§ 1. Qui facit per alium facit per se. It is thus the law
holds us accountable for the action of others which we
direct. By the extension of this rule we immensely increase
the personality of great writers and may credit them
with vast spheres of action which never come within their
consciousness. No man gains and suffers more from this
consideration than Rousseau. On the one hand, we may
attribute to him the crimes of Robespierre and Saint-Just;
on the other Pestalozzi was instigated by him to turn to
farming and—education.
In treating of Rousseau as an educational reformer I
passed over a life in which almost every incident tends to
weaken the effect of his words. With Pestalozzi we must
turn to his life for the true source of his writings and the
best comment on them.
§ 2. John Henry Pestalozzi was born at Zurich in 1746.
His father dying when he was five years old, he was brought
up with a brother and sister by a pious and self-denying
mother and by a faithful servant “Babeli,” who had comforted
the father in his last hours by promising to stay with
his family. Thus Pestalozzi had an advantage denied to
Rousseau and denied as it would seem to Locke; there
was scope for his home affections, and the head was not
developed before the heart. When he was sent to a day-school
he became to some extent the laughing stock of his
companions who dubbed him Harry Oddity of Foolborough;
but he gained their good-will by his unselfishness. It was
remembered that on the shock of an earthquake when
teachers and taught fled from the school building Harry
Oddity was induced to go back and bring away what his
companions considered precious. His holidays he spent
with his grandfather the pastor of a village some three miles
from Zurich, where the lad learnt the condition of the
rural poor and saw what a good man could do for them.
He always looked back to these visits as an important
element in his education. “The best way for a child to
acquire the fear of God,” he wrote, “is for him to see and
hear a true Christian.” The grandfather’s example so
affected him that he wished to follow in his steps, and he
became a student of theology.[151]
§ 3. Even as a student Pestalozzi proved that he was no
ordinary man. In his time there was great intellectual and
moral enthusiasm among the students of the little Swiss
University. Some distinguished professors, especially Bodmer,
had awakened a craving for the old Swiss virtues of
plain living and high thinking; and a band of students,
among whom Lavater was leader and Pestalozzi played a
prominent part, became eager reformers. The citizens of
the great towns like Geneva and Zurich had become in
effect privileged classes; and as their spokesmen the Geneva
magistrates condemned the Contrat Social and the Emile.
This raised the indignation of the reforming students at
Zurich; and though their organ, a periodical called the
Memorial, kept clear of politics, one Muller wrote a paper
which contained some strong language, and this was held
to be proof of a conspiracy. Muller fled and was banished.
Pestalozzi and some other of his friends were imprisoned.
The Memorial was suppressed.
§ 4. It is in this Memorial, a weekly paper edited by
Lavater who was five years Pestalozzi’s senior that we have
Pestalozzi’s earliest writing. We find him coming forward
as “a man of aspirations.” No one he says can object
to his expressing his wishes. And “wishes” with a man of
19 are usually hopes. Among other wishes he says: “I
would that some one would draw up in a simple manner a
few principles of education intelligible to everybody; that
some generous people would then share the expense of
printing, so that the pamphlet might be given to the public
for nothing or next to nothing. I would then have clergymen
distribute it to all fathers and mothers, so that they
might bring up their children in a rational and Christian
manner. But,” he adds, “perhaps this is asking too much
at a time.”
The Memorial was suppressed because “the privileged
classes” knew that it was in the hands of their opponents.
Pestalozzi then and always felt keenly the oppression to
which the peasants were exposed; and he spoke of “the
privileged” as men on stilts who must descend among the
people before they could secure a natural and firm position.
He also satirises them in some of his fables, as, e.g., that of
the “Fishes and the Pike.” “The fishes in a pond
brought an accusation against the pike who were making
great ravages among them. The judge, an old pike, said
that their complaint was well founded, and that the
defendants, to make amends, should allow two ordinary
fish every year to become pike.”
§ 5. By this time Pestalozzi had given up theology and
had taken to the law. Now under the influence of
Rousseau, or rather of the craving for a simple “natural”
life which found its most eloquent expression in Rousseau’s
writing, Pestalozzi made a bonfire of his MSS. and decided
on becoming a farmer.
§ 6. There was another person concerned in this decision.
In his childhood he had one day ventured into the shop of
one of the leading tradesmen, Herr Schulthess, bent on procuring
for his farthings some object of delight; but he found
there a little shop-keeper, Anna Schulthess, seven years his
senior, who discouraged his extravagance and persuaded
him to keep his money. Anna and he since those days
had become engaged—not at all to the satisfaction of
her parents. Their intimacy had been strengthened by
their concern for a common friend, a young man named
Bluntschli, who died of consumption. This friend, three
years older than Pestalozzi, seems to have understood him
thoroughly; and in the parting advice he gave him there
was a warning which happily for the general good was in
after years neglected. “I am going,” said Bluntschli, “and
you will be left alone. Avoid any career in which you
might become the victim of your own goodness and trust,
and choose some quiet life in which you will run no risk.
Above all, do not take part in any important undertaking
without having at your side a man who by his cool judgment,
knowledge of men and things, and unshakable
fidelity may be able to protect you from the dangers to
which you will be exposed.”
§ 7. When the friendship with Anna Schulthess had
ripened into a betrothal Pestalozzi spent a year in the
neighbourhood of Bern learning farming under a man then
famous for his innovations. His new ideas Pestalozzi
absorbed very readily. “I had come to him,” he says, “a
political visionary, though with many profound and correct
attainments, views, and anticipations in matters political.
I went away from him just as great an agricultural visionary,
though with many enlarged and correct ideas and intentions
with regard to agriculture.”
§ 8. During his “learning year” he kept up a correspondence
with his betrothed, and the letters of both, which
have been preserved, differ very widely from love-letters in
general. Of himself Pestalozzi gives an account which
shows that in part at least he could see himself as others
saw him. “Dearest,” he writes, “those of my faults which
appear to me most important in relation to the situation in
which I may be placed in after-life are improvidence,
incautiousness, and a want of presence of mind to meet
unexpected changes in my prospects.... Of my
great, and indeed very reprehensible negligence in all
matters of etiquette, and generally in all matters which are
not in themselves of importance, I need not speak; anyone
may see them at first sight of me. I also owe you the
open confession, my dear, that I shall always consider my
duties toward my beloved partner subordinate to my duties
towards my country; and that, although I shall be the
tenderest husband, nevertheless, I hold myself bound to be
inexorable to the tears of my wife if she should ever
attempt to restrain me by them from the direct performance
of my duties as a citizen, whatever this must lead to. My
wife shall be the confidante of my heart, the partner of all
my most secret counsels. A great and honest simplicity
shall reign in my house. And one thing more. My life
will not pass without important and very critical undertakings.
I shall not forget ... my first resolutions to
devote myself wholly to my country. I shall never, from
fear of man, refrain from speaking when I see that the good
of my country calls upon me to speak. My whole heart is
my country’s: I will risk all to alleviate the need and
misery of my fellow-countrymen. What consequences may
the undertakings to which I feel myself urged on draw
after them! how unequal to them am I! and how imperative
is my duty to show you the possibility of the great
dangers which they may bring upon me! My dear, my
beloved friend, I have now spoken candidly of my character
and my aspirations. Reflect upon everything. If the
traits which it was my duty to mention diminish your
respect for me, you will still esteem my sincerity, and you
will not think less highly of me, that I did not take advantage
of your want of acquaintance with my character for
the attainment of my inmost wishes.”
§ 9. The young lady addressed was worthy of her lover.
“Such nobleness, such elevation of character, reach my
very soul,” said she. With equal nobleness she encouraged
Pestalozzi in his schemes and took the consequences without
a murmur during their long married life of 46
years.
§ 10. Full of new ideas about farming Pestalozzi now
thought he saw his way to making a fortune. He took
some poor land near Birr not far from Zurich, and persuaded
a banking firm to advance money with which he
proposed to cultivate vegetables and madder. In September,
1769, he was married, and six months later the
pair settled in a new house, “Neuhof,” which Pestalozzi
had built on his land.
§ 11. But in spite of his excellent ideas and great industry,
his speculation failed. The bankers soon withdrew
their money. Pestalozzi was not cautious enough for them.
However, his wife’s friends prevented an immediate collapse.
§ 12. But before he had any reason to doubt the success
of his speculation Pestalozzi had begun to reproach himself
with being engrossed by it. What had become of all his
thoughts for the people? Was he not spending his strength
entirely to gain the prosperity of himself and his household?
These thoughts came to him with all the more force
when a son was born to him; and at this time they naturally
connected themselves with education. He had now
seen a good deal of the degraded state of the peasantry.
How were they to be raised out of it?
§ 13. To Pestalozzi there seemed one answer and one
only. This was by education. To many people in the present
day it might seem that “education,” when quite successful,
would qualify labourers to become clerks. This was not the
notion of Pestalozzi. Rousseau had completely freed him
from bondage to the Renascence, and education did not
mean to him a training in the use of books. He looked
at the children of the lowest class of the peasants and asked
himself what they needed to raise them. Knowledge would
not do it. “The thing was not that they should know what
they did not know, but that they should behave as they did
not behave” (supra, p. 169); and the road to right action
lay through right feeling. If they could be made conscious
that they were loved and cared for, their hearts would open
and give back love and respect in return. More than this,
they must be taught not only to respect their elders but also
themselves. They must be taught to help themselves and
contribute to their own maintenance. So Pestalozzi resolved
to take into his own house some of the very poorest children,
to bring them up in an atmosphere of love, and to instruct
them in field-work and spinning which would soon partly
(as Pestalozzi hoped, wholly) pay for their keep. Thus, just
at the time when the experiment for himself failed he began
for others an experiment that seemed likely to add indefinitely
to his difficulties.
§ 14. In the winter of 1774 the first children were taken
into Neuhof. The consequences to his wife and to his little
son only four years old might have vanquished the courage
of a less ardent philanthropist. “Our position entailed much
suffering on my wife;” he writes, “but nothing could shake
us in our resolve to devote our time, strength and remaining
fortune to the simplification of the instruction and domestic
education of the people.”
§ 15. These children, at first not more than 20 in number,
Pestalozzi treated as his own. They worked with him in
the summer in the garden and fields, in winter in the house.
Very little time was given to separate lessons, the children
often learning while they worked with their hands. Pestalozzi
held that talking should come before reading and writing;
and he practised them in conversation on subjects taken
from their every day life. They also repeated passages from
the Bible till they knew them by heart.
§ 16. In a few months, as we are told, the appearance of
these poor little creatures had entirely changed; though fed
only on bread and vegetables they looked strong and hearty,
and their faces gained an expression of cheerfulness, frankness
and intelligence which till then had been totally
wanting. They made good progress with their manual work
as well as with the associated lessons, and took pleasure in
both. In all they said and did, they seemed to show their
consciousness of their benefactor’s kind care of them.
§ 17. This experiment naturally drew much attention to it,
and when it had gone on over a year Pestalozzi was induced
by his friend Iselin of Basel to insert in the Ephemerides (a
paper of which Iselin was editor), an “appeal ... for
an institution intended to provide education and work for
poor country children.” In this appeal Pestalozzi narrates
his experience. “I have proved,” says he, “that it is not
regular work that stops the development of so many poor
children, but the turmoil and irregularity of their lives, the
privations they endure, the excesses they indulge in when
opportunity offers, the wild rebellious passions so seldom
restrained, and the hopelessness to which they are so often
a prey. I have proved that children after having lost health,
strength and courage in a life of idleness and mendicity have,
when once set to regular work quickly recovered their health
and spirits and grown rapidly. I have found that when
taken out of their abject condition they soon become kindly,
trustful and sympathetic; that even the most degraded of them
are touched by kindness, and that the eyes of the child who
has been steeped in misery, grow bright with pleasure and
surprise, when, after years of hardship, he sees a gentle
friendly hand stretched out to help him; and I am convinced
that when a child’s heart has been touched the consequences
will be great for his development and entire moral character.”
Pestalozzi therefore would have the very poorest children
brought up in private establishments where agriculture and
industry were combined, and where they would learn to work
steadily and carefully with their hands, the chief part of
their time being devoted to this manual work, and their instruction
and education being associated with it. And he
asks for support in greatly increasing the establishment he
has already begun.
§ 18. Encouraged by the support he received and still more
by his love for the children and his own too sanguine disposition
Pestalozzi enlarged his undertaking. The consequence
was bankruptcy. Several causes conspired to bring about
this result. Whatever he might do for the children, he could
not educate the parents, and these were many of them beggars
with the ordinary vices of their class. With the usual discernment
of such people they soon came to the conclusion that
Pestalozzi was making a fortune out of their children’s labour;
so they haunted Neuhof, treated Pestalozzi with the greatest
insolence, and often induced their children to run away in their
new clothes. This would account for much, but there was
another cause of failure that accounted for a great deal more.
This was Pestalozzi’s extreme incapacity as an administrator.
Even his industrial experiment he carried on in such a way that
it proved a source of expense rather than of profit. He says
himself, that, contrary to his own principles, which should
have led him to begin at the beginning and lay a good
foundation in teaching, he put the children to work that was
too difficult for them, wanted them to spin fine thread before
their hands got steadiness and skill by exercise on the
coarser kind, and to manufacture muslin before they could
turn out well-made cotton goods. “Before I was aware of
it,” he adds, “I was deeply involved in debt, and the greater
part of my dear wife’s property and expectations had, as it
were, in an instant gone up in smoke.”
§ 19. The precise arrangement made with the creditors
we do not know. The bare facts remain that the children
were sent away, and that the land was let for the creditors’
benefit; but Pestalozzi remained in the house. This was
settled in 1780.
§ 20. We have now come to the most gloomy period in
Pestalozzi’s history, a period of eighteen years, and those
the best years in a man’s life, which Pestalozzi spent in great
distress from poverty without and doubt and despondency
within. When he got into difficulties, his friends, he tells
us, loved him without hope: “in the whole surrounding
district it was everywhere said that I was a lost man, that
nothing more could be done for me.” “In his only too
elegant country house,” we are told, “he often wanted
money, bread, fuel, to protect himself against hunger and
cold.” “Eighteen years!—what a time for a soul like his
to wait! History passes lightly over such a period. Ten,
twenty, thirty years—it makes but a cipher difference if
nothing great happens in them. But with what agony must
he have seen day after day, year after year gliding by, who
in his fervent soul longed to labour for the good of mankind
and yet looked in vain for the opportunity!” (Palmer.)
§ 21. But he who was always ready to sacrifice himself for
others now found someone, and that a stranger, ready to
make a great sacrifice for him. A servant, named Elizabeth
Naef, heard of the disaster and distress at Neuhof, and her
master having just died she resolved to go to the rescue. At
first Pestalozzi refused her help. He did not wish her to
share the poverty of his household, and he felt himself out of
sympathy with her “evangelical” form of piety. But
Elizabeth declared she had come to stay, and when
Pestalozzi found he could not shake her determination he
consented, saying, “Well, you will find after all that God
is in our house also.”
§ 22. To this pious sensible but illiterate peasant woman
Pestalozzi was fond of tracing many of his ideas. She was
the original of his Gertrude, and it was of her he wrote:
“God’s sun pursues its path from morning to evening; yet
your eye detects no movement, your ear no sound. Even
when it goes down, you know that it will rise again and
continue to ripen the fruits of the earth. Extreme as it may
seem, I am not ashamed to say that this is an image of
Gertrude as of every woman who makes her house a temple
of the living God and wins heaven for her husband and
children.” (Leonard and Gertrude). She was invaluable at
Neuhof and restored comfort to the household. In after years
she managed the establishment at Yverdun and married
one of the Krüsis who were Pestalozzi’s assistants.
§ 23. Writing of the gloomy years at Neuhof Pestalozzi
afterwards said; “My head was grey, yet I was still a child.
