may require all children to partake of a certain degree of
instruction, it must make such instruction free.
5. Should instruction that is above the compulsory grade be free?
This depends on the question whether the State needs a certain
amount of the higher culture, and whether this required amount
will be secured at the pupils’ own expense. Monsieur Compayré
decides, as against Condorcet (paragraph 441), that the higher
grades of instruction should not be gratuitous. In this country
the prevailing theory is that the higher education should be
endowed by the State.
6. The relation of instruction to morality has never been more
justly and pointedly stated than in paragraph 433. This is not
only good sense but sound philosophy.]
FOOTNOTES:
[198] Théry, _Histoire de l’éducation en France_, Paris, 1861, Tome
II. p. 188.
[199] Albert Duruy, _L’instruction publique et la Révolution_, p.
80.
[200] J. Simon, _Dieu, patrie, et liberté_, p. 11.
[201] Albert Duruy, _op. cit._, p. 16.
[202] _Doléances_ presented to the States-General by the teachers
of the smaller cities, hamlets, and villages of Bourgogne.
[203] A. Duruy, _op. cit._, p. 10.
[204] See the _Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_, Article FRANCE.
[205] What is meant by “liberty of teaching” will be better
understood from the following quotations from the _Dictionnaire de
Pédagogie_, Première Partie, p. 1575 _et seq._:--
“Liberty of teaching, in a country which has proclaimed obligatory
instruction, is the equal right of all to give that instruction,
or the prohibition of every monopoly which would put that
instruction into the hands either of privileged individuals, or of
corporations, or even of the State, to the exclusion of every other
teaching body.”
“Under the old régime, the education of the masses was committed to
the hands of the Church; the colleges, directed by a body of men
who were all ecclesiastics, gave ‘a vain pretence of an education,
where the memory alone was exercised, and where the reason was
insulted in the forms of reasoning.’”
“The purpose of the men of the Revolution was, then, above all
else, to emancipate science, and to guarantee the right of free
inquiry; and while rescuing instruction from the tyranny of the
Church, to assure to citizens in general the opportunity to acquire
the knowledge that is essential to man. On the one hand, they would
take precautions against the abuse of power by a government which
had always shown itself hostile to free thought ...; on the other,
in opposition to the old doctrine which condemned the people to
ignorance, they proclaimed the duty of the State to create a system
of _public instruction_, common to all citizens.”
“It is at this point of view that we must place ourselves in
order to gain a correct notion of the plans that were submitted
to the Constituent Convention and the Legislative Assembly. What
Talleyrand and Condorcet desired was, first, to organize, under the
form of a public service, a system of national education in which
all might participate; and in the second place, to take precautions
against the Church and the royal authority, and so prevent despotic
power from attempting to prevent the development of new truths and
the teaching of theories which it judged contrary to its policy
and interests. For them, liberty of teaching is the demand of
philosophic liberty against ecclesiastical and secular authority.”
(P.)
[206] Public instruction as now organized in France is of three
grades, as follows:--
“Primary instruction, which gives the elements of knowledge,
reading, writing, and arithmetic. Secondary instruction, embracing
the study of the ancient languages, of rhetoric, and the first
elements of the mathematical and physical sciences, and of
philosophy. This is given in the lycées and colleges, as well as
in the smaller seminaries. Superior instruction, designed to teach
in all their completeness letters, the languages, the sciences,
and philosophy. This is given in the Faculties, in the College of
France, and in the larger seminaries.”--LITTRÉ. (P.)
[207] See the _Rapport_ of Daunou presented to the National
Convention, 27 Vendémiaire, year IV.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE CONVENTION.--LEPELLETIER SAINT-FARGEAU, LAKANAL, DAUNOU.
THE CONVENTION; SUCCESSIVE MEASURES; THE BILL OF LANTHENAS; THE
BILL OF ROMME; THE NATIONAL HOLIDAYS; ELEMENTARY BOOKS; DECREE
OF MAY 30, 1793; LAKANAL (1762-1845); DAUNOU (1761-1840); THE
BILL OF LAKANAL, SIEYÈS, AND DAUNOU; LEPELLETIER SAINT-FARGEAU
(1760-1793); HIS SCHEME OF EDUCATION (JULY 13, 1793); LEPELLETIER
AND CONDORCET; COMPULSORY EDUCATION IN BOARDING-SCHOOLS; THE
CHILD BELONGS TO THE REPUBLIC; SCHOOL OCCUPATIONS; ABSOLUTE
GRATUITY; THE RIGHTS OF THE FAMILY; SAINT-JUST; THE ROMME
LAW; THE BOUQUIER LAW; THE LAKANAL LAW; EDUCATIONAL METHODS;
ELEMENTARY BOOKS; GEOGRAPHY; LETTERS AND SCIENCES; THE FOUNDATION
OF NORMAL SCHOOLS; THE NORMAL SCHOOL OF PARIS; CENTRAL SCHOOLS;
THEIR DEFECTS; POSITIVE AND PRACTICAL SPIRIT; GREAT FOUNDATIONS
OF THE CONVENTION; THE LAW OF OCTOBER 27, 1795; INSUFFICIENCY OF
DAUNOU’S SCHEME; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
446. THE CONVENTION.--The Constituent Assembly and the Legislative
Assembly had done nothing more than to prepare reports and
projected decrees, without either discussing them or bringing
them to a vote. The Convention went so far as to vote, but it did
not have the time to execute the resolutions, contradictory and
incoherent, which it was forced to adopt, one after another, by the
fluctuation of political currents.
447. SUCCESSIVE MEASURES.--Nothing definite in the way of execution
issued from the enthusiastic passion which the Convention exhibited
for the organization of primary instruction. First there was a
triumph of modern ideas in the bill of Lanthenas, the first
article of which was adopted December 12, 1792; and they appeared
again in the bill of Sieyès, Daunou, and Lakanal, presented June
26, 1793, and defeated after an exciting discussion. But the
influence of the Girondists was succeeded by the domination of
the Montagnards[208] whose dictatorial and violent spirit is
indicated: 1. in the bill of Lepelletier, adopted through the
support of Robespierre, August 13, 1793; 2. in the bill projected
and presented by Romme in behalf of the commission of public
instruction, October 20, 1793, and passed on the following day;
3. and lastly in the bill of Bouquier, which, presented December
19, 1793, became the decree of December 26. The reaction which
followed resulted in the legislative acts by which the Convention
finished its educational work. The bill of Sieyès, Daunou, and
Lakanal was reconsidered, and November 17, 1793, it was substituted
for the bill of Bouquier. Finally, when the constitution of 1794
was substituted for the constitution of 1793, a new law of public
instruction was passed on the report of Daunou, October 27, 1795,
and it is this law which presided over the organization of schools
under the Directory.
