.”
In subjects taught, as well as in methods of teaching, Basedow followed Comenius in the main. Words were taught in connection with things; object teaching occupied an important place; pictures were extensively used; children were first taught to speak and later to write in foreign languages; German and French held positions of honor; arithmetic, geometry, geography, and natural history were all taught; great attention was given to the physical development of the children, and play was considered as important as Latin; school hours were shortened; the discipline was much less severe; and the children were allowed and permitted to take degrees of freedom altogether unheard of before Basedow’s day.