With a heart in which all the foundations of life were shaken,
I still pursued in those stormy times my favourite object,
but my way was one of prejudice, of passion and of
error.” But with Pestalozzi self-depreciation had “almost
grown the habit of his soul,” and in his writings at Neuhof
at this period we find no traces of this prejudice, passion and
error from which he supposes himself to have suffered. He
certainly did not abandon his love of humanity; and in
his sacrifice for it he sought a religious basis. In these
Neuhof days he wrote: “Christ teaches us by His example
and doctrine to sacrifice not only our possessions but ourselves
for the good of others, and shews us that nothing we
have received is absolutely ours but is merely entrusted to
us by God to be piously employed in the service of charity.”
(Quoted by Guimps. R’s trans. 72.) Whatever were his
doubts and difficulties, he never swerved from pursuing the
great object of his life, and nothing could cloud his
mind as to the true method of attaining that object. As he
afterwards wrote to Gessner (Wie Gertrud u.s.w.), “Even
while I was the sport of men who condemned me I never
lost sight for a moment of the object I had in view, which
was the removal of the causes of the misery that I saw on
all sides of me. My strength too kept on increasing, and my
own misfortunes taught me valuable truths. I knew the
people as no one else did. What deceived no one else
always deceived me, but what deceived everybody else
deceived me no longer.... My own sufferings have
enabled me to understand the sufferings of the people and
their causes as no man without suffering can understand
them. I suffered what the people suffered and saw them as
no one else saw them; and strange as it may seem, I was
never more profoundly convinced of the fundamental truths
on which I had based my undertaking than when I saw
that I had failed.” (R’s. Guimps 74.)
§ 24. Pestalozzi still had a few friends who did not
despise the dreamer of dreams. Among them was the
editor of the Ephemerides, Iselin. This friend encouraged
him to write, and there soon appeared in the Ephemerides
a series of reflexions under the title of “The Evening Hour
of a Hermit.” Not many editors would have printed these
aphorisms, and they attracted little or no attention at the
time, but they have proved worth attending to. “The
fruit of Pestalozzi’s past years, they are,” says Raumer,
“at the same time the seed-corn of the years that were to
come, the plan and key to his action in pedagogy....
The drawing of the architect of genius contains his work,
even though the architect himself has not skill enough to
carry out his own design.” (Quoted by Otto Fischer).[152]
§ 25. What was the connexion between Pestalozzi’s
belief at this season and complete belief in dogmatic
Christianity? The question is one that will always be asked
and can never, I think, be fully answered. In the days
preceding the French Revolution it was a proof of wisdom
to “Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, and cling to
Faith,” even though the Faith were “beyond the forms of
Faith” (see Tennyson’s Ancient Sage). But Pestalozzi did
far more than this. He traced all virtue and strength in
the people to belief in the Fatherhood of God; and he
saw in unbelief the severance of all the bonds of society.
The “Hermit” does not indeed use the phrases common
among “evangelical” Christians, but that he was indeed a
Christian is established not only by the general tone of his
aphorisms but still more clearly by his last words: “The
Man of God, who with his sufferings and death has restored
to humanity the lost feeling of the child’s disposition towards
God is the Redeemer of the world; he is the sacrificed
Priest of the Lord; he is the Mediator between God and
God-forgetting mankind. His teaching is pure justice,
educating philosophy of the people; it is the revelation of
God the Father to the lost race of his children.”
§ 26. The “Evening Hour” remaining almost unnoticed,
Pestalozzi’s friends urged him to write something in a more
popular form. So he set to work on a tale which should
depict the life of the peasantry and shew the causes of their
degradation and the cure. With extraordinary rapidity he
wrote between the lines of an old account book the first
part of his “Leonard and Gertrude.” The book, which was
complete in itself, and through the good offices of Iselin (of
the Ephemerides), soon found a publisher, suddenly sprang
into immense popularity, a popularity of which nothing but
the “continuations” could ever have deprived it. In the
works of a great artist we see natural objects represented
with perfect fidelity and yet with a life breathed into them
by genius, which is wanting or at least is not visible to
common eyes in the originals. Just so do we find Swiss
peasant life depicted by Pestalozzi. The delineation is
evidently true to nature; and, at the same time, shows
Nature as she reveals herself to genius. But for this work
something more than genius was necessary, viz., sympathy
and love. In the preface to the first edition, he says, “In
that which I here relate, and which I have, for the most
part, seen and heard myself in the course of an active life,
I have taken care not once to add my own opinion to what
I saw and heard the people themselves saying, feeling;
believing, judging, and attempting.” In a later edition
(1800) he says, “I desired nothing then, and I desire
nothing else now, as the object of my life, but the welfare
of the people, whom I love, and whom I feel to be miserable
as few feel them to be miserable, because I have with them
borne their sufferings as few have borne them.”
§ 27. Wherever German was read this book excited vast
interest, and though it seemed to most people only a good
tale, it met with some more discerning readers. The Bern
Agricultural Society sent the author their thanks and a gold
medal, and Pestalozzi was at once recognised as a man who
understood the peasantry and had good ideas for raising
them. The book is and must remain a classic, but
Pestalozzi in his zeal to spread the truth added again and
again “continuations,” and these became less and less
popular in the method of exposition.[153]
§ 28. Here and there we get glimpses of the trials
Pestalozzi had gone through in his industrial experiment.
“The love and patience,” he writes, “with which Gertrude
bore with the disorderly and untrained little ones was almost
past belief. Their eyes were often anywhere but on their
yarn, so that this would now be too thick, and now too thin.
When they had spoiled it, they would watch for a moment
when Gertrude was not looking, and throw it out of the
window by the handful, until they found that she discovered
the trick when she weighed their work at night.”
(E. C’s. trans., p. 122.) And in this connexion Pestalozzi
preached his doctrine of perfect attainment. “‘What you
can’t do blindfold,’” said Harry, “‘you can’t do at all.’” (ib.)
§ 29. “Gertrude,” we are told, “seemed quite unable to
explain her method in words;” and here no doubt Pestalozzi
was speaking of himself; but like Gertrude he “would let
fall some significant remark which went to the root of the
whole matter of education.” As an instance we may take
what Gertrude said to the schoolmaster: “You should do
for the children what their parents fail to do for them. The
reading, writing, and arithmetic are not after all what they
most need. It is all well and good for them to learn something,
but the really important thing for them is to be something.”
When this truth is fully realized by teachers and
school managers there will be some hope for national
education.
§ 30. “Although Gertrude exerted herself to develop very
early the manual dexterity of her children, she was in no
haste for them to learn to read and write; but she took
pains to teach them early how to speak: for, as she said,
‘Of what use is it for a person to be able to read and
write if he cannot speak, since reading and writing are only
an artificial sort of speech.’ ... She did not adopt the
tone of an instructor towards the children ... and her
verbal instruction seemed to vanish in the spirit of her real
activity, in which it always had its source. The result of
her system was that each child was skilful, intelligent, and
active to the full extent that its age and development
allowed.” (Ib. p. 130.)
§ 31. In this book we see that knowledge is treated as
valueless unless it has a basis in action. “The pastor was
soon convinced that all verbal instruction in so far as it aims
at true human wisdom and at the highest goal of this
wisdom, true religion, ought to be subordinated to a constant
training in practical domestic labour.... So he
strove to lead the children without many words to a quiet
industrious life, and thus to lay the foundations of a silent
worship of God and love of humanity. To this end he
connected every word of his brief religious teachings with
their actual every-day experience, so that when he spoke of
God and eternity, it seemed to them as if he were speaking
of father and mother, house and home; in short of the
things with which they were most familiar” (p. 156). Thus
he built on the foundation laid by the schoolmaster, who
“cared for the children’s heads as he did for their hearts,
and demanded that whatever entered them should be plain
and clear as the silent moon in the sky. To insure this he
taught them to see and hear with accuracy, and cultivated
their powers of attention” (p. 157).
§ 32. With all his love for the children, an element of
severity was not wanting. Pestalozzi maintained that “love
was only useful in the education of men when in conjunction
with fear: for they must learn to root out thorns
and thistles, which they never do of their own accord, but
only under compulsion and in consequence of training”
(p. 157).
§ 33. Just at the end of the book “the Duke” appoints
a commission to report on the success of the Bonal experiment,
and Pestalozzi makes him give the following order:
“To insure thoroughness there must be among the examiners
men skilled in law and finance, merchants, clergymen,
government officials, schoolmasters, and physicians,
besides women of different ranks and conditions of life who
shall view the matter with their woman’s eyes and be sure
there is nothing visionary in the background” (p. 180). In
this respect Pestalozzi is in advance of us still. No woman
has yet sat on an educational commission.
§ 34. Thus we find Pestalozzi at the age of thirty-five
turning author, and for the next six or seven years he worked
indefatigably with his pen. Most men of genius have some
leading purpose which unites their varied activities, and
this was specially true of Pestalozzi. He never lost sight
of his one object, which was the elevation of the people;
and this he held to be attainable only by means of education
properly so called. The success of the first part of Leonard
and Gertrude he now endeavoured to turn to account in
spreading true ideas of education. With this intent he
published Christopher and Eliza: My Second Book for the
People (1782), which was a kind of commentary on Leonard
and Gertrude. But the public wished to be amused, not
taught; and the book was a failure. He was thus driven
into the attempt already mentioned to catch the public ear
by continuing Leonard and Gertrude, thus endangering his
first and, as it proved, his only great success in literature.
§ 35. To gain circulation for his ideas he also started a
weekly paper called the Swiss Journal, and issued it regularly
throughout the year 1782; but the subscribers were
so few that he was then obliged to give it up. I have not
the smallest doubt that it was, as Guimps says, full of wisdom,
but not the kind of wisdom that readers of periodicals are
likely to care for.[154]
§ 36. In the Swiss Journal we get a hint of the analogy
between the development of the plant and of the man.
This analogy, often as it had been observed before, was
never before so fruitful as it became in the hands of
Pestalozzi and Froebel. The passage quoted by Guimps is
this: “Teach me, summer day, that man formed from the
dust of the earth, grows and ripens like the plant rooted in
the soil.”
§ 37. Between the close of the year 1787 and 1797
Pestalozzi did not publish anything. Though he had
become famous, had made the acquaintance of the greatest
men in Germany, such as Goethe, Wieland, Herder, and
Fichte, and had been declared a “Citizen of the French
Republic,” together with Bentham, Tom Payne, Wilberforce,
Clarkson, Washington, Madison, Klopstock, Kozciusko, &c.,
he was nearly starving, and, naturally enough in that state
of affairs both private and public, he was in great despondency.
As we have seen, his whole life and work were
founded on religion and on the only religion possible for us,
the Christian religion; but carried away by his political
radicalism he seems at this time to have doubted whether
Christianity was more than the highest human wisdom. In
October, 1793, he wrote to a friend in Berlin: “I doubt,
not because I look on doubt as the truth, but because the
sum of the impressions of my life has driven faith with its
blessings from my soul. Thus impelled by my fate I see
nothing more in Christianity but the purest and noblest
teaching of the victory of the spirit over the flesh, the one
possible means of raising our nature to its true nobility, or
in other words of establishing the empire of the reason over
the senses by the development of the purest feelings of
the heart.” If this was the lowest point to which Pestalozzi’s
faith sank in the days of the Revolution, it remained for
practical purposes higher than the faith of most professing
Christians then and since.
§ 38. At this time we find him complaining: “My
agriculture swallows up all my time. I am longing for
winter with its leisure. My time passes like a shadow.”
He was then forty-six years of age and seemed to himself
to have done nothing.
§ 39. Another five years he had to wait before he found
an opportunity for action. During this time, impelled by
Fichte, he endeavoured to give his ideas philosophic completeness,
and after labouring for three years with almost
incredible toil he published in 1797 his “Inquiry into the
Course of Nature in the Development of the Human
Race.” This book is pronounced even by his biographer
Guimps to be “prolix and obscure,” and, says Pestalozzi,
“nobody understood me.” But even in this book there was
much wisdom, had the world cared to learn; but the world
had then no place for Pestalozzi, and as he says at the end
of this book, “without even asking whether the fault was
his or another’s, it crushed him with its iron hammer as the
mason crushes a useless stone.” He was, however, not
actually crushed, and a place was in time found for him.
§ 40. The world might be pardoned for neglecting
an Inquiry which even a biographer finds “prolix and
obscure.” But why could it see nothing in another book
which Pestalozzi published in the same year, “Figures to
my ABC Book,” or according to its later title, “Fables,” a
series of apologues as witty and wise as those of Lessing.[155]
§ 41. As I have said already (supra p. 239) there seems
a marked distinction between thinkers and doers, at least
in education, and we seldom find a man great in both. But
with all his weakness as a practical man Pestalozzi proved
great both as a thinker and a doer. He not only thought
out what should be done, but he also made splendid efforts
to do it. His first attempt at Neuhof was, as we have seen,
all his own; so was the next at Stanz; but afterwards he
had to work with others, and the work would have come to
a standstill if he had not gained the co-operation of the
magistrates, the parents of the children, and his own
assistants. So he never again had the free hand, or at least
the free thought which bore such good fruit in his enforced
cessation from practice in the years between 1780 and 1798.
It is well then to ask, as his biographer Guimps has asked,
what was the main outcome of Pestalozzi’s thought before
he plunged into action a second time in 1798.
§ 42. Pestalozzi set himself to find a means of rescuing
the people from their poverty and degradation. This he
held would last as long as their moral and intellectual
poverty lasted; so there was no hope except in an education
that should make them better and more intelligent. In
studying the children even of the most degraded parents he
found the seeds, as it were, of a wealth of faculties, sentiments,
tastes, and capabilities, which, if developed, might
make them reasonable and upright human beings. But
what was called education did nothing of the kind. Instead
of developing the noblest part of the child’s nature it
neglected this entirely, and bringing to the child the knowledge,
ideas, and feelings of others, it tried to make him
“learn” them. So “education” did little beyond stifling
the child’s individuality under a mass of borrowed ideas.
The schoolmaster worked, as it were, from without to within.
This Pestalozzi would change, and make education begin in
the child and work from within outwards. Acting on this
principle he sought for some means of developing the
child’s inborn faculties, and he found as he says: “Nature
develops all the powers of humanity by exercising them;
they increase with use.” (Evening Hour, Aph. 22.) No
means can be found of exercising the higher faculties which
can be compared with the actual relations of daily life; so
Pestalozzi declares: “The pure sentiment of truth and
wisdom is formed in the narrow circle of the relationships
which affect us, the circumstances which suggest our actions,
and the common knowledge which we cannot do without.”
And taking as his starting-point the needs, desires, and connexions
of actual life he was naturally led to associate the
work of the body with that of the mind, to develop industry
and study side by side, to combine the workshop and the
school. With regard to instruction he was never tired of
insisting on the importance of thorough mastery in the
first elements, and there was to be no advance till this
mastery was attained. (See what “Harry” says, supra
p. 306.) “The schools,” he says (E. H., No. 28), “hastily
substitute an artificial method of words for the truer method
of Nature which knows no hurry but waits.”
§ 43. In this account of Pestalozzi’s doctrine before 1798
I have as usual followed M. Guimps. According to him
Pestalozzi had discovered “a principle which settles the law
of man’s development, and is the fundamental principle of
education.” This principle M. Guimps briefly states as
follows: “All the real knowledge, useful powers, and noble
sentiments that a man can acquire are but the extension of
his individuality by the development of the powers and
faculties that God has put in him, and by their assimilation
of the elements supplied by the outer world. There exists
for this development and the work of assimilation a natural
and necessary order, an order which the school mostly sets
at nought.”
§ 44. Now we come to the period of Pestalozzi’s practical
activity. In 1798 Switzerland was overrun by the French.
Everything was remodelled after the French pattern; and
in conformity with the existing phase in the model country
the government of Switzerland was declared to be in the
hands of five “Directors.” Pestalozzi was a Radical, and
he at once set to work to serve the new government with
his pen. The Directors gladly welcomed such an ally as the
author of Leonard and Gertrude, and they made him
editor of a newspaper intended to diffuse the revolutionary
principles among the people. Naturally enough they supposed
that he, like other people, “wanted” something; but
when asked what he wanted he replied simply that he
wished to be a schoolmaster. The Directors, especially Le
Grand, took a genuine interest in education, and were quite
willing that Pestalozzi should be allowed a free hand in his
“new departure.” They therefore agreed to find the funds
with which Pestalozzi might open a new Institution in
Aargau.