In this confusion, this chaos of bills and counter-bills, it
is difficult to establish any clew that is wholly trustworthy.
We shall restrict ourselves to noting the points that seem
essential.[209]
Impatient to finish its business, the committee on public
instruction, which the Convention had appointed October 2,
1792, decided to put aside, for the present, the other branches
of public instruction, and proposed for immediate action only
the organization of primary schools, by taking, as a point
of departure, the bill which Condorcet had presented to the
Legislative Assembly. The report of Lanthenas and a proposed decree
were within a few weeks the results of these deliberations; but in
all its parts this result is scarcely more than the reproduction
of Condorcet’s work, and presents nothing original. Let us note,
however, the idea of associating the pupil with his teacher in the
work of instruction:--
“Teachers will call to their aid the pupils whose intelligence
shall have made the most rapid progress; and they will thus be
able, _very easily_, to give to four classes of pupils, in the
same session, all the attention needed for their progress. At the
same time, the efforts made by the most competent to teach what
they know to their schoolmates, will be much more instructive to
themselves than the lessons they receive from their masters.”
Further, let us notice title III. of the proposed decree relative
to the measures to be taken in order to make obligatory the use of
the French language, and to abolish the _patois_, or particular
idioms. The minimum salary of men teachers was fixed at six hundred
francs. The appointment of teachers was entrusted to the heads
of families, who were to elect one from a list prepared by a
“commission of educated persons” appointed by the Councils-General
of the communes and the Directories of departments.
448. THE BILL OF LANTHENAS.--The discussion of the bill of
Lanthenas began on December 12, 1792, but only article first was
carried, and the bill itself did not become a law.
On December 20, another member of the Convention, Romme,
mathematician, deputy from Puy-de-Dôme, read a new report on public
instruction.
449. THE BILL OF ROMME.--The bill of Lanthenas aimed at only the
first grade of instruction, but the report of Romme embraced
the four grades of instruction, and was but little more than a
reproduction of Condorcet’s work. But no legislative measure
followed the reading of his bill, and up to the 30th of May, 1793,
there is scarcely anything to be noted, as the educational work of
the Convention, save the bill of Rabaud Saint-Étienne on public
festivals, and the report of Arbogast on elementary books.
450. NATIONAL HOLIDAYS.--It is difficult to form an idea of
the importance which the men of this period attributed to the
educational influence of national holidays. At variance on so
many points, they all agree in thinking that the French people
could be instructed and regenerated simply by establishing popular
solemnities.
“It is a kind of institution,” said Robespierre, “which ought to
be considered as an essential part of public education,--I mean
national holidays.”
Daunou also persisted in considering national holidays as the most
certain and the most comprehensive means of public instruction. The
decree passed at his request established seven national holidays:
that of the foundation of the Republic, of young men, of husbands,
of thanksgiving, of agriculture, of liberty, of old men.
451. ELEMENTARY BOOKS.--An important point in the pedagogy of the
Revolution was the attention given to the composition of elementary
books. On several occasions the Convention put up for competition
these modest works intended to aid parents or teachers in their
task. It was one of the happiest thoughts of that period to desire
that there should be placed in the hands of parents simple methods
and well-arranged books which might teach them how to bring up
their children. The difficulty of this kind of composition was
understood, and so application was made to the most distinguished
writers. Bernardin de Saint Pierre was employed to edit the
_Elements of Morality_.
December 24, 1792, Arbogast had submitted to the Convention a
proposed decree in which it was said:--
“It is only the superior men in a science, or in an art, those who
have sounded all its depths, and have carried it to its farthest
limits, who are capable of composing such elementary treatises as
are desirable.”
452. DECREE OF MAY 30, 1793.--The first decree of the Convention
relative to primary schools was passed May 30, 1793. But this
laconic law contained nothing very new. Besides, it was forgotten
in the storm which on the next day, May 31, swept away the
Girondists, and gave to the Montagnards the political supremacy.
453. LAKANAL (1762-1845).--After the revolution of May 31, among
the men who, in the committee on public instruction and in the
assembly itself, were occupied with the educational organization
of France, we must assign the first place to Lakanal and Daunou.
On June 26, 1793, three days after the adoption of the new
constitution, Lakanal brought to the tribune the bill which he had
drawn up in conjunction with Daunou and Sieyès.
Lakanal is one of the purest and most remarkable characters of the
French Revolution.[210] “Lakanal,” said Marat, to whom some one
had denounced him, “works too much to have the time to conspire.”
Industrious and thoughtful, after having taught philosophy with
the “Doctrinaires,” of whom he was the pupil, he became the
first, after Condorcet, of the educators of the Revolution. “His
appearance,” says Paul Bert, “has always particularly attracted
me. It unites gentleness with force, energy with serenity. We feel
that this austere citizen has never known any other passion than
that of well-doing, and has neither desired nor obtained any other
reward than that of having done his duty. He despises violence of
language, and hates that of acts; and so we do not find him, under
the Empire, a baron like Jean-Bon Saint André, a minister like
Fouché, or a senator like a whole herd.”
454. DAUNOU (1761-1840).--At an early period in his life, Daunou
had taught philosophy in the colleges of the Oratorians, of whom he
was a member. In 1789 he published in the _Journal Encyclopédique_,
a plan of national education which was approved by the Oratory,
and which he presented to the Constituent Assembly in 1790. In the
Convention he took an active part in the work of the committee on
public instruction, and assisted in the preparation of Lakanal’s
first bill. In the same year he published an _Essay on Public
Instruction_. In the Council of the Five Hundred he was appointed
to make a report on the organization of special schools. Under
the Empire he accepted the management of the national archives.
Under the Restoration he was appointed professor of history in
the College of France. Finally, after 1830, we find him once
more in the Chamber of Deputies, giving proof of unusual energy
and vitality, and presenting in opposition to the minister of
public instruction, de Montalivet, a counter-bill, the principal
aim of which was to lodge with the municipal authorities the
administration of schools, a power which the government wished to
leave in the hands of the inspectors.