§ 45. But the editorship and the plans for the new Institution
came to an abrupt ending. The Catholic cantons
did not acquiesce in giving up their local liberties and being
subjected to a new government in the hands of men whom
they regarded as heretics and even atheists. Consequently
those missionaries of enlightenment, the French troops, at
once fell upon them and slaughtered many without distinction
of age or sex. The French, we are told, did not
expect to meet with resistance; so their light became
lightning and struck dead the stupid people who could
not or would not see. “Our soldiers” (it is Michelet who
speaks) “were ferocious at Stanz.” (Nos Fils, 217). This
ferocity at Stanz in September, 1798, was in secret disapproved
of by the Directors, who were nominally responsible
for it. But all they could do was to provide in a
measure for the “111 infirm old people, the 169 orphans,
and 237 other children,” who were left totally destitute.
Le Grand proposed to Pestalozzi that he should, for the
present, give up his other plans and go to Stanz (which is on
the Lake of Lucerne) to take charge of the orphan and
destitute children. Pestalozzi was not the man to refuse
such a task as this. He at once set out. Some buildings
connected with an Ursuline convent were, without the consent
of the nuns, made over to him. Workmen were
employed upon them, and as soon as a single room could
be inhabited Pestalozzi received forty children into it.
This was in January, 1799, in the middle of a remarkably
cold winter.
§ 46. Thus under circumstances perhaps less unfavourable
than they seemed began the five months’ trial of
pure Pestalozzianism. The physical difficulties were immense.
At first Pestalozzi and all the children were shut
up day and night in a single room. He had throughout
no helper of any kind but one female servant, and he had
to do everything for the children, even what was most
menial and disgusting. As soon as possible the number
was increased, and before long was nearly eighty, some of
the children having to go out to sleep. But great as were
the material difficulties, those arising from the opposition and
hatred of the people he came to succour were still worse.
To them he seemed no philanthropist, but only a servant
of the devil, an agent of the wicked government which had
sent its ferocious soldiers and slaughtered the parents of
these poor children, a Protestant who came to complete the
work by destroying their souls. Pestalozzi, who was making
heroic efforts in their behalf, seems to have wondered at the
animosity shown him by the people of Stanz; but on
looking back we must admit that in the circumstances it
was only natural.
§ 47. And yet in spite of enormous difficulties of every
kind Pestalozzi triumphed. Within the five months he
spent with them he attached to him the hearts of the
children, and produced in them a marvellous physical,
intellectual, and moral change. “If ever there was a
miracle,” says Michelet, “it was here. It was the reward
of a strong faith, of a wonderful expansion of heart. He
believed, he willed, he succeeded.” (Nos Fils 223.)
What was the great act of faith by which Pestalozzi
triumphed? According to M. Michelet he stood before
these vicious and degraded children and said, “Man is
good.” Pestalozzi does not tell us this himself; and as a
benighted believer in Christianity, I venture to differ from
the enlightened Michelet. As far as I can judge from
Pestalozzi’s own teaching the source of his strength was his
belief in the goodness not of Man but of God.
§ 48. But encouraged and rewarded as he was by the
result, Pestalozzi could not long have maintained this fearful
exertion. He was over fifty years of age, and he must soon
have succumbed; indeed he was already spitting blood when
in June, 1799, the French soldiers, whose action had
brought him to Stanz, drove him away again. Falling back
before the Austrians they had need of a hospital in Stanz,
and demanded the buildings occupied by Pestalozzi and the
children. So almost all the children had to be sent away,
and then at last Pestalozzi took thought for his own health
and retired to some baths in the mountains. But most of
his peculiarities in teaching may be said to date from the
experience at Stanz; and I will therefore give this experience
in his own words.
§ 49. The following is the account given in his letter to
his friend Gessner. (I have in part availed myself of Mr.
Russell’s translation of Guimps, pp. 149 ff.)
“My friend, once more I awake from a dream; once more I see my
work destroyed, and my failing strength wasted.
“But, however weak and unfortunate my attempt, a friend of
humanity will not grudge a few moments to consider the reasons which
convince me that some day a more fortunate posterity will certainly
take up the thread of my hopes at the place where it is now broken....
“I once more made known, as well as I could, my old wishes for the
education of the people. In particular, I laid my whole scheme before
Legrand (then one of the Directors), who not only took a warm interest
in it, but agreed with me that the Republic stood in urgent need of a
reform of public education. He also agreed with me that much might
be done for the regeneration of the people by giving a certain number
of the poorest children an education which should be complete, but
which, far from lifting them out of their proper sphere, would but attach
them the more strongly to it.
“I limited my desires to this one point, Legrand helping me in
every possible way. He even thought my views so important that he
once said to me: ‘I shall not willingly give up my present post till
you have begun your work.’ ...
“It was my intention to try to find near Zurich or in Aargau a place
where I should be able to join industry and agriculture to the other
means of instruction, and so give my establishment all the development
necessary to its complete success. But the Unterwalden disaster
(September, 1798) left me no further choice in the matter. The
Government felt the urgent need of sending help to this unfortunate
district, and begged me for this once to make an attempt to put my
plans into execution in a place where almost everything that could have
made it a success was wanting.
“I went there gladly. I felt that the innocence of the people would
make up for what was wanting, and that their distress would, at any
rate, make them grateful.
“My eagerness to realise at last the great dream of my life would have
led me to work on the very highest peaks of the Alps, and, so to speak,
without fire or water.
“For a house, the Government made over to me the new part of the
Ursuline convent at Stanz, but when I arrived it was still uncompleted,
and not in any way fitted to receive a large number of children. Before
anything else could be done, then, the house itself had to be got ready.
The Government gave the necessary orders, and Rengger pushed on the
work with much zeal and useful activity. I was never indeed allowed
to want for money.
“In spite, however, of the admirable support I received, all this
preparation took time, and time was precisely what we could least
afford, since it was of the highest importance that a number of
children, whom the war had left homeless and destitute, should be
received at once.
“I was still without everything but money when the children crowded
in; neither kitchen, rooms, nor beds were ready to receive them. At
first this was a source of inconceivable confusion. For the first few
weeks I was shut up in a very small room; the weather was bad, and
the alterations, which made a great dust and filled the corridors with
rubbish, rendered the air very unhealthy.
“The want of beds compelled me at first to send some of the poor
children home at night; these children generally came back the next
day covered with vermin. Most of them on their arrival were very
degenerated specimens of humanity. Many of them had a sort
of chronic skin-disease, which almost prevented their walking, or sores
on their heads, or rags full of vermin; many were almost skeletons,
with haggard, careworn faces, and shrinking looks; some brazen,
accustomed to begging, hypocrisy, and all sorts of deceit; others broken
by misfortune, patient, suspicious, timid, and entirely devoid of
affection. There were also some spoilt children amongst them who had
known the sweets of comfort, and were therefore full of pretensions.
These kept to themselves, affected to despise the little beggars their
comrades, and to suffer from this equality, and seemed to find it impossible
to adapt themselves to the ways of the house, which differed
too much from their old habits. But what was common to them all
was a persistent idleness, resulting from their want of physical and
mental activity. Out of every ten children there was hardly one who
knew his A B C; as for any other knowledge, it was, of course, out of
the question.
“The entire absence of school learning was what troubled me least,
for I trusted in the natural powers that God bestows on even the poorest
and most neglected children. I had observed for a long time that
behind their coarseness, shyness, and apparent incapacity, are hidden
the finest faculties, the most precious powers; and now, even amongst
these poor creatures by whom I was surrounded at Stanz, marked
natural abilities soon began to show themselves. I knew how useful
the common needs of life are in teaching men the relations of things, in
bringing out their natural intelligence, in forming their judgment, and
in arousing faculties which, buried, as it were, beneath the coarser
elements of their nature, cannot become active and useful till they are
set free. It was my object then to set free these faculties, and bring
them to bear on the pure and simple circumstances of domestic life, for
I was convinced this was all that was wanting, and these natural
faculties would shew themselves capable of raising the hearts and minds
of my pupils to all that I could desire.
“I saw then how my wishes might be carried out; and I was persuaded
that my affection would change the state of my children just as quickly
as the spring sun would awake to new life the earth that winter had
benumbed. I was not deceiving myself: before the spring sun melted
the snow of our mountains my children were hardly to be recognised.
“But I must not anticipate. Just as in the evening I often mark the
quick growth of the gourd by the side of the house, so I want you to
mark the growth of my plant; and, my friend, I will not hide from
you the worm which sometimes fastens on the leaves, sometimes even
on the heart.
“I opened the establishment with no other helper but a woman-servant.
I had not only to teach the children, but to look after their
physical needs. I preferred being alone, and, unfortunately, it was the
only way to reach my end. No one in the world would have cared to
enter into my views for the education of children, and at that time I
knew scarcely any one even capable of it.
“In proportion as the men whom I might have called to my aid were
highly educated just so far they failed to understand me, and were
incapable of confining themselves even in theory to the simple starting-points
which I sought to come back to. All their views about the
organisation and requirements of the enterprise differed entirely from
mine. What they specially objected to was the notion that the enterprise
might be carried out without the aid of any artificial means, and
simply by the influence of nature in the environment of the children,
and by the activity aroused in them by the needs of their daily life.
“And yet it was precisely upon this idea that I based all my hope of
success; it was, as it were, a basis for innumerable other points of view.
“Experienced teachers, then, could not help me; still less boorish,
ignorant men. I had nothing to put into the hands of assistants to
guide them, nor any results or apparatus by which I could make my
ideas clearer to them. Thus, whether I would or no, I had first to
make my experiment alone, and collect facts to illustrate the essential
features of my system before I could venture to look for outside help.
Indeed, in my then position, nobody could help me. I knew that I must
help myself and shaped my plans accordingly.
“I wanted to prove by my experiment that if public education is to
have any real value for humanity, it must imitate the means which make
the merit of domestic education; for it is my opinion that if school
teaching does not take into consideration the circumstances of family life,
and everything else that bears on a man’s general education, it can only
lead to an artificial and methodical dwarfing of humanity.
“In any good education, the mother must be able to judge daily, nay
hourly, from the child’s eyes, lips, and face, of the slightest change in
his soul. The power of the educator, too, must be that of a father,
quickened by the general circumstances of domestic life.
“Such was the foundation upon which I built. I determined
that there should not be a minute in the day when my children should
not be aware from my face and my lips that my heart was theirs, that
their happiness was my happiness, and their pleasures my pleasures.
“Man readily accepts what is good, and the child readily listens to
it; but it is not for you that he wants it, master and educator, but for
himself. The good to which you would lead him must not depend on
your capricious humour or passion; it must be a good which is good in
itself and by the nature of things, and which the child can recognize as
good. He must feel the necessity of your will in things which concern
his comfort before he can be expected to obey it.
“Whatever he does gladly, whatever gains him credit, whatever
tends to accomplish his great hopes, whatever awakens his powers and
enables him truly to say I can, all this he wills.
“But this will is not aroused by words; it is aroused only by a kind
of complete culture which gives feelings and powers. Words do not
give the thing itself, but only an expression, a clear picture, of the thing
which we already have in our minds.
“Before all things I was bound to gain the confidence and the
love of the children. I was sure that if I succeeded in this all the rest
would come of itself. Friend, only think how I was placed, and how
great were the prejudices of the people and of the children themselves,
and you will comprehend what difficulties I had to overcome.”
After narrating what we already know he goes on:
“Think, my friend, of this temper of the people, of my weakness,
of my poor appearance, of the ill-will to which I was almost publicly
exposed, and then judge how much I had to endure for the sake of
carrying on my work.
“And yet, however painful this want of help and support was to me,
it was favourable to the success of my undertaking, for it compelled me
to be always everything for my children. I was alone with them from
morning till night. It was from me that they received all that could
do them good, soul and body. All needful help, consolation, and
instruction they received direct from me. Their hands were in mine,
my eyes were fixed on theirs.
“We wept and smiled together. They forgot the world and Stanz;
they only knew that they were with me and I with them. We shared
our food and drink. I had about me neither family, friends, nor
servants; nothing but them. I was with them in sickness, and in
health, and when they slept. I was the last to go to bed, and the first
to get up. In the bedroom I prayed with them, and, at their own
request, taught them till they fell asleep. Their clothes and bodies
were intolerably filthy, but I looked after both myself, and was thus
constantly exposed to the risk of contagion.
“This is how it was that these children gradually became so attached
to me, some indeed so deeply that they contradicted their parents and
friends when they heard evil things said about me. They felt that I
was being treated unfairly, and loved me, I think, the more for it.
But of what avail is it for the young nestlings to love their mother when
the bird of prey that is bent on destroying them is constantly hovering near?
“However, the first results of these principles and of this line of
action were not always satisfactory, nor, indeed, could they be so.
The children did not always understand my love. Accustomed to
idleness, unbounded liberty, and the fortuitous and lawless pleasures of
an almost wild life, they had come to the convent in the expectation of
being well fed, and of having nothing to do. Some of them soon
discovered that they had been there long enough, and wanted to go
away again; they talked of the school fever that attacks children when
they are kept employed all day long. This dissatisfaction, which
showed itself during the first months, resulted principally from the fact
that many of them were ill, the consequence either of the sudden
change of diet and habits, or of the severity of the weather and the
dampness of the building in which we lived. We all coughed a great
deal, and several children were seized with a peculiar sort of fever.
This fever, which always began with sickness, was very general in the
district. Cases of sickness, however, not followed by fever, were not
at all rare, and were an almost natural consequence of the change of
food. Many people attributed the fever to bad food, but the facts soon
showed them to be wrong, for not a single child succumbed.
“On the return of spring it was evident to everybody that the
children were all doing well, growing rapidly, and gaining colour.
Certain magistrates and ecclesiastics, who saw them some time afterwards,
stated that they had improved almost beyond recognition....
“Months passed before I had the satisfaction of having my hand
grasped by a single grateful parent. But the children were won over
much sooner. They even wept sometimes when their parents met me
or left me without a word of salutation. Many of them were perfectly
happy, and used to say to their mothers: ‘I am better here than at
home.’ At home, indeed, as they readily told me when we talked
alone, they had been ill-used and beaten, and had often had neither
bread to eat nor bed to lie down upon. And yet these same children
would sometimes go off with their mothers the very next morning.
“A good many others, however, soon saw that by staying with me
they might both learn something and become something, and these never
failed in their zeal and attachment. Before very long their conduct
was imitated by others who had not altogether the same feelings.
“Those who ran away were the worst in character and the least
capable. But they were not incited to go till they were free of their
vermin and their rags. Several were sent to me with no other purpose
than that of being taken away again as soon as they were clean and
well clothed.
“But after a time their better judgment overcame the defiant hostility
with which they arrived. In 1799[156] I had nearly eighty children.
Most of them were bright and intelligent, some even remarkably so.
“For most of them study was something entirely new. As soon as
they found that they could learn, their zeal was indefatigable, and in a
few weeks children who had never before opened a book, and could
hardly repeat a Pater Noster or an Ave, would study the whole day
long with the keenest interest. Even after supper, when I used to say
to them, ‘Children, will you go to bed, or learn something?’ they
would generally answer, especially in the first month or two, ‘Learn
something.’ It is true that afterwards, when they had to get up very
early, it was not quite the same.
“But this first eagerness did much towards starting the establishment
on the right lines, and making the studies the success they ultimately
were, a success indeed, which far surpassed my expectations. And
yet great beyond expression were my difficulties. I did not as yet find
it possible to organise the studies properly.