455. THE BILL OF LAKANAL, SIEYÈS, AND DAUNOU.--These are the
principal provisions of this bill: a school for each thousand
inhabitants; separate schools for girls and boys; the election
of teachers entrusted to a board of inspectors composed of three
members, and located at the government centre of each district; the
general organization of methods, regulations, and school régime
placed in the hands of a central commission sitting with the Corps
Législatif, and placed under its authority; an education which
embraces the whole man, at once intellectual, physical, moral,
and industrial; the first lessons in reading given to boys as to
girls by a woman teacher; arithmetic, geometry, physics, and morals
included in the programme of instruction; visits to hospitals,
prisons, and workshops; finally, liberty granted to private
initiative to found schools.
“The law can put no veto on the right which all citizens have
to open private courses and schools, free in all grades of
instruction, and to direct them as shall seem to them best.” (Art.
61.)
This was pushing liberality rather far.
Another distinctive feature of this bill, which is not without
value, is the respect shown the character and functions of the
teacher. On public occasions the schoolmaster shall wear a medal
with this inscription: _He who instructs is a second father_.
The form is rather pretentious, but the sentiment is good. Other
articles do not merit the same commendation, particularly the one
which established theatres in each canton, in which men and women
would take part in music and dancing.
The bill of Lakanal, vigorously opposed by a part of the Assembly,
was not adopted. Under the leadership of Robespierre, the
Convention gave preference to the dictatorial and violent measure
of Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau.
456. LEPELLETIER SAINT-FARGEAU (1760-1793).--Assassinated in 1793,
Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau left among his papers an educational bill
which Robespierre took up, and which he presented to the Assembly
July 13, 1793, on the occasion of the debate opened on the motion
of Barrère. A month later the bill was passed by the Convention,
but before being carried into operation, the decree was revoked.
The Assembly receded from the accomplishment of a reform in which
some good intentions could not atone for measures that, on the
whole, were mischievous and tyrannical.
457. HIS SCHEME OF EDUCATION.--The plan of Lepelletier scarcely
deserves the admiration which Michelet gives it, who salutes
in this work the “_revolution of childhood_,” and who declares
that it is “admirable in spirit, and in no respect chimerical.”
An imitation with but little originality of the institutions of
Lycurgus and the reveries of Plato, the plan of Lepelletier is
scarcely more than an historical curiosity.
458. LEPELLETIER AND CONDORCET.--Lepelletier accepted Condorcet’s
plan in all that relates to _secondary schools_, _institutes_, and
_lycées_, that is to say, higher primary instruction, secondary
instruction, and superior instruction.
“I find,” he said, “in these three courses a plan which seems to me
wisely conceived.”
But Lepelletier follows only his own fancy in the conception of
those curious boarding-schools, little barracks for childhood,
in which he confined all children by force, wresting them from
their parents, and placing at the expense of the State their moral
training, as well as their material support.
459. OBLIGATORY ATTENDANCE IN BOARDING-SCHOOLS.--In education,
Lepelletier represents the doctrine of the Jacobins. In order
to make France republican, he would employ radical and absolute
measures.
“Let us ordain,” he says, “that all children, girls as well as
boys, girls from five to eleven, and boys from five to twelve,
shall be educated in common, at the expense of the State, and shall
receive, for six or seven years, the same education.”
In order that there may be complete equality, their food, like
their instruction, shall be the same; even more, their dress shall
be identical. Does Lepelletier then desire, in his craze for
equality, that girls shall be dressed like boys?
460. THE CHILD BELONGS TO THE REPUBLIC.--The idea of Lepelletier
is that the child is the property of the State, a chattel of the
Republic. The State must make the child in its own image.
“In our system,” he says, “the entire being of the child belongs to
us; the material never leaves the mould.” And he adds, “Whatever is
to compose the Republic ought to be cast in the republican mould.”
Lepelletier imposes on all children, girls and boys, the same
studies,--reading, writing, numbers, natural morality, domestic
economy. This is almost the programme of Condorcet. But he adds
to it manual labor. All children shall be employed in working
the soil. If the college has not at its disposal enough land to
cultivate, the children shall be taken out on the roads, there to
pick up stones or to scatter them. Can we imagine, without smiling,
a system of education, in which our future advocates and writers
are to spend six years in transporting material upon the highways?
461. ABSOLUTE GRATUITY.--The colleges in which Lepelletier
sequesters and quarters all the children are to be absolutely
free. Three measures were proposed for covering the expense: 1.
tuition paid by parents in easy circumstances; 2. the labor of the
children; 3. the balance needed furnished by the State. But is
there not just a little of the chimerical in counting much on the
work of children of that age?
462. THE RIGHTS OF THE FAMILY.--Lepelletier takes but little
account of the rights of the family. However, notice must be taken
of that idea which Robespierre thought “sublime,”--the creation, at
each college, of a council of heads of families, entrusted with the
oversight of teachers and their children.
463. SAINT-JUST.--Saint-Just, in his _Institutions républicaines_,
maintains opinions analogous to those of Lepelletier. He admits
that the child belongs to his mother till the age of five; but from
the age of five till death he belongs to the Republic. Till the age
of sixteen boys are fed at the expense of the State. It is true
that their food is not expensive. It is composed of grapes, fruit,
vegetables, milk-diet, bread, and water. Their dress is of cotton
in all seasons. However, Saint-Just did not subject girls to the
same régime. More liberal on this point than Lepelletier, he would
have them brought up at home.
464. THE ROMME LAW (Oct. 30, 1793).--Romme was one of the most
active members of the committee on public instruction. He was
the principal author of the bill which the Convention passed in
October, 1793, the principal articles of which were conceived as
follows:--
“Art. 1. There are primary schools distributed throughout the
Republic in proportion to the population.
“Art. 2. In these schools children receive their earliest physical,
moral, and intellectual education, the best adapted to develop in
them republican manners, love of country, and taste for labor.
“Art. 3. They learn to speak, read, and write the French language.
“They are taught the acts of virtue which most honor free men, and
particularly the acts of the French Revolution most fit to give
them elevation of soul, and to make them worthy of liberty and
equality.
“They acquire some notions of the geography of France.
“The knowledge of the rights and duties of the man and the citizen
is brought within their comprehension through examples and their
own experience.
“They are given the first notions of the natural objects that
surround them, and of the natural action of the elements.
“They have practice in the use of numbers, of the compass, the
level, weights and measures, the lever, the pulley, and in the
measurement of time.
“They are often allowed to witness what is done in the fields and
in workshops; and they take part in these employments as far as
their age permits.”