“Neither my trust nor my zeal had been able to overcome either the
intractability of individuals or the want of coherence in the whole
experiment. The general order of the establishment, I felt, must be
based upon order of a higher character. As this higher order did not
yet exist, I had to attempt to create it; for without this foundation I
could not hope to organise properly either the teaching or the general
management of the place, nor should I have wished to do so. I wanted
everything to result not from a preconceived plan, but from my
relations with the children. The high principles and educating forces
I was seeking, I looked for from the harmonious common life of my
children, from their common attention, activity, and needs. It was not,
then, from any external organisation that I looked for the regeneration
of which they stood so much in need. If I had employed constraint,
regulations, and lectures, I should, instead of winning and ennobling
my children’s hearts, have repelled them and made them bitter, and
thus been farther than ever from my aim. First of all, I had to arouse
in them pure, moral, and noble feelings, so that afterwards, in external
things, I might be sure of their ready attention, activity, and obedience.
I had, in short, to follow the high precept of Jesus Christ, ‘Cleanse first
that which is within, that the outside may be clean also; and if ever
the truth of this precept was made manifest, it was made manifest then.
“My one aim was to make their new life in common, and their new
powers, awaken a feeling of brotherhood amongst the children, and
make them affectionate, just, and considerate.
“I was successful in gaining my aims. Amongst these seventy wild
beggar-children there soon existed such peace, friendship, and cordial
relations as are rare even between actual brothers and sisters.
“The principle to which I endeavoured to conform all my conduct
was as follows: Endeavour, first, to broaden your children’s
sympathies, and, by satisfying their daily needs, to bring love and
kindness into such unceasing contact with their impressions and their
activity, that these sentiments may be engrafted in their hearts; then
try to give them such judgment and tact as will enable them to make a
wise, sure, and abundant use of these virtues in the circle which
surrounds them. In the last place, do not hesitate to touch on the
difficult questions of good and evil, and the words connected with
them. And you must do this especially in connection with the ordinary
events of every day, upon which your whole teaching in these matters
must be founded, so that the children may be reminded of their own
feelings, and supplied, as it were, with solid facts upon which to base
their conception of the beauty and justice of the moral life. Even though
you should have to spend whole nights in trying to express in two
words what others say in twenty, never regret the loss of sleep.
“I gave my children very few explanations; I taught them neither
morality nor religion. But sometimes, when they were perfectly quiet,
I used to say to them, ‘Do you not think that you are better and more
reasonable when you are like this than when you are making a noise?’
When they clung round my neck and called me their father, I used to
say, ‘My children, would it be right to deceive your father? After
kissing me like this, would you like to do anything behind my back to
vex me?’ When our talk turned on the misery of the country, and
they were feeling glad at the thought of their own happier lot, I would
say, ‘How good God is to have given man a compassionate heart!’ ...
They perfectly understood that all they did was but a preparation
for their future activity, and they looked forward to happiness as
the certain result of their perseverance. That is why steady application
soon became easy to them, its object being in perfect accordance with
their wishes and their hopes. Virtue, my friend, is developed by this
agreement, just as the young plant thrives when the soil suits its nature,
and supplies the needs of its tender shoots.
“I witnessed the growth of an inward strength in my children,
which, in its general development, far surpassed my expectations, and
in its particular manifestations not only often surprised me, but touched
me deeply.
“When the neighbouring town of Altdorf was burnt down, I
gathered the children round me, and said, ‘Altdorf has been burnt
down; perhaps, at this very moment, there are a hundred children
there without home, food, or clothes; will you not ask our good
Government to let twenty of them come and live with us?’ I still
seem to see the emotion with which they answered, ‘Oh, yes, yes!’
‘But, my children,’ I said, ‘think well of what you are asking! Even
now we have scarcely money enough, and it is not at all certain that if
these poor children came to us, the Government would give us any
more than they do at present, so that you might have to work harder,
and share your clothes with these children, and sometimes perhaps go
without food. Do not say, then, that you would like them to come
unless you are quite prepared for all these consequences.’ After having
spoken to them in this way as seriously as I could, I made them repeat
all I had said, to be quite sure that they had thoroughly understood
what the consequences of their request would be. But they were not
in the least shaken in their decision, and all repeated, ‘Yes, yes, we
are quite ready to work harder, eat less, and share our clothes, for we
want them to come.’
“Some refugees from the Grisons having given me a few crowns for
my poor children, I at once called them and said, ‘These men are
obliged to leave their country; they hardly know where they will find
a home to-morrow, yet, in spite of their trouble, they have given me
this for you. Come and thank them.’ And the emotion of the
children brought tears to the eyes of the refugees.
“It was in this way that I strove to awaken the feeling of each
virtue before talking about it, for I thought it unwise to talk to children
on subjects which would compel them to speak without thoroughly
understanding what they were saying.
“I followed up this awakening of the sentiments by exercises intended
to teach the children self-control, so that all that was good in them
might be applied to the practical questions of every-day life.
“It will easily be understood that, in this respect, it was not possible
to organise any system of discipline for the establishment; that could
only come slowly, as the general work developed.
“Silence, as an aid to application, is perhaps the great secret of such
an institution. I found it very useful to insist on silence when I was
teaching, and also to pay particular attention to the attitude of my
children. I succeeded so well that the moment I asked for silence, I
could teach in quite a low voice. The children repeated my words all
together; and as there was no other sound, I was able to detect the
slightest mistakes of pronunciation. It is true that this was not always
so. Sometimes, whilst they repeated sentences after me, I would ask
them as if in fun to keep their eyes fixed on their middle fingers. It is
hardly credible how useful simple things of this sort sometimes are
as means to the very highest ends.
“One young girl, for instance, who had been little better than a
savage, by keeping her head and body upright, and not looking about,
made more progress in her moral education than any one would have
believed possible.
“These experiences have shown me that the mere habit of carrying
oneself well does much more for the education of the moral sentiments
than any amount of teaching and lectures in which this simple fact is
ignored.
“Thanks to the application of these principles, my children soon
became more open, more contented and more susceptible to every good
and noble influence than any one could possibly have foreseen when
they first came to me, so utterly devoid were they of ideas, good
feelings, and moral principles. As a matter of fact, this lack of
previous instruction was not a serious obstacle to me; indeed, it hardly
troubled me at all. I am inclined even to say that, in the simple
method I was following, it was often an advantage, for I had incomparably
less trouble to develop those children whose minds were still
blank, than those who had already acquired inaccurate ideas. The
former, too, were much more open than the latter to the influence of all
pure and simple sentiments.
“But when the children were obdurate and churlish, then I was
severe, and made use of corporal punishment.
“My dear friend, the pedagogical principle which says that we must
win the hearts and minds of our children by words alone without
having recourse to corporal punishment, is certainly good, and applicable
under favourable conditions and circumstances; but with children of
such widely different ages as mine, children for the most part beggars,
and all full of deeply-rooted faults, a certain amount of corporal punishment
was inevitable, especially as I was anxious to arrive surely,
speedily, and by the simplest means, at gaining an influence over them
all, for the sake of putting them all in the right road. I was compelled
to punish them, but it would be a mistake to suppose that I thereby, in
any way, lost the confidence of my pupils.
“It is not the rare and isolated actions that form the opinions and
feelings of children, but the impressions of every day and every hour.
From such impressions they judge whether we are kindly disposed
towards them or not, and this settles their general attitude towards us.
Their judgment of isolated actions depends upon this general attitude.
“This is how it is that punishments inflicted by parents rarely make
a bad impression. But it is quite different with schoolmasters and
teachers who are not with their children night and day, and have none
of those relations with them which result from life in common.
“My punishments never produced obstinacy; the children I had
beaten were quite satisfied if a moment afterwards I gave them my
hand and kissed them, and I could read in their eyes that the final
effect of my blows was really joy. The following is a striking instance
of the effect this sort of punishment sometimes had. One day one of
the children I liked best, taking advantage of my affection, unjustly
threatened one of his companions. I was very indignant, and my
hand did not spare him. He seemed at first almost broken-hearted, and
cried bitterly for at least a quarter of an hour. When I had gone out,
however, he got up, and going to the boy he had ill-treated, begged his
pardon, and thanked him for having spoken about his bad conduct.
My friend, this was no comedy; the child had never seen anything
like it before.
“It was impossible that this sort of treatment should produce a bad
impression on my children, because all day long I was giving them
proofs of my affection and devotion. They could not misread my
heart, and so they did not misjudge my actions. It was not the same
with the parents, friends, strangers, and teachers who visited us; but
that was natural. But I cared nothing for the opinion of the whole
world, provided my children understood me.
“I always did my best, therefore, to make them clearly understand
the motives of my actions in all matters likely to excite their attention
and interest. This, my friend, brings me to the consideration of the
moral means to be employed in a truly domestic education.
“Elementary moral education, considered as a whole, includes three
distinct parts: the children’s moral sense must first be aroused by their
feelings being made active and pure; then they must be exercised in
self-control, so that they may give themselves to that which is right and
good; finally they must be brought to form for themselves, by reflection
and comparison, a just notion of the moral rights and duties which are
theirs by reason of their position and surroundings.
“So far, I have pointed out some of the means I employed to reach
the first two of these ends. They were just as simple for the third; for
I still made use of the impressions and experiences of their daily life to
give my children a true and exact idea of right and duty. When, for
instance, they made a noise, I appealed to their own judgment, and
asked them if it was possible to learn under such conditions. I shall
never forget how strong and true I generally found their sense of
justice and reason, and how this sense increased and, as it were, established
their good will.
“I appealed to them in all matters that concerned the establishment.
It was generally in the quiet evening hours that I appealed to their free
judgment. When, for instance, it was reported in the village that they
had not enough to eat, I said to them, ‘Tell me, my children, if you
are not better fed than you were at home? Think, and tell me yourselves,
whether it would be well to keep you here in such a way as
would make it impossible for you afterwards, in spite of all your application
and hard work, to procure what you had become accustomed to.
Do you lack anything that is really necessary? Do you think that I
could reasonably and justly do more for you? Would you have me
spend all the money that is entrusted to me on thirty or forty children
instead of on eighty as at present? Would that be just?’
“In the same way, when I heard that it was reported that I punished
them too severely, I said to them: ‘You know how I love you, my
children; but tell me would you like me to stop punishing you? Do
you think that in any other way I can free you from your deeply-rooted
bad habits, or make you always mind what I say?’ You were there,
my friend, and saw with your own eyes the sincere emotion with which
they answered, ‘We don’t complain about your hitting us. We wish
we never deserved it. But we want to be punished when we do wrong.’
“Many things that make no difference in a small household could
not be tolerated where the numbers were so great. I tried to make
my children feel this, always leaving them to decide what could or
could not be allowed. It is true that in my intercourse with them I
never spoke of liberty or equality; but, at the same time, I encouraged
them as far as possible to be free and unconstrained in my presence, with
the result that every day I marked more and more that clear open look
in their eyes which, in my experience, is the sign of a really liberal
education. I could not bear the thought of betraying the trust in me
which I saw shining in their eyes; I strove constantly to strengthen it
and at the same time their free individuality, that nothing might happen
to trouble those angel-eyes, the sight of which caused me the most
intense delight. But I could not endure frowns and anxious looks; I
myself smoothed away the frowns; then the children smiled, and even
among themselves they took care not to shew frowning faces.
“By reason of their great number, I had occasion nearly every day
to point out the difference between good and evil, justice and injustice.
Good and evil are equally contagious amongst so many children, so that,
according as the good or bad sentiments spread, the establishment was
likely to become either much better or much worse than if it had only contained
a smaller number. About this, too, I talked to them frankly. I shall
never forget the impression that my words produced when, in speaking
of a certain disturbance that had taken place among them, I said,
‘My children, it is the same with us as with every other household;
when the children are numerous, and each gives way to his bad habits,
the disorder becomes such that the weakest mother is driven to take
sensible measures in bringing up her children, and make them submit to
what is just and right. And that is what I must do now. If you do
not willingly assist in the maintenance of order, our establishment
cannot go on, you will fall back into your former condition, and your
misery—now that you have been accustomed to a good home, clean
clothes, and regular food—will be greater than ever. In this world, my
children, necessity and conviction alone can teach a man to behave;
when both fail him, he is hateful. Think for a moment what you
would become if you were safe from want and cared nothing for right,
justice, or goodness. At home there was always some one who looked
after you, and poverty itself forced you to many a right action; but with
convictions and reason to guide you, you will rise far higher than by
following necessity alone.’
“I often spoke to them in this way without troubling in the least
whether they each understood every word, feeling quite sure that
they all caught the general sense of what I said....
“Here are a few more thoughts which produced a great impression on
my children: ‘Do you know anything greater or nobler than to give
counsel to the poor, and comfort to the unfortunate? But if you remain
ignorant and incapable, you will be obliged, in spite of your good heart,
to let things take their course; whereas, if you acquire knowledge and
power, you will be able to give good advice, and save many a man from
misery.’
“I have generally found that great, noble, and high thoughts are
indispensable for developing wisdom and firmness of character.
“Such an instruction must be complete in the sense that it must take
account of all our aptitudes and all our circumstances; it must be conducted,
too, in a truly psychological spirit, that is to say, simply,
lovingly, energetically, and calmly. Then, by its very nature, it produces
an enlightened and delicate feeling for everything true and good,
and brings to light a number of accessory and dependent truths, which
are forthwith accepted and assimilated by the human soul, even in the
case of those who could not express these truths in words.
“I believe that the first development of thought in the child is very
much disturbed by a wordy system of teaching, which is not adapted
either to his faculties or the circumstances of his life. 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 personal observation and experience....
“I knew no other order, method, or art, but that which resulted
naturally from my children’s conviction of my love for them, nor did I
care to know any other.
“Thus I subordinated the instruction of my children to a higher aim,
which was to arouse and strengthen their best sentiments by the relations
of every-day life as they existed between themselves and me....
“As a general rule I attached little importance to the study of
words, even when explanations of the ideas they represented were
given.
“I tried to connect study with manual labour, the school with the
workshop, and make one thing of them. But I was the less able to do
this as staff, material, and tools were all wanting. A short time only
before the close of the establishment, a few children had begun to spin;
and I saw clearly that, before any fusion could be effected, the two parts
must be firmly established separately—study, that is, on the one hand,
and labour on the other.
“But in the work of the children I was already inclined to care less
for the immediate gain than for the physical training which, by developing
their strength and skill, was bound to supply them later with a
means of livelihood. In the same way I considered that what is
generally called the instruction of children should be merely an exercise
of the faculties, and I felt it important to exercise the attention,
observation, and memory first, so as to strengthen these faculties before
calling into play the art of judging and reasoning; this, in my opinion,
was the best way to avoid turning out that sort of superficial and presumptuous
talker, whose false judgments are often more fatal to the
happiness and progress of humanity than the ignorance of simple people
of good sense.
“Guided by these principles, I sought less at first to teach my
children to spell, read, and write than to make use of these exercises
for the purpose of giving their minds as full and as varied a development
as possible....
“In natural history they were very quick in corroborating what I
taught them by their own personal observations on plants and animals.
I am quite sure that, by continuing in this way, I should soon have
been able not only to give them such a general acquaintance with the
subject as would have been useful in any vocation, but also to put
them in a position to carry on their education themselves by means of
their daily observations and experiences; and I should have been able
to do all this without going outside the very restricted sphere to which
they were confined by the actual circumstances of their lives. I hold it
to be extremely important that men should be encouraged to learn by
themselves and allowed to develop freely. It is in this way alone that
the diversity of individual talent is produced and made evident.
“I always made the children learn perfectly even the least important
things, and I never allowed them to lose ground; a word once learnt, for
instance, was never to be forgotten, and a letter once well written never
to be written badly again. I was very patient with all who were weak
or slow, but very severe with those who did anything less well than they
had done it before.
“The number and inequality of my children rendered my task easier.
Just as in a family the eldest and cleverest child readily shows what he
knows to his younger brothers and sisters, and feels proud and happy to
be able to take his mother’s place for a moment, so my children were
delighted when they knew something that they could teach others. A
sentiment of honour awoke in them, and they learned twice as well by
making the younger ones repeat their words. In this way I soon had
helpers and collaborators amongst the children themselves. When I
was teaching them to spell difficult words by heart, I used to allow any
child who succeeded in saying one properly to teach it to the others.