But the bill of Romme was not put in operation. The Convention
presently decided on a revision of the decree it had passed, and
the bill of Bouquier was substituted for the bill of Romme.
465. THE BOUQUIER LAW (Dec. 19, 1793).--Bouquier was a man of
letters, deputy from Dordogne, and belonged to the Jacobinic party.
He spoke of his bill as follows:--
“It is a simple and natural scheme, and one easy to execute; a
plan which forever proscribes all idea of an academic body, of a
scientific society, of an educational hierarchy; a plan, finally,
whose bases are the same as those of the constitution, liberty,
equality, and simplicity.”
The Bouquier bill was adopted December 19, and remained in force
till it was superseded by the Lakanal law.
These are its principal provisions:--
“The right to teach is open to all.” “Citizens, men and women,
who would use the liberty to teach, shall be required to produce
a certificate of citizenship and good morals, and to fulfill
certain formalities.” “They shall be designated as _instituteurs_
and _institutrices_.” They shall be placed “under the immediate
supervision of the municipality, of parents, and of all the
citizens.” “They are forbidden to teach anything contrary to the
laws and to republican morality.” On the other hand, parents are
required to send their children to the primary schools. Parents who
do not obey this order are sentenced, for the first offence, to pay
a fine equal to a fourth of their school tax. In case of a second
offence, the fine is to be doubled and the children to be suspended
for ten years from their rights as citizens. Finally, young people
who, on leaving the primary schools, “do not busy themselves with
the cultivation of the soil, shall be required to learn a trade
useful to society.”
Enforced school attendance, and what is an entirely different
thing, the obligation of citizens to work, were thus established by
the Bouquier law.
Let us add that the author of this bill, which, like so many
others, was not executed, had strange notions on the sciences and
on instruction.
“The speculative sciences,” he says, “detach from society the
individuals who cultivate them.... Free nations have no need of
speculative scholars, whose minds are constantly travelling over
desert paths.”
Hence, no scientific instruction. The real schools, “the noblest,
the most useful, the most simple, are the meetings of committees.
The Revolution, in establishing national holidays, in creating
popular associations and clubs, has placed in all quarters
inexhaustible sources of instruction. Then let us not go and
substitute for this organization, as simple and sublime as the
people that creates it, an artificial organization, based on
academic statutes which should no longer infect a regenerated
nation.”
466. THE LAKANAL LAW (Nov. 17, 1794).--There still remained
something of the spirit of Lepelletier in the Bouquier law, though
the idea of an education in common had been abandoned; but the
Lakanal law openly breaks with the tendencies of Robespierre and
his friends.
The law which was passed November 17, 1794, upon the report of
Lakanal, reproduced in its spirit and in its principal provisions
the original bill which the influence of Robespierre had defeated.
The following was the programme of instruction contained in this
law.
The instructor shall teach:--
“1. Reading and writing; 2. the declaration of the rights of man
and the constitution; 3. elementary lessons on republican morals;
4. the elements of the French language both spoken and written; 5.
the rules of simple calculation and of surveying; 6. lessons on
the principal phenomena and the most common productions of nature;
there shall be taught a collection of heroic actions and songs of
triumph.”
At the same time the bill required that the schools be divided into
two sections, one for the girls and the other for the boys, and
distributed in the proportion of one to each thousand inhabitants.
The teachers, nominated by the people and confirmed by a jury
of instruction, are to receive salaries as follows: men, twelve
hundred francs; women, one thousand francs.
467. PEDAGOGICAL METHODS.--Lakanal had given much thought to
pedagogical methods. It is the interior of the school, not less
than its exterior organization, that preoccupied his generous
spirit. Like the most of his contemporaries, a partisan of
Condillac’s doctrine, he believed that the idea could not reach
the understanding except through the mediation of the senses.
Consequently, he recommended the method which consists “in first
appealing to the eyes of pupils, ... in creating the understanding
through the senses, ... in developing morals out of the
sensibility, just as understanding out of sensation.” This is an
excellent method if we add to it a corrective, if we do not forget
to excite the intelligence itself, and to make an appeal to the
interior forces of the soul.
468. ELEMENTARY BOOKS.--A few other quotations will suffice
to prove with what acuteness of pedagogic sense Lakanal was
endowed.[211] Very much interested in the composition of works
for popular instruction, he sharply distinguished the elementary
book, which brings knowledge within the reach of children, from
the abridgment, which does no more than condense a long work. “The
abridged,” he said, “is exactly opposed to the elementary.” No
one has better comprehended than he the difficulty of writing a
treatise on morals for the use of children:--
“It requires special genius. Simplicity in form and artless
grace should there be mingled with accuracy of ideas; the art of
reasoning ought never to be separated from that of interesting the
imagination; such a work should be conceived by a profound logician
and executed by a man of feeling. There should be found in it, so
to speak, the analytical mind of Condillac and the soul of Fénelon.”
469. GEOGRAPHY.--Lakanal has defined with the same exactness the
method to be followed in the teaching of geography. “First let
there be shown,” he says, “in every school, the plan of the
commune in which it is situated, and then let the children see a
map of the canton of which the commune forms a part; then a map of
the department, and then a map of France; after which will come the
map of Europe and of other parts of the world, and lastly a map of
the world.”[212]
470. LETTERS AND SCIENCES.--More just than Condorcet, Lakanal did
not wish scientific culture to do prejudice to literary culture:--
“For a long time we have neglected the belles-lettres, and some men
who wish to be considered profound regard this study as useless. It
is letters, however, which open the intelligence to the light of
reason, and the heart to impressions of sentiment. They substitute
morality for interest, give pupils polish, exercise their judgment,
make them more sensitive and at the same time more obedient to the
laws, more capable of grand virtues.”
471. NECESSITY OF NORMAL SCHOOLS.--Lakanal’s highest title to glory
is that he has associated his name with the foundation of normal
schools. The idea of establishing pedagogical seminaries was not
absolutely new. A number of the friends of instruction, both in
the seventeenth and in the eighteenth century,[213] had seen that
it would be useless to open schools, if good teachers had not been
previously trained; but the Convention has the honor of having for
the first time given practical effect to this vague aspiration.