These child-helpers, whom I had formed from the very outset, and who
had followed my method step by step, were certainly much more useful
to me than any regular schoolmasters could have been.
“I myself learned with the children. Our whole system was so
simple and so natural that I should have had difficulty in finding a
master who would not have thought it undignified to learn and teach as
I was doing....
“You will hardly believe that it was the Capuchin friars and the nuns
of the convent that showed the greatest sympathy with my work. Few
people, except Truttman, took any active interest in it. Those from
whom I had hoped most were too deeply engrossed with their high
political affairs to think of our little institution as having the least degree
of importance.
“Such were my dreams; but at the very moment that I seemed to be
on the point of realizing them, I had to leave Stanz.”
§ 50. Heroic efforts rise above the measurement of time.
As Byron has said, “A thought is capable of years,” and it
seldom happens that the nobleness of any human action
depends on the time it lasts. Pestalozzi’s five months’
experiment at Stanz proved one of the most memorable
events in the history of education. He was now completely
satisfied that he saw his way to giving children a right
education and “thus raising the beggar out of the dung-hill”;
and seeing the right course he was urged by his love of the
people into taking it. But how was he to set to work?
His notions of school instruction differed entirely from
those of the teaching profession; and even in the revolutionary
age they had some reason for looking askance at
this revolutionist. “He had everything against him,” we
read, “thick, indistinct speech, bad writing, ignorance of
drawing, scorn of grammatical learning. He had studied
various branches of natural history, but without any particular
attention either to classification or terminology. He was
conversant with the ordinary operations in arithmetic, but
he would have had difficulty in getting through a really long
sum in multiplication or division; and he probably had
never tried to work out a problem in geometry. For years
this dreamer had read no books. But instead of the usual
knowledge that any young man of ordinary talent can acquire
in a year or two, he understood thoroughly what most
masters were entirely ignorant of—the mind of man and the
laws of its development, human affections and the art of
arousing and ennobling them. He seemed to have almost
an intuitive insight into the development of human nature,
and was never tired of contemplating it.” (C. Monnard in
R.’s Guimps, p. 174.)[157]
§ 51. This man wished to be a schoolmaster, but who
would venture to entrust him with a school? No one
seemed willing to do this; and he would have been at a
loss where to turn had he not had influential friends at
Burgdorf, a town not far from Bern. These got for him
permission to teach, not indeed the children of burgesses but
the children of non-burgesses, seventy-three of whom used to
assemble under a shoemaker in his house in the suburbs.
With this arrangement, however, the shoemaker and the
parents of the children were by no means satisfied. “If
the burgesses like the new method,” they said very
reasonably, “let them try it on their own children.” Their
grumbling was heard, and permission to teach was withdrawn
from Pestalozzi.
§ 52. The check, however, was only temporary. His friends
were wiser than the shoemaker, and they procured for him
admission into the lowest class of the school for burghers’
children. In this class there were about 25 children, boys
and girls between the ages of 5 and 8. Here he proved
that he was vastly different from a mere dreamer. After
teaching these children in his own way for eight months he
received the first official recognition of the merits of his
system. The Burgdorf School Commission after the usual
examination, wrote a public letter to Pestalozzi, in which they
said: “The surprising progress of your little scholars of
various capacities shews plainly that every one is good for
something, if the teacher knows how to get at his abilities
and develop them according to the laws of psychology. By
your method of teaching you have proved how to lay the
groundwork of instruction in such a way that it may afterwards
support what is built on it.... Between the ages of 5
and 8, a period in which according to the system of torture
enforced hitherto, children have learnt to know their letters,
to spell and read, your scholars have not only accomplished
all this with a success as yet unknown, but the best of them
have already distinguished themselves by their good writing,
drawing, and calculating. In them all you have been able
so to arouse and excite a liking for history, natural history,
mensuration, geography, &c., that thus future teachers must
find their task a far easier one if they only know how to
make good use of the preparatory stage the children have
gone through with you” (Morf, Pt. I, p. 223).
§ 53. In consequence of this report, Pestalozzi in June
1800 was made master of the second school of Burgdorf, a
school numbering about 70 boys and girls from 10 to 16
years old. With them Pestalozzi did not get on so well.
Ramsauer, a poor boy of 10 who afterwards helped Pestalozzi
at Yverdun and became one of his best teachers, has left us
his remembrances. Two things seemed clear to the child’s
mind: 1st, that their teacher was very kind but very unhappy;
2nd, that the pupils did not learn anything and behaved very
badly. Many schoolmasters have smiled in derision at this
account of Pestalozzi’s actual teaching; but in reading it
several things should be borne in mind. First Ramsauer as
a child would have a keen eye and good memory for the
master’s eccentricities; but how far the teaching succeeded
he could not judge, for he did not know what it aimed at.
Then again he saw that Pestalozzi’s zeal was for the whole
school, not for individual scholars. But the child who knew
of nothing beyond Burgdorf could not tell that Pestalozzi
was thinking not so much of the children of Burgdorf as of
the children of Europe. For Burgdorf—whether it was
pleased to honour or to dismiss Pestalozzi—could not contain
him. His aims extended beyond the town, beyond canton
Bern, beyond Switzerland even; and he was consumed with
zeal to bring about a radical change in elementary education
throughout Europe. The truth which was burning within
him he has himself expressed as follows:
“If we desire to aid the poor man, the very lowest among
the people, this can be done in one way only, that is, by
changing his schools into true places of education, in which
the moral, intellectual, and physical powers which God has put
into our nature may be drawn out, so that the man may be
enabled to live a life such as a man should live, contented
in himself and satisfying other people. Thus and only thus
does the man, whom in God’s wide world nobody helps and
nobody can help, learn to help himself.” “The public
common school-coach throughout Europe must not simply be
better horsed, but still more it must be turned round and be
brought on to an entirely new road.” (Quoted by Morf, P.
I, p. 211.)
§ 54. Pestalozzi was now working heart and soul at the
engineering of this “new road.” His grand successes
hitherto had been gained more by the heart than by the
head; but the school course must draw out the faculties of
the head as well as of the heart. Pestalozzi made all
instruction start from what children observed for themselves.
“I laid special stress,” he says, “on just what usually affected
their senses. And as I dwelt much on elementary knowledge,
I wanted to know when the child receives its first lesson,
and I soon came to the conviction that the first hour of
learning dates from birth. From the very moment that the
child’s senses open to the impressions of nature, nature
teaches it. Its new life is but the faculty, now come to
maturity, of receiving impressions; it is the awakening of
the germs now perfect which will go on using all their forces
and energies to secure the development of their proper
organisation; it is the awakening of the animal now complete
which will and shall become a man. So the sole instruction
given to the human being consists merely in the art of giving
a helping hand to this natural tendency towards its proper
development; and this art consists essentially in the means
of putting the child’s impressions in connexion and harmony
with the precise degree of development the child has
reached. There must be then in the impressions to be
given him by instruction, a regular gradation; and the
beginning and the progress of his various knowledges must
exactly correspond with the beginning and increase in his
powers as they are developed. From this I soon saw that
this gradation must be ascertained for all the branches of
human knowledge, especially for those fundamental notions
from which our thinking power takes its rise. On such
principles and no others is it possible to construct real school
books and books about teaching” (Wie Gertrud, &c., Letter I.).
§ 55. In endeavouring to put teaching, as he said, “on a
psychological basis,” Pestalozzi compared it to a mechanism.
On one occasion when expounding his views, he was
interrupted by the exclamation, “Vous voulez mécaniser
l’éducation!” Pestalozzi was weak in French, and he took
these words to mean, “You wish to get at the mechanism
of education.” He accordingly assented, and was in his
turn misunderstood. Soon afterwards he endeavoured to
express the new thing by a new word and said, “Ich will
den menschlichen Unterricht psychologisieren; I wish to
psychologise instruction,” and this he explains to mean
that he sought to make instruction fall in with the eternal
laws which govern the development of the human intellect
(Morf, I, p. 227). But this was a task which no one man
could accomplish, not even Pestalozzi. The eternal laws
which govern the development of mind have not been
completely ascertained even after investigations carried on
during thousands of years; and Pestalozzi did not know
what had been established by previous thinkers. He made
a gigantic effort to find both the laws and their application,
but if he had continued to stand alone he could have done
but little. Happily he attracted to him some young and
vigorous assistants, who caught his enthusiasm and worked
in his spirit. They did much, but there was one thing the
Master could not communicate—his genius.
§ 56. Just at this time, before Pestalozzi found associates
in his work, he drew up for a “Society of Friends of
Education” an account of his method; and this begins
with the words I have already quoted, “I want to psychologise
education.” Basing all instruction on Anschauung
(which is nearly equivalent to the child’s own observation),
he explains how this may be used for a series of exercises,
and he takes as the general elements of culture the following:
language, drawing, writing, arithmetic, and the art
of measuring. In the education of the poor he would lay
special stress on the importance of two things, then and
since much neglected, viz., singing and the sense of the
beautiful. The mother’s cradle song should begin a series
leading up to hymns of praise to God. Education should
develop in all a sense of the beauties of Nature. “Nature
is full of lovely sights, yet Europe has done nothing either
to awaken in the poor a sense for these beauties, or to
arrange them in such a way as to produce a series of
impressions capable of developing this sense.... If
ever popular education should cease to be the barbarous
absurdity it now is, and put itself into harmony with the
real needs of our nature, this want will be supplied.”
(R.’s Guimps, 186.)
§ 57. In the last year of the eighteenth century (1800)
Pestalozzi was toiling away, constant to his purpose but not
clearly seeing the road before him. In March, 1800, he
wrote to Zschokke: “For thirty years my life has been a well-nigh
hopeless struggle against the most frightful poverty....
For thirty years I have had to forego many of the barest
necessaries of life, and have had to shun the society of my
fellow-men from sheer lack of decent clothes. Many and
many a time have I gone without a dinner and eaten in bitterness
a dry crust of bread on the road at a time when even the
poorest were seated round a table. All this I have suffered
and am still suffering to-day, and with no other object than
the realization of my plans for helping the poor” (R.’s
Guimps, 189). It was clear that he could not help others
till he himself got help; and he now did get just the help
he wanted, an assistant who though a schoolmaster was,
strange to say, perfectly ready to learn, and to throw himself
into carrying out another man’s ideas. This was Hermann
Kruesi, a man twenty-five years old, who from the age of
18 had been master of the village school at Gais in
Appenzell. In consequence of the war between the French
and Austrians, Appenzell was now reduced to a state of
famine, and bands of children were sent off to other
cantons to escape starvation. Fischer, a friend of Pestalozzi’s,
and himself an educationist taught by Salzmann
(supra 289), wrote from Burgdorf to the pastor of Gais,
offering to get thirty children taken in by the people of
Burgdorf, and asking that they might be sent with some one
who would look after them in the day-time and teach them.
In answer to this invitation Kruesi, after a week’s march,
entered Burgdorf with a troop of little ones. The children
were drawn up in an open place, and benevolent people
chose which they would adopt. Kruesi was taken into the
Castle which the Government had made over partly to
Fischer, partly to Pestalozzi. In it Kruesi opened a day-school.
Fischer soon afterwards died; and Pestalozzi
proposed to Kruesi, who had become entirely converted to
his views, that they should unite and together carry on the
school in the Castle. By a decree of 23rd July, 1800, the
Executive Council granted to Pestalozzi the gratuitous use
of as much of the Castle and garden as he needed, and
thus was established Pestalozzi’s celebrated Institute at
Burgdorf.
§ 58. Very soon Kruesi enlisted other helpers who had
read Leonard and Gertrude, viz., Tobler and Buss, and
this is his account of the party: “Our society thus consisted
of four very different men ... the founder, whose
chief reputation was that of a dreamy writer, incapable in
practical life, and three young men, one [Tobler] a private
tutor whose youth had been much neglected, who had
begun to study late, and whose pedagogic efforts had never
produced the results his character and talents seemed to
promise; another [Buss], a bookbinder, who devoted
his leisure to singing and drawing; and a third [Kruesi
himself], a village schoolmaster who carried out the duties
of his office as best he could without having been in any
way prepared for them. Those who looked on this group of
men, scarce one of them with a home of his own, naturally
formed but a small opinion of their capabilities. And yet
our work succeeded, and won the public confidence beyond
the expectations of those who knew us, and even beyond
our own” (R.’s Guimps, 304).
§ 59. With assistance from the Government there was
added to the united schools of Pestalozzi and Kruesi a
training class for teachers; and elementary teachers were
sent to spend a month at Burgdorf and learn of Pestalozzi,
as years afterwards they were sent to the same town to
learn of Froebel. This Institute opened in January, 1801,
and had nearly three years of complete success. In it was
carried out Pestalozzi’s notion that there should be “no
gulf between the home and the school.” On one occasion
a parent visiting the establishment exclaimed, “Why, this
is not a school but a family!” and Pestalozzi declared
that this was the highest praise he could give it. The bond
which united them all, both teachers and scholars, was love
of “Father Pestalozzi.” Want of space kept the number of
children below a hundred, and these enjoyed great freedom
and worked away without rewards and almost without
punishments. Both public reports and private speak very
highly of the results. In June, 1802, the President of the
Council of Public Education in Bern declares: “Pestalozzi
has discovered the real and universal laws of all elementary
teaching.” A visitor, Charles Victor von Bonstetten, writes:
“The children know little, but what they know, they know
well.... They are very happy and evidently take great
pleasure in their lessons, which says a great deal for the
method.... As it will be long before there is another
Pestalozzi, I fear that the rich harvest his discovery seems
to promise will be reserved for future ages.”
The success of the method was specially conspicuous in
arithmetic. A Nürnberg merchant who came prejudiced
against Pestalozzi was much impressed and has acknowledged:
“I was amazed when I saw these children treating
the most complicated calculations of fractions as the simplest
thing in the world.”
§ 60. Up to this point Pestalozzi may be said to have
gained by the disposition to “reform” or revolutionise
everything, which had prevailed in Switzerland since 1798.
But from the reaction which now set in he suffered more
than he had gained. Switzerland sent deputies to Paris to
discuss under the direction of the First Consul Bonaparte
what should be their future form of Government. Among
these deputies Pestalozzi was elected, and he set off thinking
more of the future of the schools than of the future of the
Government. At Paris he asked for an interview with
Bonaparte, but destruction being in his opinion a much
higher art than instruction, the First Consul said he could
not be bothered about questions of A, B, C. He, however,
deputed Monge to hear what Pestalozzi had to say, but the
mathematician seems to have agreed with some English
authorities that “there was nothing in Pestalozzi.”[158] On his
return to Switzerland Pestalozzi was asked by Buss, “Did
you see Bonaparte?” “No,” replied Pestalozzi, “I did not
see Bonaparte and Bonaparte did not see me.” His presumption
in thus putting himself on an equality with the
great conqueror seems to have taken away the breath of his
contemporaries: but “the whirligig of time brings in his
revenges,” and before the close of the century Europe
already thinks more in amount, and immeasurably more in
respect, of Pestalozzi than of Bonaparte.
§ 61. As a result of the reaction the Government of
United Switzerland ceased to exist, and the Cantons were
restored. This destroyed Pestalozzi’s hopes of Government
support, and even turned his Institute out of doors. The
Castle of Burgdorf was at once demanded for the Prefect of
the District; but Pestalozzi was offered an old convent at
Münchenbuchsee near Bern, and thither he was forced to
migrate.
§ 62. Close to Münchenbuchsee was Hofwyl where was
the agricultural institution of Emmanuel Fellenberg.
Fellenberg and Pestalozzi were old friends and correspondents,
and as they had much regard for each other and
Fellenberg was as great in administration as Pestalozzi in
ideas, there seemed a chance of their benefiting by co-operation;
but this could not be. The teachers desired
that the administration should be put into the hands of
Fellenberg, and this was done accordingly, “not without
my consent,” says Pestalozzi, “but to my profound mortification.”