Decreed June 2, 1793, the foundation of normal schools was the
object of a report by Lakanal on October 26, 1794. In a style which
was inferior to his ideas, and which would have been more effective
had it been simpler, Lakanal sets forth the necessity of teaching
the teachers themselves before sending them to teach their pupils:--
“Are there in France, are there in Europe, are there in the whole
world, two or three hundred men (and we need more than this number)
competent to teach the useful arts and the necessary branches of
knowledge, according to methods which make minds more acute, and
truths more clear,--methods which, while teaching you to know one
thing, teach you to reason upon all things? No, that number of
men, however small it may appear, exists nowhere on the earth. It
is necessary, then, that they be trained. In being the first to
decree normal schools, you have resolved to create in advance a
very large number of teachers, capable of being the executors of a
plan whose purpose is the regeneration of the human understanding,
in a republic of twenty-five millions of men, all of whom democracy
renders equal.”
The term _normal schools_ (from the Latin word _norma_, a rule) was
not less new than the thing. Lakanal explains that it was designed
by this expression to characterize with exactness the schools which
were to be the type and the standard of all the others.
472. THE NORMAL SCHOOL OF PARIS.--To accomplish his purpose,
Lakanal proposed to assemble at Paris, under the direction of
eminent masters, such as Lagrange, Berthollet, and Daubenton, a
considerable number of young men, called from all quarters of the
Republic, and designated “by their talents as by their state of
citizenship.” The masters of this great normal school were to
give their pupils “lessons on the art of teaching morals, ... and
teach them to apply to the teaching of reading and writing, of the
first elements of calculation, of practical geometry, of history
and of French grammar, the methods outlined in the elementary
courses adopted by the National Convention and published by its
orders.” Once instructed “in the art of teaching human knowledge,”
the pupils of the Normal School of Paris were to go and repeat in
all parts of the Republic the “grand lectures” they had heard, and
there form the nucleus of provincial normal schools. And thus, says
Lakanal with exaggeration, “that fountain of enlightenment, so pure
and so abundant, since it will proceed from the foremost men of the
Republic of every class, poured out from reservoir to reservoir,
will diffuse itself from place to place throughout all France,
without losing anything of its purity in its course.”
October 30, 1794, the Convention adopted the proposals of Lakanal.
The Normal School opened January 20, 1795. Its organization
was defective and impracticable. First, there were too many
pupils,--four hundred young men admitted without competitive tests,
and abandoned to themselves in Paris; professors who were doubtless
illustrious, but whose literary talent or scientific genius did not
perhaps adapt itself sufficiently to the needs of a normal course
of instruction and of a practical pedagogy; lectures insufficient
in number, which lasted for only four months, and which, on the
testimony of Daunou, “were directed rather towards the heights of
science than towards the art of teaching.” Thus the experiment,
which terminated May 6, 1795, did not fulfill the hopes that had
been formed of it: the idea of establishing provincial normal
schools was not carried out. But no matter; a memorable example
had been given, and the fruitful principle of the establishment of
normal schools had made a start in actual practice.
473. CENTRAL SCHOOLS.--The _central schools_, designed to replace
the colleges of secondary instruction, were established by decree
of February 25, 1795, on the report of Lakanal. Daunou modified
them in the law of October 25, 1795. They continued, without great
success, till the law of May 1, 1802, which suppressed them.
474. DEFECTS OF THE CENTRAL SCHOOLS.--The Central Schools of
Lakanal resembled, trait for trait, the Institutes of Condorcet.
And it must be confessed that here the imitation is not happy.
Lakanal made the mistake of borrowing from Condorcet the plan of
these poorly defined establishments, in which the instruction was
on too vast a scale, and the programmes too crowded, where the
pupil, it seems, was to learn to discuss _de omni re scibili_.
Condorcet went so far as to introduce into his Institutes a
course of lectures on midwifery! The Central Schools, in which
the instruction was a medley of studies indiscreetly presented to
an overdriven auditory, do honor neither to the Convention that
organized them, nor to Condorcet who had traced the first sketch of
them.
475. POSITIVE AND PRACTICAL SPIRIT.--However, there was something
correct in the idea which presided over the foundation of the
Central Schools. We find this expressed in the _Essays on
Instruction_, by the mathematician, Lacroix.[214] Lacroix calls
attention to the fact that the progress of the sciences and the
necessity of learning a great number of new things, impose on the
educator the obligation to take some account of space; and, if I
may so speak, of clipping the wings of studies which, like Latin,
had thus far been the unique and exclusive object of instruction.
In the Central Schools, in fact, the classical languages held
only the second place. Not only were the mathematical sciences,
and those branches of knowledge from which the pupil can derive
the most immediate profit, associated with the classics, but the
preference was given to them. In the minds of those who organized
these schools, the positive and practical idea of success in life
was substituted for the speculative and disinterested idea of
mental development for its own sake. In reality, these two ideas
ought to complete each other, and not to exclude each other. The
ideal of education consists in finding a system which welcomes
both. But in the Central Schools the first point of view absorbed
the second. These establishments resembled the industrial schools
of our day, but with this particular defect, that there was a
determination to include everything in them, and to give a place
to new studies without wholly sacrificing the old. Let there be
created colleges of practical and special instruction; nothing can
be better, for provision would thus be made for the needs of modern
society. But let no one force literary studies and the industrial
arts to live together under the same roof.
476. GREAT FOUNDATIONS OF THE CONVENTION.--In the first years of
its existence, the Convention had given its attention only to
primary schools. It seemed as though teaching the illiterate to
read was the one need of society. In the end the Convention rose
above these narrow and exclusive views, and turned its attention
towards secondary instruction and towards superior instruction. It
is particularly by the establishment of several special schools
for superior instruction that the Convention gave proof of its
versatility and intelligence.
In quick succession it decreed and founded the Polytechnic School,
under the name of the Central School of Public Works (March 11,
1794); the Normal School (October 30, 1794); the School of Mars
(June 1, 1794); the Conservatory of Arts and Trades (September
29, 1794). The next year it organized the Bureau of Longitudes,
and finally the National Institute. What a magnificent effort to
repair the ruins which anarchy had made, or to supply the omissions
which the old régime had patiently suffered! Of these multiplied
creations the greater number remain and still flourish.
477. LAW OF OCTOBER 27, 1795.--Those who ask us to see in the
decree of October 27, 1795, “the capital work of the Convention in
the matter of instruction, the synthesis of all its previous labors
and proposals, the most serious effort of the Revolution,”[215]
evidently put forward a paradox. Lakanal and his friends would
certainly have disavowed a law which cancels with a few strokes
of the pen the grand revolutionary principles in the matter of
education,--the gratuity, the obligation, and the universality of
instruction.