He could not work with this “man of iron,” as he
calls Fellenberg; so he left Münchenbuchsee and accepting
one of several invitations he settled in the Castle of Yverdun
near the lake of Neuchatel. Within a twelvemonth he was
followed by his old assistants, who had found government
by Fellenberg less to their taste than no-government by
Pestalozzi.
§ 63. Thus arose the most celebrated Institute of which
we read in the history of education. For some years its
success seemed prodigious. Teachers came from all quarters,
many of them sent by the Governments of the countries to
which they belonged, that they might get initiated into the
Pestalozzian system. Children too were sent from great
distances, some of them being intrusted to Pestalozzi, some
of them living with their own tutor in Yverdun and only
attending the Institute during the day. The wave of
enthusiasm for the new ideas seemed to carry everything
before it; but there is nothing stable in a wave, and when
the enthusiasm has subsided disappointment follows. This
was the case at Yverdun, and Pestalozzi outlived his Institute.
But the principles on which he worked and the spirit in
which he worked could not pass away; and, at least in
Germany, all elementary schoolmasters acknowledge how
much they are indebted to his teaching.
§ 64. Of the state of things in the early days of the
Institute we have a very lively account written for his own
children by Professor Vuillemin, who entered it in 1805 as a
child of eight, and was in it for two years. From this I extract
the following portrait of Pestalozzi: “Imagine, my children,
a very ugly man with rough bristling hair, his face scarred
with small-pox and covered with freckles, an untidy beard,
no neck-tie, his breeches not properly buttoned and coming
down to his stockings, which in their turn descended on to
his great thick shoes; fancy him panting and jerking as he
walked; then his eyes which at one time opened wide to
send a flash of lightning, at another were half closed as if
engaged on what was going on within; his features now
expressing a profound sadness and now again the most
peaceful happiness; his speech either slow or hurried, either
soft and melodious or bursting forth like thunder; imagine
the man and you have him whom we used to call our Father
Pestalozzi. Such as I have sketched him for you we loved
him; we all loved him, for he loved us all; we loved him
so warmly that when some time passed without our seeing
him, we were quite troubled about it, and when he again
appeared we could not take our eyes off him” (Guimps,
315).
§ 65. At this time he was no less loved by his assistants,
who put up with any quarters that could be found for them,
and received no salary. We read that the money paid by
the scholars was kept in the room of “the head of the family”;
every master could get the key, and when they required
clothes they took from these funds just the sum requisite.
This system, or want of system, went on for some time without
abuse. As Vuillemin says, it was like a return to the
early days of the Christian Church.
§ 66. We have seen that the first Emperor Napoleon
“could not be bothered about questions of A, B, C.” His
was the pride that goes before a fall. On the other hand
the Prussian Government which he brought to the dust in
the battle of Jena (1806) had the wisdom to perceive that
children will become men, and that the nature of the
instruction they receive will in a great measure determine
what kind of men they turn out. How was Prussia again
to raise its head? Its rulers decided that it was by the
education of the people. “We have lost in territory,” said
the king; “our power and our credit abroad have fallen;
but we must and will go to work to gain in power and in
credit at home. It is for this reason that I desire above
everything that the greatest attention be paid to the education
of the people” (Guimps, 319). About the same time
the Queen (Louisa) wrote in her private diary, “I am reading
Leonard and Gertrude, and I delight in being transported
into the Swiss village. If I could do as I liked I should
take a carriage and start for Switzerland to see Pestalozzi;
I should warmly shake him by the hand, and my eyes filled
with tears would speak my gratitude.... With what goodness,
with what zeal, he labours for the welfare of his fellow-creatures!
Yes, in the name of humanity, I thank him with
my whole heart.”
So in the day of humiliation Prussia seriously went to
work at the education of the people, and this she did on
the lines pointed out by Pestalozzi. To him they were
directed by their philosopher Fichte, who in his Addresses
to the German Nation (delivered at Berlin 1807-8) declared
that education was the only means of raising a nation, and
that all sound reform of public instruction must be based
on the principles of Pestalozzi.
To bring these principles to bear on popular education,
the Prussian Government sent seventeen young men for a
three years’ course to Pestalozzi’s Institute, “where,” as the
Minister said in a letter to Pestalozzi, “they will be prepared
not only in mind and judgment, but also in heart,
for the noble vocation which they are to follow, and will
be filled with a sense of the holiness of their task, and with
new zeal for the work to which you have devoted your
life.”
§ 67. Among the eminent men who were drawn to
Yverdun were some who afterwards did great things in
education, as e.g., Karl Ritter, Karl von Raumer the historian
of education, the philosopher Herbart, and a man
who was destined to have more influence than anyone,
except perhaps Pestalozzi himself—I mean Friedrich Froebel.
Ritter’s testimony is especially striking. “I have seen,”
says he, “more than the Paradise of Switzerland, for I have
seen Pestalozzi, and recognised how great his heart is, and
how great his genius; never have I been so filled with a
sense of the sacredness of my vocation and the dignity of
human nature as in the days I spent with this noble man....
Pestalozzi knew less geography than a child in
one of our primary schools, yet it was from him that I
gained my chief knowledge of this science; for it was in
listening to him that I first conceived the idea of the natural
method. It was he who opened the way to me, and I take
pleasure in attributing whatever value my work may have
entirely to him.”
§ 68. At this time we read glowing accounts of the
healthy and happy life of the children; and throughout
Pestalozzi never lost a single pupil by illness. With a body
of very able assistants, instruction was carried on for ten
hours out of the twenty-four; but in these hours there was
reckoned the time spent in drill, gymnastics, hand-work,
and singing. The monotony of school-life was also broken
by frequent “festivals.”
§ 69. And yet the Institute had taken into it the seeds
of its own ruin. There were several causes of failure,
though these were not visible till the house was divided
against itself.
§ 70. First, Pestalozzi based the morality and discipline
of the school on the relations of family life. He would be
the “father” of all the children. At Burgdorf this relation
seemed a reality, but it completely failed at Yverdun when
the Institute became, from the number of the pupils and
their differences in language, habits, and antecedents, a
little world. The pupils still called him “Father Pestalozzi,”
but he could no longer know them as a father should
know his children. Thus the discipline of affection slowly
disappeared, and there was no school discipline to take its
place.
§ 71. Next, we can see that even at Burgdorf, and still
more at Yverdun, Pestalozzi was attempting to do impossibilities.
According to his system, the faculties of the child
were to be developed in a natural unbroken order, and the
first exercises were to give the child the power of surmounting
later difficulties by its own exertions. But this
education could not be started at any age, and yet children
of every age and every country were received into the
Institution. It was not likely that the fresh comers could
be made to understand that they “knew nothing,” and must
start over again on a totally different road. The teachers
might take such pupils to the water of “sense-impressions,”
but they could not inspire the inclination to drink, nor
induce the lad to learn what he supposed himself to know
already. (Cfr. supra p. 64, § 4.)
§ 72. But there was a greater mischief at work than
either of these. In his discourse to the members of the
Institution on New Year’s Day, 1808, Pestalozzi surprised
them all by his gloom. He had had a coffin brought in,
and he stood beside it. “This work,” said he, “was
founded by love, but love has disappeared from our midst.”
This was only too true, and the discord was more deeply
rooted than at first appeared. Among the brood of Pestalozzians
there was a Catholic shepherd lad from Tyrol,
Joseph Schmid by name, and he, in the end, proved a
veritable cuckoo. As he shewed very marked ability in
mathematics, he became one of the assistant masters; and
a good deal of the fame of the Institution rested on the
performances of his pupils. But his ideas differed totally
from those of his colleagues, especially from those of
Niederer, a clergyman with a turn for philosophy, who had
become Pestalozzi’s chief exponent.
§ 73. After Pestalozzi’s gloomy speech, the masters, with
the exception of Schmid, urged Pestalozzi to apply for a
Government inquiry into the state of the Institution. This
Pestalozzi did, and Commissioners were appointed, among
them an educationist, Père Girard of Freiburg, by whom
the Report was drawn up. The Report was not favourable.
Père Girard was by no means inclined to sit at the feet of
Pestalozzi, as he had principles of his own. Pestalozzi, he
thought, laid far too much stress on mathematics, and he
drew from him a statement that everything taught to a child
should seem as certain as that two and two made four.
“Then,” said Girard, “if I had thirty children I would not
intrust you with one of them. You could not teach him
that I was his father.” Thus the Report, though very
friendly in tone, was by no means friendly in spirit. The
Commissioners simply compared the performances of the
scholars with what pupils of the same age could do in good
schools of the ordinary type, and Père Girard stated, though
not in the Report, that the Institution was inferior to the
Cantonal School of Aargau. But the comparison of these
incommensurables only shews that Girard was not capable
of understanding what was going on at Yverdun. Indeed,
he asserts “not only that the mother-tongue was neglected,”
but also that the children, “though they had reached a high
pitch of excellence in abstract mathematics, were inconceivably
weak in all ordinary practical calculations.” This
is absurd. In Pestalozzian teaching the abstract never
went before ordinary practical calculations. The good
Father evidently blunders, and takes “head-reckoning” for
abstract, and pen or pencil arithmetic for practical work.
Reckoning with slate or paper is no doubt “ordinary,” but
a distinction has often to be drawn between what is ordinary
and what is practical.
§ 74. Soon after this the disputes between Schmid and
his colleagues waxed so fierce that Schmid was virtually
driven away. In 1810 he left Yverdun, and declared the
Institution “a disgrace to humanity.” Great was the disorder
into which the Institution now fell from having over
it only a genius with “an unrivalled incapacity to govern.”
The days which “remind us of the early Church” were no
more, and financial difficulties naturally followed them.
For the next five years things went from bad to worse, and
the masters were then driven to the desperate, and, as it
proved, the fatal step of inviting the able and strong-willed
Schmid back again. He came in 1815, he acquired entire
control over Pestalozzi, and drove from him all his most
faithful adherents, among them not only Niederer, who had
invited the return of his rival, but even Kruesi and the
faithful servant, Elizabeth Naef, now Mrs. Kruesi, the
widow of Kruesi’s brother. Pestalozzi’s grandson married
Schmid’s sister, and thus united with him by family ties,
Schmid took entire possession of the old man and kept it
till the end. His former colleagues seem to have been
deceived in their estimate both of Schmid’s integrity and
ability. He completed the ruin of the Institution, and he
was finally expelled from Yverdun by the Magistrates.
§ 75. But while Pestalozzi seemed falling lower and lower
to the eyes of the inhabitants of Yverdun, and so had little
honour in his own country, his fame was spreading all over
Europe. Of this Yverdun was to reap the benefit. In
1813-14, Austrian troops marched across Switzerland to
invade France. In January, 1814, the Castle and other
buildings in Yverdun were “requisitioned” for a military
hospital, many of the Austrian soldiers being down with
typhus fever. In a great fright the Municipality sent off
two deputies to headquarters, then at Basel, to petition that
this order might be withdrawn. As the order threatened
the destruction of his Institution, Pestalozzi went with them,
and it was entirely to him they owed their success. On
their return they reported that “no military hospital would
be established at Yverdun, and that M. Pestalozzi had been
received with most extraordinary favour.”
§ 75. On this occasion Pestalozzi took the opportunity of
preaching to the Emperor Alexander on the necessity of
establishing good schools and of emancipating the serfs.
The Emperor took the lecture in good part, and allowed the
philanthropist to drive him into a corner and “button-hole”
him.
§ 76. In 1815 Pestalozzi received a visit from an
Englishman, or more accurately Scotsman—Dr. Bell, who,
however, like most of our compatriots, could find nothing
in Pestalozzi. Whatever we may think of Bell as an
educationist, he was certainly a poor prophet. On leaving
Yverdun he said, “In another twelve years mutual instruction
will be adopted by the whole world and Pestalozzi’s method
will be forgotten.”[159]
§ 77. In December, 1815, Pestalozzi was thrown more
completely into the power of Schmid by losing the only
companion from whom nothing but death could separate
him—his wife. At the funeral Pestalozzi, standing by the
coffin, and as if heard by her whose earthly remains were in
it, ran over the disasters and trials they had passed through
together, and the sacrifices she had made for him. “What
in those days of affliction,” said he, “gave us strength to
bear our troubles and recover hope?” and taking up a Bible
he went on, “This is the source whence you drew, whence
we both drew courage, strength, and peace.”
§ 78. The “death agony of the Institution,” as Guimps
calls it, lasted for some years, but in this gloomy period
there are only two incidents I will mention. The first is
the publication of Pestalozzi’s writings, for which Schmid
and Pestalozzi sought subscriptions; and the appeal was
so cordially answered that Pestalozzi received £2,000.
This sum he wished to devote to the carrying out of a plan
he had always cherished of an orphanage at Neuhof; but
the money seems to have melted we do not know how.
§ 79. The other incident is that of Pestalozzi’s last
success. In spite of Schmid he would open a school for
twelve neglected children at Clindy, a hamlet near Yverdun.
Here he produced results like those which had crowned his
first efforts at Neuhof, Stanz, and Burgdorf. Old, absent-minded,
and incapable as he seemed in ordinary affairs, he,
as though by enchantment, gained the attention and the
affection of the children, and bent them entirely to his will.
In a few months the number of children had risen to thirty,
and wonderful progress had been made. Clindy at once
became celebrated. Pestalozzi was induced to admit some
children whose friends paid for them, and Schmid then
persuaded the old man to remove the school into the Castle.
§ 80. In 1824 the Institution, which had lasted for twenty
years, was finally closed, and Pestalozzi went to spend his
remaining days (nearly three years as it proved) at Neuhof,
which was then in the hands of his grandson. The year
before his death he visited an orphanage conducted on his
principles by Zeller at Beuggen near Rheinfelden. The
children sang a poem of Goethe’s quoted in Leonard and
Gertrude, and had a crown of oak ready to put on the old
man’s head; but this he declined. “I am not worthy of it,”
said he, “keep it for innocence.”
§ 81. On 17th February, 1827, at the age of eighty-one,
Pestalozzi fell asleep.
§ 82. “The reform needed,” said Pestalozzi, “is not
that the school-coach should be better horsed, but that it
should be turned right round and started on a new track.”
This may seem a violent metaphor, but perhaps it is not
more violent than the change that was (and in this country
still is) necessary. Let us try to ascertain what is the right
road according to Pestalozzi, and then see on what road the
school-coach is now travelling.
§ 83. The grand change advocated by Pestalozzi was a
change of object. The main object of the school should
not be to teach but to develop.
§ 84. This change of object naturally brings many
changes with it. Measured by their capacity for acquiring
school knowledge and skill young children may be considered,
as one of H.M. Inspectors considered them, “the
fag-end of the school.” But if the school exists not to
teach but to develop, young children, instead of being the
“fag-end,” become the most important part of all. In the
development of all organisms more depends on the earlier
than on the later stages; and there is no reason to doubt
that this law holds in the case of human beings. On this
account, from the days of Pestalozzi educational science
has been greatly, I may say mainly, concerned with young
children. For the dominating thought has been that the
young human being is an undeveloped organism, and that
in education that organism is developed. So the essence of
Pestalozzianism lies not so much in its method as in its aim,
not more in what it does than in what it endeavours to do.
§ 85. And thus it was that Pestalozzi (in Raumer’s
words) “compelled the scholastic world to revise the whole
of their task, to reflect on the nature and destiny of man,
and also on the proper way of leading him from his youth
towards that destiny.” And it was his love of his fellow-creatures
that raised him to this standpoint. He was moved
by “the enthusiasm of humanity.” Consumed with grief
for the degradation of the Swiss peasantry, he never lost
faith in their true dignity as men, and in the possibility of
raising them to a condition worthy of it. He cast about for
the best means of thus raising them, and decided that it
could be effected, not by any improvement in their outward
circumstances, but by an education which should make them
what their Creator intended them to be, and should give
them the use and the consciousness of all their inborn
faculties. “From my youth up,” he says, “I felt what a
high and indispensable human duty it is to labour for the
poor and miserable; ... that he may attain to a
consciousness of his own dignity through his feeling of the
universal powers and endowments which he possesses
awakened within him; that he may not only learn to gabble
over by rote the religious maxim that ‘man is created in
the image of God, and is bound to live and die as a child
of God,’ but may himself experience its truth by virtue of
the Divine power within him, so that he may be raised, not
only above the ploughing oxen, but also above the man in
purple and silk who lives unworthily of his high destiny”
(Quoted in Barnard, p. 13).