The destinies of public instruction are allied to the fate of
constitutions. To changes of policy there correspond, by an
inevitable recoil, analogous changes in the organization of
instruction. Out of the slightly retrograde constitution of 1793
there issued the educational legislation of 1794, of which it could
be said that “the spirit of reaction made itself painfully felt in
it.”
Daunou, who was the principal author of it, doubtless had high
competence in questions of public instruction; but with a secret
connivance of his own temperament he yielded to the tendencies
of the times. He voluntarily condescended to the timidities of a
senile and worn-out Assembly, which, having become impoverished by
a series of suicides, had scarcely any superior minds left within
it.
478. INSUFFICIENCY OF DAUNOU’S SCHEME.--Nothing could be more
defective than Daunou’s plan. The number of primary schools was
reduced. It is no longer proposed to proportion them to the
population. Daunou goes back to the cantonal schools of Talleyrand:
“There shall be established in each canton of the Republic one or
more primary schools.” We are far from Condorcet, who required a
school for each group of four hundred souls, and from Lakanal, who
demanded one for each thousand inhabitants. On the other hand,
teachers no longer receive a salary from the State. The State
merely assures to them a place for a class-room and lodging, and
also a garden! “There shall likewise be furnished the teacher the
garden which happens to lie near these premises.” There is no other
remuneration save the annual tuition paid by each pupil to the
teacher. At the same stroke the teacher was made the hireling of
his pupils, and gratuity of instruction was abolished. Only the
indigent pupils, a fourth of the whole number, could be exempted
by the municipal administration from the payment of school fees.
Finally, the programme of studies was reduced to the humblest
proportions: reading, writing, number, and the elements of
republican morality.
After so many noble and generous ambitions, after so many
enthusiastic declarations in favor of the absolute gratuity
of primary instruction, after so many praiseworthy efforts to
raise the material and moral condition of teachers, and to cause
instruction to circulate to the minutest fibres of the social
tissue, the Convention terminated its work in a mean conception
which thinned out the schools, which impoverished the programmes,
which plunged the teacher anew into a precarious state of
existence, which put him anew at the mercy of his pupils, without,
however, taking care to assure him of patronage, and which, for his
sole compensation in case he had no pupils to instruct, guaranteed
him the right to cultivate a garden, if, indeed, there should be
one in the neighborhood of the school! Had the law of 1795 been in
fact the educational will of the Convention, is it not true, at
least, that it is after the manner of those wills extorted by undue
means, where a man by his final bequests recalls his former acts,
and proves himself faithless to all the aspirations of his life?
No, it is not from Daunou, but from Talleyrand, from Condorcet, and
from Lakanal that we must seek the real educational thought of the
Revolution. Doubtless the measure of Daunou had over all previous
measures the advantages of being applied, and of not remaining a
dead letter; but the glory of the early Revolutionists should not
be belittled by the fact that circumstances arrested the execution
of their plans, and that a century was necessary in order that
society might attain the ideal which they had conceived. They were
the first to proclaim the right and the duty of each citizen to
be instructed and enlightened. We are ceaselessly urged to admire
the past and to respect the work of our fathers. We do not in the
least object to this, but the Revolution itself also forms a part
of that past, and we regret that the men who so eloquently preach
the worship of traditions and respect for ancestors, are precisely
those who the most harshly disparage the efforts of the Revolution.
[479. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. The educational legislation of the
French Revolution, apparently so inconsiderate, so vacillating,
and so fruitless, betrays the instinctive feeling of a nation
in peril, that the only constitutional means of regeneration is
universal instruction, intellectual and moral.
2. Out of the same instinct grew the conception that the
starting-point in educational reform is the instruction and
inspiration of the teaching body. The normal school lies at the
very basis of national safety and prosperity.
3. The immediate fruitlessness of the educational legislation
of the Revolution, is another illustration of the general fact
that no reform is operative, which in any considerable degree
antedates the existing state of public opinion. Could there be a
revelation of the ideal education, human society could grow into
it only by slow and almost insensible degrees. While there can
be rational growth only through some degree of anticipation, it
is perhaps best that educators have only that prevision which is
provisional.]
FOOTNOTES:
[208] A term applied to the most pronounced revolutionists of the
Convention and of the National Assembly.
[209] It is impossible, within the limits prescribed by the
character and plan of this work, to enter into detail and enumerate
all the decrees and counter-decrees of the Convention on the
subject of public instruction. To see clearly into this chaos and
this confusion, it is necessary to read the excellent article of
Monsieur Guillaume in the _Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_, article
CONVENTION.
[210] See a recent sketch, _Lakanal_, by Paul Legendre (Paris,
1882), with a Preface by Paul Bert.
[211] See in the _Revue politique et littéraire_, for Oct. 7, 1882,
an excellent article on Lakanal, by Monsieur Janet.
[212] If the consensus of philosophic opinion is trustworthy, there
is no basis whatever in psychology for this sequence. On the almost
uniform testimony of psychologists, the organic mental sequence is
from aggregates to parts; so that if the method of presentation is
to be in harmony with the organic mode of the mind’s activities,
the sequence should be as follows: the globe; the eastern
continent; Europe; France; the department; the canton; the commune.
On the mental sequence, see Hamilton’s _Lectures_, Vol. I. pp. 69,
70, 368, 371, 469, 498, 500, 502, 503. (P.)
[213] Dumonstier, rector of the University of Paris in 1645, La
Salle, and in the eighteenth century, the Abbé Courtalon.
[214] Essais sur l’enseignement. Paris, 1805.
[215] Albert Duruy, _op. cit._ p. 137.
CHAPTER XVIII.
PESTALOZZI.