Again he says (and I quote at length on the point, as it
is indeed the key to Pestalozzianism), “Why have I insisted
so strongly on attention to early physical and intellectual
education? Because I consider these as merely leading to
a higher aim, to qualify the human being for the free and
full use of all the faculties implanted by the Creator, and
to direct all these faculties towards the perfection of the
whole being of man, that he may be enabled to act in
his peculiar station as an instrument of that All-wise and
Almighty Power that has called him into life” (To
Greaves, p. 160).
§ 86. Believing in this high aim of education, Pestalozzi
required a proper early training for all alike. “Every
human being,” said he, “has a claim to a judicious development
of his faculties by those to whom the care of his
infancy is confided” (Ib. p. 163).
§ 87. Pestalozzi therefore most earnestly addressed himself
to mothers, to convince them of the power placed in
their hands, and to teach them how to use it. “The
mother is qualified, and qualified by the Creator Himself,
to become the principal agent in the development of her
child; ... and what is demanded of her is—a thinking
love.... God has given to thy child all the faculties
of our nature, but the grand point remains undecided—how
shall this heart, this head, these hands, be employed? to
whose service shall they be dedicated? A question the
answer to which involves a futurity of happiness or misery to
a life so dear to thee.... It is recorded that God
opened the heavens to the patriarch of old, and showed him
a ladder leading thither. This ladder is let down to every
descendant of Adam; it is offered to thy child. But he
must be taught to climb it. And let him not attempt it by
the cold calculations of the head, or the mere impulse of
the heart; but let all these powers combine, and the noble
enterprise will be crowned with success. These powers are
already bestowed on him, but to thee it is given to assist in
calling them forth” (To Greaves, p. 21). “Maternal love
is the first agent in education.... Through it the
child is led to love and trust his Creator and his Redeemer.”
§ 88. From the theory of development which lay at the
root of Pestalozzi’s views of education, it followed that the
imparting of knowledge and the training for special pursuits
held only a subordinate position in his scheme. “Education,
instead of merely considering what is to be imparted
to children, ought to consider first what they may be said
already to possess, if not as a developed, at least as an
involved faculty capable of development. Or if, instead of
speaking thus in the abstract, we will but recollect that it is
to the great Author of life that man owes the possession,
and is responsible for the use, of his innate faculties,
education should not simply decide what is to be made of a
child, but rather inquire what it was intended that he
should become. What is his destiny as a created and
responsible being? What are his faculties as a rational and
moral being? What are the means for their perfection, and
the end held out as the highest object of their efforts by the
Almighty Father of all, both in creation and in the page of
revelation?”
§ 89. Education, then, must consist “in a continual
benevolent superintendence, with the object of calling forth all
the faculties which Providence has implanted; and its
province, thus enlarged, will yet be with less difficulty
surveyed from one point of view, and will have more of a
systematic and truly philosophical character, than an incoherent
mass of ‘lessons’—arranged without unity of
principle, and gone through without interest—which too
often usurps its name.”
The educator’s task then is to superintend and promote
the child’s development, morally, intellectually, and physically.
§ 90. “The essential principle of education is not
teaching,” said Pestalozzi; “it is love” (R.’s G., 289).
Again he says, “The child loves and believes before it
thinks and acts” (Ib. 378). And in a very striking passage
(Ib. 329), where he compares the development of the
various powers of a human being to the development of a
tree, he says, “These forces of the heart—faith and love—are
in the formation of immortal man what the root is for
the tree.” So, according to Pestalozzi, a child without faith
and love can no more grow up to be what he should be
than a tree can grow without a root. Apart from this vital
truth there can be no such thing as Pestalozzianism.
“Ah yet when all is thought and said
The heart still overrules the head.”
It is our hearts and affections that lead us right or wrong
far more than our intellects. In advocating the training of
the minds of the people, Lord Derby once remarked that as
Chairman of Quarter Sessions he had found most of the
culprits brought before him were stupid and ignorant. It
certainly cannot be denied that the commonest kind of
criminal is bad in every way. He has his body ruined
by debauchery, his intellect almost in abeyance, and his
heart and affections set on what is vile and degrading. If
you could cultivate his intellect you would certainly raise
him out of the lowest and by far the largest of the criminal
classes. But he might become a criminal of a type less
disgusting in externals, but in reality far more dangerous.
The most atrocious miscreant of our time, if not of all time,
was a man who contrived a machine to sink ships in mid-ocean,
his only object being to gain a sum of money on a
false insurance. This man was a type of the élite of
criminals, had received an intellectual training, and could
not have been described by Lord Derby as ignorant or
stupid.
§ 91. Pestalozzi then, much as he valued the development
of the intellect, put first the moral and religious
influence of education; and with him moral and religious
were one and the same. He protested against the ordinary
routine of elementary education, because “everywhere in it
the flesh predominated over the spirit, everywhere the divine
element was cast into the shade, everywhere selfishness and
the passions were taken as the motives of action, everywhere
mechanical habits usurped the place of intelligent spontaneity”
(R.’s G., 470). Education for the people must be
different to this. “Man does not live by bread alone;
every child needs a religious development; every child
needs to know how to pray to God in all simplicity,
but with faith and love” (R.’s G., 378). “If the religious
element does not run through the whole of education, this
element will have little influence on the life; it remains
formal or isolated”[160] (Ib. 381). And Pestalozzi sums up the
essentials of popular education in the words: “The child
accustomed from his earliest years to pray, to think, and to
work, is already more than half educated” (Ib. 381).
§ 92. Here we see the main requisites. First the child
must pray with faith and love. Next he must think.
“The child must think!” exclaims the schoolmaster:
“Must he not learn?” To which Pestalozzi would have
replied, “Most certainly he must.” Learning was not in
Pestalozzi’s estimation as in Locke’s, the “last and least”
thing, but learning was with him something very different
from the learning imparted by the ordinary schoolmaster.
Pestalozzi was very imperfectly acquainted with the thoughts
and efforts of his predecessors, but the one book on education
which he had studied had freed him from the “idols”
of the schoolroom. This book was the Emile of Rousseau,
and from it he came no less than Rousseau himself to despise
the learning of the schoolmaster. But when he had to face
the problem of organizing a course of education for the
people, Pestalozzi did not agree with Rousseau that the
first twelve years should be spent in “losing time.” No,
the children must learn, but they must learn in such a way
as to develop all the powers of the mind. And so Pestalozzi
was led to what he considered his great discovery, viz., that
all instruction must be based on “Anschauung.”
§ 93. The Germans, who have devoted so much thought
and care and effort to education, greatly honour Pestalozzi,[161]
and as his disciples aim at making all elementary instruction
“anschaulich.” We English have troubled ourselves so
little about Pestalozzi, or, I might say, about the theory of
education, that we have not cared to get equivalent words
for Anschauung and anschaulich. For Anschauung “sense-impression”
has lately been tried; but this is in two ways
defective; for (1) there may be “Anschauungen” beyond
the range of the senses, and (2) there is in an “Anschauung”
an active as well as a passive element, and this the word
“impression” does not convey. The active part is brought
out better by “observation”—the word used by Joseph
Payne and James MacAlister; but this seems hardly wide
enough. Other writers of English borrow words straight from
the French, and talk about “intuition” and “intuitive,”
words which were taken (first I believe by Kant) from the
Latin intueri, “to look at with attention and reflection.”
§ 94. I think we shall be wise in following these writers.
On good authority I have heard of a German professor who
when asked if he had read some large work recently published
in the distressing type of his nation, replied that he
had not; he was waiting for a French translation. If the
Germans find that the French express their thoughts more
clearly than they can themselves, we may think ourselves
fortunate when the French will act as interpreters. I therefore
gladly turn to M. Buisson and translate what he says
about “intuition.”
“Intuition is just the most natural and most spontaneous
action of human intelligence, the action by which
the mind seizes a reality without effort, hesitation, or
go-between. It is a ‘direct apperception,’ made as it were
at a glance. If it has to do with some matter within the
province of the senses, the senses perceive it at once. Here
we have the simplest case of all, the most common, the
most easily noted. If the thing concerned is an idea, a
reality, that is, beyond the reach of the senses, we still say
that we seize it by intuition when all that is necessary is that
it present itself to the mind, and the mind at once grasps
it and is satisfied with it without any need of proof or
investigation. We advance by intuition whenever our mind,
acting by the senses, or by the judgment, or by the conscience,
knows things with the same amount of evidence and
the same amount of speed that a distinct view of an object
affords the eye. So intuition is no separate faculty; it is
nothing strange or new in the mind of man. It is just the
mind itself ‘intuitively’ recognising what exists in it or
around it” (Les Conférences Péd. faites aux Instituteurs,
Delagrave, 1879, p. 331). So the “intuitive method” (to
keep the French name for it) is of very wide application.
“It appeals to this force sui generis, to this glance of the
mind, to this spontaneous spring of the intelligence towards
truth.” It sets the pupil’s mind to work in following his
own intellectual instincts. If in our teaching we can use it,
we shall have gained, as M. Buisson says, the best helper in the
world, viz., the pupil. If he can be got to take an active
part in the instruction all difficulty vanishes at once. Instead
of having to drag him along, you will see him delighted to
keep you company.
§ 95. According to M. Buisson there are three kinds of
intuition—sensuous, intellectual, and moral. Similarly M.
Jullien (Esprit de Pestalozzi, 1812, vol. j, p. 152) says that
there are “intuitions” of the “internal senses” as well as
of the external: the “internal senses” are four in number:
first, the sense for the true; second, the sense for the beautiful;
third, the sense for the good; fourth, the sense for the
infinite.
§ 96. Without settling whether this analysis is complete
we shall have no difficulty in admitting that both body and
mind have faculties by means of which we apprehend, lay
hold of, what is true and right; and it is on the use of these
faculties that Pestalozzi bases instruction. No Englishman
may have found a good word to indicate Anschauung, but one
Englishman at least had the idea of it long before Pestalozzi.
More than a century earlier Locke had called knowledge
“the internal perception of the mind.” “Knowing is seeing,”
said he; “and if it be so, it is madness to persuade
ourselves we do so by another man’s eyes, let him use never
so many words to tell us that what he asserts is very
visible” (Supra p. 222).
§ 97. Thus in theory Pestalozzi was, however unconsciously,
a follower of Locke. But in practice they went far
asunder. Locke’s thoughts were constantly occupied with
philosophical investigations, and he seems to have made
small account of the intellectual power of children, and to
have supposed that they cannot “see” anything at all. So
he cared little what was taught them, and till they reached
the age of reason the tutor might give such lessons as
would be useful to “young gentlemen,” the avowed object
being to “keep them from sauntering.” His follower
Rousseau preferred that the child’s mind should not be
filled with the traditional lore of the schoolroom, and that
the instructor, when the youth reached the age of twelve,
should find “an unfurnished apartment to let.” Then came
Pestalozzi, and he saw that at whatever age the instructor
began to teach the child, he would not find an unfurnished
apartment, seeing that every child learns continuously from
the hour of its birth. And how does the child learn? Not
by repeating words which express the thoughts, feelings, and
experiences of other people,[162] but by his own experiences
and feelings, and by the thoughts which these suggest to
him.
§ 98. Elementary education then on its intellectual side
is teaching the child to think. The proper subjects of
thought for children Pestalozzi held to be the children’s
surroundings, the realities of their own lives, the things that
affect them and arouse their feelings and interests. Perhaps
he did not emphasize interest as much as Herbart has done
since; but clearly an Anschauung or “intuition” is only
possible when the child is interested in the thing observed.
§ 99. The art of teaching in Pestalozzi’s system consists
in analyzing the knowledge that the children should acquire
about their surroundings, arranging it in a regular sequence,
and bringing it to the children’s consciousness gradually and
in the way in which their minds will act upon it. In this
way they learn slowly, but all they learn is their own.
They are not like the crow drest up in peacock’s feathers, for
they have not appropriated any dead knowledge (“angelernte
todte Begriffe,” as Diesterweg has it), and it cannot be said
of them, “They know about much, but know nothing (Sie
kennen viel und wissen nichts).” Their knowledge is actual
knowledge, for they are taught not what to think but to
think, and to exercise their powers of observation and draw
conclusions from their own experience. The teacher
simply furnishes materials and occasions for this exercise
in observing, and as it goes on gives his benevolent superintendence.
§ 100. They learn slowly for another reason. According
to Pestalozzi the first conceptions must be dwelt upon
till they are distinct and firmly fixed. Buss tells us that
when he first joined Pestalozzi at Burgdorf the delay over
the prime elements seemed to him a waste of time, but
that afterwards he was convinced of its being the right plan,
and felt that the failure of his own education was due to its
incoherent and desultory character. “Not only,” says
Pestalozzi, “have the first elements of knowledge in every
subject the most important bearing on its complete outline,
but the child’s confidence and interest are gained by perfect
attainment even in the lowest stage of instruction.”[163]
§ 101. We have seen that Pestalozzi would have
children learn to pray, to think, and to work. In schools
for the soi-disant “upper classes” the parents or friends of
a boy sometimes say, “There is no need for him to work
he will be very well off.” From this kind of demoralization
Pestalozzi’s pupils were free. They would have to work,
and Pestalozzi wished them to learn to work as soon as possible.
In this way he sought to increase their self-respect,
and to unite their school-life with their life beyond it.[164]
§ 102. Pestalozzi was tremendously in earnest, and he
wished the children also to take instruction seriously. He
was totally opposed to the notion which had found favour
with many great authorities as e.g., Locke and Basedow,
that instruction should always be given in the guise of
amusement. “I am convinced,” says he, “that such a
notion will for ever preclude solidity of knowledge, and, for
want of sufficient exertions on the part of the pupils, will
lead to that very result which I wish to avoid by my
principle of a constant employment of the thinking powers.
A child must very early in life be taught the lesson that
exertion is indispensable for the attainment of knowledge”[165]
(To G., xxiv, p. 117). But he should be taught at the same
time that exertion is not an evil, and he should be encouraged,
not frightened, into it. Healthy exertion, whether of body
or mind, is always attended with a feeling of satisfaction
amounting to pleasure, and where this pleasure is absent the
instructor has failed in producing proper exertion. As
Pestalozzi says, “Whenever children are inattentive and
apparently take no interest in a lesson, the teacher should
always first look to himself for the reason”[166] (Ib.).
§ 103. But though he took so serious a view of instruction,
he made instruction include and indeed give a prominent
place to the arts of singing and drawing. In the
Pestalozzian schools singing found immense favour with both
the masters and the pupils, and the collection of songs by
Nägeli, a master at Yverdun, became famous. Drawing too
was practised by all. As Pestalozzi writes to Greaves (xxiv,
117), “A person who is in the habit of drawing, especially
from nature, will easily perceive many circumstances which
are commonly overlooked, and will form a much more correct
impression even of such objects as he does not stop to
examine minutely, than one who has never been taught to
look upon what he sees with an intention of reproducing a
likeness of it. The attention to the exact shape of the
whole and the proportion of the parts, which is requisite for
the taking of an adequate sketch, is converted into a habit,
and becomes productive both of instruction and amusement.”
§ 104. I have now endeavoured to point out the main
features of Pestalozzianism. The following is the summing
up of these features given by Morf in his Contribution to
Pestalozzi’s Biography:—
1. Instruction must be based on the learner’s own
experience. (Das Fundament des Unterrichts ist
die Anschauung.)
2. What the learner experiences and observes must be
connected with language.
3. The time for learning is not the time for judging, not
the time for criticism.
4. In every department instruction must begin with the
simplest elements, and starting from these must
be carried on step by step according to the development
of the child, that is, it must be brought into
psychological sequence.