GERMAN PEDAGOGY; THE PIETISTS AND FRANCKE (1663-1727); THE
PHILANTHROPISTS AND BASEDOW (1723-1790); THE PEOPLE’S SCHOOLS;
PESTALOZZI (1746-1827); THE EDUCATION OF PESTALOZZI; PESTALOZZI
AS AN AGRICULTURIST; HOW PESTALOZZI BECAME A TEACHER; EDUCATION
OF HIS SON; THE SCHOOL AT NEUHOF (1775-1780); PESTALOZZI
AS A WRITER (1780-1787); LEONARD AND GERTRUDE (1781); NEW
EXPERIMENTS IN AGRICULTURE; OTHER WORKS; THE ORPHAN ASYLUM AT
STANZ (1798-1799); METHODS FOLLOWED AT STANZ; THE SCHOOLS AT
BURGDORF (1799-1801); HOW GERTRUDE TEACHES HER CHILDREN (1801);
PESTALOZZI’S STYLE; ANALYSIS OF THE GERTRUDE; THE INSTITUTE AT
BURGDORF (1801-1804); THE INSTITUTE AT YVERDUN (1805-1825);
TENTATIVES OF PESTALOZZI; ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES; EDUCATIONAL
PROCESSES; SIMPLIFICATION OF METHODS; ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
480. GERMAN PEDAGOGY.--For two centuries Germany has been the
classical land of pedagogy; and to render an account of all the
efforts put forth in that country in the domain of education it
would be necessary to write several volumes.
From the opening of the eighteenth century, says Dittes, “a change
for the better takes place. Ideas become facts. The importance of
education is more and more recognized; pedagogy shakes off the
ancient dust of the school and interests itself in actual life; it
is no longer willing to be a collateral function of the Church, but
begins to become an independent art and science. A few theologians
will still render it important service, but in general they will do
this outside the Church, and often in opposition to it.”
While awaiting the grand and fruitful impulsion of Pestalozzi, the
history of pedagogy ought to mention at least the Pietists, “whose
educational establishments contributed to prepare the way for the
new methods,” and after them, the Philanthropists, of whom Basedow
is the most celebrated representative.
481. THE PIETISTS AND FRANCKE (1663-1727).--Francke played nearly
the same part in Germany that La Salle did in France. He founded
two establishments at Halle, the _Pædagogium_ and the _Orphan
Asylum_, which, in 1727, contained more than two thousand pupils.
He belonged to the sect of Pietists, Lutherans who professed an
austere morality, and, in conformity with the principles of his
denomination, he made piety the supreme end of education.
That which distinguishes and commends Francke, is his talent for
organization. He was right in giving marked attention to the
material condition of schools and to needed supplies of apparatus.
The Pædagogium was installed in 1715 in comfortable quarters,
and there were annexed to it a botanical garden, a museum of
natural history, physical apparatus, a chemical and an anatomical
laboratory, and a shop for the cutting and polishing of glass.
After him his disciples, Niemeyer, Semler, and Hecker, continued
his work, and, in certain respects, reformed it. They founded
the first _real schools_ of Germany. They kept up the practical
spirit, the professional pedagogy of their master, and assured the
development of those educational establishments which still exist
to-day under the name of the _Institutions_ of Francke.
482. THE PHILANTHROPISTS AND BASEDOW (1723-1790).--With Basedow,
a more liberal spirit, borrowed in part from Rousseau, gained
entrance into German pedagogy. Basedow founded at Dessau a school
which received the praise of the philosopher Kant, and of the
clergyman Oberlin. He designated it by a name which reflects his
humanitarian intentions, the _Philanthropinum_. In the methods
which he employed in it he seems always to have had before his eyes
the exclamation of Rousseau: “Things, things! Too many words!” The
intuitive method, or that of _teaching by sight_, was practised in
the school of Dessau.
The principal work of Basedow, his _Elementary Book_, is scarcely
more than the _Orbis Pictus_ of Comenius reconstructed according
to the principles of Rousseau. At Dessau, the pretence was made of
teaching a language in six months. “Our methods,” says Basedow,
“make studies only one-third as long and thrice as agreeable.”
An abuse was made of mechanical exercises. The children, at
the command of the master: _Imitamini sartorem_,--_Imitamini
sutorem_,--all began to imitate the motions of a tailor who is
sewing, or of a shoemaker who is using his awl. Graver still,
Basedow made such an abuse of _object lessons_ as to represent to
children certain scenes within the sick-chamber, for the purpose of
teaching them their duties and obligations to their mothers.[216]
483. SCHOOLS FOR THE PEOPLE.--Great efforts were made in the
eighteenth century, in the Catholic, as well as in the Protestant
countries of Germany, towards the development of popular
instruction. Maria Theresa and Frederick II. considered public
instruction as an affair of the State. Private enterprise was
added to the efforts of the government. In Prussia, a nobleman,
Rochow (1734-1805), founded village schools; and in Austria, two
ecclesiastics, Felbiger (1724-1788) and Kindermann (1740-1801),
contributed by their activity in education to the reform of schools.
Nevertheless, the results were still very poor, and the public
school, especially the village school, remained in a sorry
condition.
“Almost everywhere,” says Dittes, “there were employed as
teachers, domestics, corrupt artisans, discharged soldiers,
degraded students, and, in general, persons of questionable
morality and education. Their pay was mean, and their authority
slight. Attendance at school, generally very irregular, was almost
everywhere entirely suspended in summer. Many villages had no
school, and scarcely anywhere was the school attended by all the
children. In many countries, most of the children, especially the
girls, were wholly without instruction. The people, especially the
peasantry, regarded the school as a burden. The clergy, it is true,
always regarded themselves as the proprietors of the school, but
on the whole they did but very little for it, and even arrested
its progress. The nobility was but little favorable, in general,
to intellectual culture for the people.... Instruction remained
mechanical and the discipline rude. It is reported that a Suabian
schoolmaster, who died in 1782, had inflicted during his experience
in teaching 911,527 canings, 124,010 whippings, 10,235 boxes on the
ear, and 1,115,800 thumps on the head. Moreover, he had made boys
kneel 777 times on triangular sticks, had caused the fool’s cap
to be worn 5001[217] times, and the stick to be held in air 1707
times. He had used something like 3000 words of abuse....”
484. PESTALOZZI (1746-1827).--In Switzerland, the situation of
primary instruction was scarcely better. The teachers were gathered
up at hazard; their pay was wretched; in general they had no
lodgings of their own, and they were obliged to hire themselves
out for domestic service among the well-off inhabitants of the
villages, in order to find food and lodging among them. A mean
spirit of caste still dominated instruction, and the poor remained
sunk in ignorance.