5. At each point the instructor shall not go forward till
that part of the subject has become the proper
intellectual possession of the learner.
6. Instruction must follow the path of development, not
the path of lecturing, teaching, or telling.
7. To the educator the individuality of the child must be
sacred.
8. Not the acquisition of knowledge or skill is the main
object of elementary instruction, but the development
and strengthening of the powers of the mind.
9. With knowledge (Wissen) must come power (Können),
with information (Kenntniss) skill (Fertigkeit).
10. Intercourse between educator and pupil, and school
discipline especially, must be based on and controlled
by love.
11. Instruction shall be subordinated to the aim of education.
12. The ground of moral-religious bringing up lies in the
relation of mother and child.[167]
§ 105. Having now seen in which direction Pestalozzi
would start the school-coach, let us examine (with reference
to England only) the direction in which it is travelling at
present.
§ 106. For educational purposes we may, with Lord
Beaconsfield, regard the English as composed of two nations,
the rich and the poor. Let us consider these separately.
In the case of the rich we find that the worst part of our
educational course—the part most wrong in theory and
pernicious in practice—is the schooling of young children,
say between six and twelve years old. Before the age of
six some few are fortunate enough to attend a good Kindergarten;
but the opportunity of doing this is at present rare,
and for most children of well-to-do parents there is, up to
six years old, little or no organised instruction. Pestalozzi
would have every mother made capable of giving such
instruction. Froebel would have every child sent to a
skilled “Kindergärtnerin.” It seems to me beyond question
that children gain immensely from joining a properly-managed
Kindergarten; but where this is impossible, perhaps the
mother may leave the child to the series of impressions
which come to its senses without any regular order. According
to the first Lord Lytton, the mother’s interference
might remind us of the man who thought his bees would
make honey faster if, instead of going in search of flowers,
they were shut up and had flowers brought to them. The way
in which young children turn from object to object, like the
bees from flower to flower, seems to show that at this stage
their intellectual training goes on whether we help it or not.
There is no doubt an education for children however young,
and the mother is the teacher, but the lessons have more to
do with the heart than the head.
§ 107. But the time for regular teaching comes at last,
and what is to be done then? Let us consider briefly what
is done.
Hitherto, the only defence ever made of our school-course
leading up to residence at a University, has been that it
aims not at giving knowledge but at training the mind.
Youths then are supposed to be engaged, not in gaining
knowledge, but in training their faculties for adult life. But
when we come to provide for the “education” of children,
we never think of training their faculties for youth, but
endeavour solely to inculcate what will then come in useful.
We see clearly enough that it would be absurd to cram the
mind of a youth with laws of science or art or commerce
which he could not understand, on the ground that the
getting-up of these things might save him trouble in after-life.
But we do not hesitate to sacrifice childhood to the
learning by heart of grammar rules, Latin declensions,
historical dates, and the like, with no thought whatever of
the child’s faculties, but simply with a view of giving him
knowledge (so-called) that will come in useful five or six
years afterwards. We do not treat youths thus, probably
because we have more sympathy with them, or at least
understand them better. The intellectual life to which the
senses and the imagination are subordinated in the man
has already begun in the youth. In an inferior degree he
can do what the man can do, and understand what the man
can understand. He has already some notion of reasoning,
and abstraction, and generalisation. But with the child it
is very different. His active faculties may be said almost
to differ in kind from a man’s. He has a feeling for the
sensuous world which he will lose as he grows up. His
strong imagination, under no control of the reason, is constantly
at work building castles in the air, and investing the
doll or the puppet-show with all the properties of the things
they represent. His feelings and affections, easily excited,
find an object to love or dislike in every person and thing
he meets with. On the other hand, he has only vague
notions of the abstract, and has no interest except in actual
known persons, animals, and things.
§ 108. There is, then, between the child of eight or nine
and the youth of fourteen or fifteen a greater difference than
between the youth and the man of twenty; and this demands
a corresponding difference in their studies. And
yet, as matters are carried on now, the child is too often
kept to the drudgery of learning by rote mere collections
of hard words, perhaps, too, in a foreign language: and
absorbed in the present, he is not much comforted by the
teacher’s assurance that “some day” these things will come
in useful.
§ 109. How to educate the child is doubtless the most
difficult problem of all, and it is generally allotted to those
who are the least likely to find a satisfactory solution.
The earliest educator of the children of many rich parents
is the nursemaid—a person not usually distinguished by
either intellectual or moral excellence.[168] At an early age
this educator is superseded by the Preparatory School.
Taken as a body, the ladies who open “establishments for
young gentlemen” cannot be said to hold enlarged views,
or, indeed, any views whatever, on the subject of education.
Their intention is not so much to cultivate the children’s
faculties as to make a livelihood, and to hear no complaints
that pupils who have left them have been found deficient
in the expected knowledge by the master of the next school.
If anyone would investigate the sort of teaching which is
considered adapted to the capacity of children at this stage,
let him look into a standard work still in vogue (“Mangnall’s
Questions”), from which the young of both sexes
acquire a great quantity and variety of learning; the whole
of ancient and modern history and biography, together with
the heathen mythology, the planetary system, and the names
of all the constellations, lying very compactly in about 300
pages.[169]
Unfortunately, moreover, from the gentility of these
ladies, their scholars’ bodies are often treated in preparatory
schools no less injuriously than their minds. It may be
natural in a child to use his lungs and delight in noise, but
this can hardly be considered genteel, so the tendency is,
as far as possible, suppressed. It is found, too, that if
children are allowed to run about they get dirty and spoil
their clothes, and do not look like “young gentlemen,” so
they are made to take exercise in a much more genteel
fashion, walking slowly two-and-two, with gloves on.[170]
§ 110. At nine or ten years old, boys are commonly put
to a school taught by masters. Here they lose sight of
their gloves, and learn the use of their limbs; but their
minds are not so fortunate as their bodies. The studies
of the school have been arranged without any thought of
their peculiar needs. The youngest class is generally the
largest, often much the largest, and it is handed over to
the least competent and worst paid master on the staff of
teachers. The reason is, that little boys are found to learn
the tasks imposed upon them very slowly. A youth or a
man who came fresh to the Latin grammar would learn in
a morning as much as the master, with great labour, can
get into children in a week. It is thought, therefore, that
the best teaching should be applied where it will have the
most obvious results. If anyone were to say to the manager
of a school, “The master who takes the lowest form teaches
badly, and the children learn nothing”; he would perhaps
say, “Very likely; but if I paid a much higher salary, and
got a better man, they would learn but little.” The only
thing the school-manager thinks of is, How much do the
little boys learn of what is taught in the higher forms?
How their faculties are being developed, or whether they
have any faculties except for reading, writing, and arithmetic,
and for getting grammar-rules, &c. by heart, he is not so
“unpractical” as to enquire.
§ 111. With reference to the education of the first of our
“two nations,” it seems then pretty clear that Pestalozzi
would require that the school-coach should be turned and
started in a totally different direction.
§ 112. What about the education of the other “nation,”
a nation of which the verb “to rule” has for many centuries
been used in the passive voice, but can be used in that
voice no longer? A century ago, with the partial exception
of Scotland and Massachusetts, there was no such thing as
school education for the people to be found anywhere in
Europe or America. But from 1789 onwards power has
been passing more and more from the few to the many;
and as a natural consequence folk-schools (for which we
have not yet found a name) have become of vast importance
everywhere. The Germans, as we have seen, have been
the disciples of Pestalozzi, and their elementary education
in everything bears traces of his ideas. The English have
organised a great system of elementary education in total
ignorance of Pestalozzi. As usual, we seem to have supposed
that the right system would come to us “in sleep.”
But has it come? The children of the poor are now compelled
by the law to attend an elementary school. What
sort of an education has the law there provided for them?
The Education Department professes to measure everything
by results. Let us do the same. Suppose that on his
leaving school we wished to forecast a lad’s future. What
should we try to find out about him? No doubt we should
ask what he knew; but this would not be by any means
the main thing. His skill would interest us, and still more
would his state of health. But what we should ask first
and foremost is this, Whom does he love? Whom does
he admire and imitate? What does he care about? What
interests him? It is only when the answers to these questions
are satisfactory, that we can think hopefully of his
future; and it is only in so far as the school-course has
tended to make the answers satisfactory, that it deserves
our approval. Schools such as Pestalozzi designed would
have thus deserved our approval; but we cannot say this
of the schools into which the children of the English poor
are now driven. In these schools the heart and the affections
are not thought of, the powers of neither mind nor
body are developed by exercise, and the children do not
acquire any interests that will raise or benefit them.
§ 113. An advocate of our system would not deny this,
but would probably say, “The question for us to consider
is, not what is the best that in the most favourable circumstances
might be attempted, but what is the best that in
very restricted and by no means favourable circumstances,
we are likely to get. The teachers in our schools are not
self-devoting Pestalozzis, but only ordinary men and women,
and still worse, ordinary boys and girls.[171] It would be of
no use talking to our teachers (still less our pupil-teachers)
about developing the affections and the mental or bodily
powers of the children. All such talk could end in nothing
but silly cant. As for character, we expect the school to
cultivate in the children habits of order, neatness, industry.
Beyond this we cannot go.”
And yet, though this seems reasonable, we feel that it is
not quite satisfactory. If so much depends in all of us on
“admiration, hope, and love,” we can hardly consider a
system of education that entirely ignores them to be well
adapted to the needs of human nature. If Pestalozzi was
right, we must be wrong. We have never supposed the
object of the school to be the development of the faculties
of heart, of head, and of hand, but we have thought of
nothing but learning—learning first of all to read, write,
and cipher, and then in “good” schools, one or more
“extra subjects” may be taken up, and a grant obtained
for them. The sole object, both of managers and teachers,
is to prepare for the Inspector, who comes once a year, and
from an examination of five hours or so, pronounces on
what the children have learnt.
§ 114. The engineer most concerned in the construction
of this machine, the Right Hon. Robert Lowe, announced
that there could be “no such thing as a science of education;”
and as when we have no opinion of our own we always
adopt the opinion of some positive person, we took his word
for it. But what if the confident Mr. Lowe was mistaken?
What if there is such a science, and the aim of it is that
children should grow up not so much to know something as
to be something? In this case we shall be obliged sooner
or later to give up Mr. Lowe and to come round to
Pestalozzi.[172] Science is correct inferences drawn from the
facts of the universe; and where such science exists, confident
assertions that it does not and cannot exist are dangerous
for the confident persons and for those who follow them. Even
if “there is no such thing as a science of education,” such
a thing as education there is; and this is just what Mr. Lowe,
and we may say the English, practically deny. They make
arrangements for instruction and mete out “the grant”
according to the results obtained, but they totally fail to
conceive of the existence of education, education which has
instruction among its various agents.
§ 115. In one respect the analogy between the educator
and child and the gardener and plant, an analogy in which
Pestalozzi no less than Froebel delighted, entirely breaks
down. The gardener has to study the conditions necessary
for the health and development of the plant, but these
conditions lie outside his own life and are independent of it.
With the educator it is different. Like the gardener he can
create nothing in the child, but unlike the gardener he can
further the development only of that which exists in himself.
He draws out in the young the intelligence and the sense of
what is just, the love of what is beautiful, the admiration of what
is noble, but this he can do only by his own intelligence and
his own enthusiasm for what is just and beautiful and noble.
Even industry is in many cases caught from the teacher. In a
volume of essays (originally published in the Forum), in which
some men, distinguished as scholars or in literature in the
United States, have given an account of their early years, we
find that almost in every case they date their intellectual industry
and growth from the time when they came under the influence
of some inspiring teacher. Thus even for instruction
and still more for education, the great force is the teacher.
This is a truth which all our “parties” overlook. They
wage their controversies and have their triumphs and defeats
about unessentials, and leave the essentials to “crotchety
educationists.” In such questions as whether the Church
Catechism shall or shall not be taught, whether natural
science shall or shall not figure in the time-table (without
scientific teachers it can figure nowhere else), whether the
parents or the Government shall pay for each child twopence
or threepence a week, whether the ratepayers shall or shall
not be “represented” among the Managers in “voluntary”
schools, in all questions of this kind education is not concerned;
and yet these are the only questions that we think
about. In the end it will perhaps dawn upon us that in
every school what is important for education is not the time-table
but the teacher, and that so far as pupil-teachers are
employed education is impossible. Elsewhere (infra p. 476)
I have told of a man in the prime of life (he seemed between
40 and 50 years old) whose time was entirely taken up in
teaching a large class of children, boys and girls, of six or
seven years. He most certainly could and did educate them
both in heart and mind. He made their lessons a delightful
occupation to them, and he exercised over them the influence
of a good and wise father. Here was the right system seen
at its best. I do not say that all or even most adult teachers
would have exercised so good an influence as this gentleman;
but so far as they come up to what they ought to be and
might be they do exercise such an influence. And this of
course can be said of no pupil-teacher.
§ 116. As regards schools then, schools for the rich and
schools for the poor, the great educating force is the personality
of the teacher. Before we can have Pestalozzian
schools we must have Pestalozzian teachers. Teachers
must catch something of Pestalozzi’s spirit and enter into
his conception of their task. Perhaps some of them will
feel inclined to say: “Fine words, no doubt, and in a sense
very true, that education should be the unfolding of the
faculties according to the Divine idea; but between this
high poetical theory and the dull prose of actual school-teaching,
there is a great gulf fixed, and we cannot attend
to both at the same time.” I know full well the difference
there is between theories and plans of education as they
seem to us when we are at leisure and can think of them
without reference to particular pupils, and when all our
energy is taxed to get through our day’s teaching, and our
animal spirits jaded by having to keep order and exact
attention among veritable schoolboys who do not answer
in all respects to “the young” of the theorists. But whilst
admitting most heartily the difference here, as elsewhere,
between the actual and the ideal, I think that the dull
prose of school-teaching would be less dull and less prosaic
if our aim was higher, and if we did not contentedly assume
that our present performances are as good as the nature of
the case will admit of. Many teachers (perhaps I may say
most) are discontented with the greater number of their pupils,
but it is not so usual for teachers to be discontented with
themselves. And yet even those who are most averse from
theoretical views, which they call unpractical, would admit,
as practical men, that their methods are probably susceptible
of improvement, and that even if their methods are
right, they themselves are by no means perfect teachers.
Only let the desire of improvement once exist, and the
teacher will find a new interest in his work. In part, the
treadmill-like monotony so wearing to the spirits will be
done away, and he will at times have the encouragement of
conscious progress. To a man thus minded, theorists may
be of great assistance. His practical knowledge may, indeed,
often show him the absurdity of some pompously
enunciated principle, and even where the principles seem
sound, he may smile at the applications. But the theorists
will show him many aspects of his profession, and will lead
him to make many observations in it, which would otherwise
have escaped him. They will save him from a danger
caused by the difficulty of getting anything done in the
school-room, the danger of thinking more of means than
ends. They will teach him to examine what his aim really
is, and then whether he is using the most suitable methods
to accomplish it.
Such a theorist is Pestalozzi. He points to a high ideal,
and bids us measure our modes of education by it. Let us
not forget that if we are practical men we are Christians,
and as such the ideal set before us is the highest of all.
“Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
The Pestalozzian literature in German and even in French is now
considerable, but it is still small in English. The book I have made
most use of is Histoire de Pestalozzi par R. de Guimps (Lausanne,
Bridel), with its translation by John Russell (London: Sonnenschein.
Appleton’s: N. Yk.). In Henry Barnard’s Pestalozzi and
Pestalozzianism are collected some good papers, among them Tilleard’s
trans. from Raumer. We also have H. Kruesi’s Pestalozzi (Cincinatti:
Wilson, Hinkle, & Co.). I have already mentioned Miss
Channing’s Leonard and Gertrude. The Letters to Greaves are now
out of print. A complete account of Pestalozzi and everything
connected with him, bibliography included, is given in M. J.
Guillaume’s article Pestalozzi, in Buisson’s Dictionnaire de Pédagogie.
(See also Pestalozzi par J. Guillaume (Hachette) just published.)