It was in the very midst of this wretched and unpropitious state
of affairs that there appeared, towards the end of the eighteenth
century, the most celebrated of modern educators, a man who, we may
be sure, was not exempt from faults, whose mind had deficiencies
and weaknesses, and whom we have no intention of shielding from
criticism, by covering him with the praises of a superstitious
admiration; but who is pre-eminently great by reason of his
unquenchable love for the people, his ardent self-sacrifice, and
his pedagogic instinct. During the eighty years of his troubled
life, Pestalozzi never ceased to work for children, and to devote
himself to their instruction. War or the ill-will of his countrymen
destroyed his schools to no purpose. Without ever despairing,
he straightway rebuilt them farther away, sometimes succeeding,
through the gift of ardent speech, which never deserted him, in
communicating the inspiration to those about him; gathering up
in all places orphans and vagabonds, like a kidnapper of a new
species; forgetting that he was poor, when he saw an occasion
to be charitable, and that he was ill, when it was necessary to
teach; and, finally, pursuing with an unconquerable energy, through
hindrances and obstacles of every description, his educational
apostleship. “It is death or success!” he wrote. “My zeal to
accomplish the dream of my life would have carried me through air
or through fire, no matter how, to the highest peak of the Alps!”
485. THE EDUCATION OF PESTALOZZI.--The life of Pestalozzi is
intimately related to his educational work. To comprehend the
educator, it is first necessary to have become acquainted with the
man.
Born at Zurich in 1746, Pestalozzi died at Brugg in Argovia in
1827. This unfortunate great man always felt the effects of the
sentimental and unpractical education given him by his mother, who
was left a widow with three children in 1751. He early formed the
habit of feeling and of being touched with emotion, rather than of
reasoning and of reflecting. The laughing-stock of his companions,
who made sport of his awkwardness, the little scholar of Zurich
accustomed himself to live alone and to become a dreamer. Later,
towards 1760, the student of the academy distinguished himself by
his political enthusiasm and his revolutionary daring. At that
early period he had conceived a profound feeling for the miseries
and the needs of the people, and he already proposed as the purpose
of his life the healing of the diseases of society. At the same
time there was developed in him an irresistible taste for a simple,
frugal, and almost ascetic life. To restrain his desires had become
the essential rule of his conduct, and, to put it in practice,
he forced himself to sleep on a plank, and to subsist on bread
and vegetables. Life in the open air had an especial attraction
for him. Each year he spent his vacations in the country at his
grandfather’s, who was a minister at Hœngg. _Omne malum ex urbe_
was his favorite thought.
486. PESTALOZZI AN AGRICULTURIST (1765-1775).--Pestalozzi’s call
to be a teacher manifested itself at first only by some vague
aspirations, of which it would be easy to find the trace in the
short essays of his youth, and in the articles which he contributed
in his twentieth year to a students’ journal published at Zurich.
After having tried his hand unsuccessfully at theology and law,
he became an agriculturist. When he established at Neuhof an
agricultural enterprise, he thought less of enriching himself
than of raising the material condition of the Swiss peasantry by
organizing new industries. But notwithstanding his good intent,
and the assistance of the devoted woman whom he had married in
1769, Anna Schultess, Pestalozzi, more enterprising than skillful,
failed in his industrial establishments. In 1775 he had exhausted
his resources. It is then that he formed an heroic resolution which
typifies his indiscreet generosity. Poor, and scarcely more than
able to support himself, he opened on his farm an asylum for poor
children.
487. HOW PESTALOZZI BECAME AN EDUCATOR.--The asylum for poor
children at Neuhof (1775-1780) is, so to speak, the first step
in the pedagogical career of Pestalozzi. The others will be the
orphan asylum at Stanz (1798-1799), the primary schools at Burgdorf
(1799), the institute at Burgdorf (1801-1804), and, finally, the
institute at Yverdun (1805-1825).
The first question that is raised when we study systems of
education, is, how the authors of those systems became teachers.
The best, perhaps, are those who became such because of their
great love for humanity, or because of their tender love for
their children. Pestalozzi is of this class. It is because he
has ardently dreamed from his youth of the moral amelioration of
the people; and it is also because he has followed with a tender
solicitude the first steps of his little son Jacob on life’s
journey, that he became a great teacher.
488. THE EDUCATION OF HIS SON.--The _Father’s Journal_,[218]
where Pestalozzi noted from day to day the progress of his
child, shows him intent on applying the principles of Rousseau.
At the age of eleven, Jacob, like Émile, did not yet know how to
read or to write. Things before words, the intuition of sensible
objects, few exercises in judgment, respect for the powers of the
child, an equal anxiety to husband his liberty and to secure his
obedience, the constant endeavor to diffuse joy and good humor
over education,--such were the principal traits of the education
which Pestalozzi gave his son, an education which was a real
experiment in pedagogy, from which the pupil perhaps suffered
somewhat, but from which humanity was to derive profit. From this
period Pestalozzi conceived some of the ideas which became the
principles of his method. The father had made the educator. One of
the superiorities of Pestalozzi over Rousseau is, that he loved and
educated his own child.
489. THE ASYLUM AT NEUHOF.--Madame de Staël was right in saying
that “we must consider Pestalozzi’s school as limited to childhood.
The education which it gives is designed only for the common
people.” And, in fact, the first and the last establishments of
Pestalozzi were schools for small children. In the last years of
his life, when he was obliged to leave the institute of Yverdun,
he returned to Neuhof, and there had constructed a school for poor
children.
The school at Neuhof was to be above all else, in Pestalozzi’s
thought, an experiment in moral and material regeneration through
labor, through order, and through instruction. Many exercises
in language, singing, reading of the Bible,--such were the
intellectual occupations. But the greater part of the time was
devoted to agricultural labor, to the cultivation of madder.
Notwithstanding his admirable devotion, Pestalozzi did not long
succeed in his philanthropic plans. He had to contend against
the prejudices of parents, and the ingratitude of the children.
Very often the little beggars whom he had gathered up waited only
till they had received from him new clothing, and then ran away
and resumed their vagabond life. Besides, he lacked resources. He
became poor, and fell more and more into debt. His friends, who had
aided him on the start, warned him that he would die in a hospital
or in a mad-house.
“For thirty years,” he says himself, “my life was a desperate
struggle against the most frightful poverty.... More than a
thousand times I was obliged to go without dinner, and at noon,
when even the poorest were seated around a table, I devoured a
morsel of bread upon the highway ...; and all this that I might
minister to the needs of the poor, by the realization of my
principles.”
490. PESTALOZZI A WRITER.--After the check to his undertaking at
Neuhof, Pestalozzi renounced for some time all practical activity,
and it was by his writings that he manifested, from 1780 to 1787,
his zeal in education.
In 1780 appeared the _Evening Hours of a Recluse_, a series of
aphorisms on the rise of a people through education. In this,
Pestalozzi sharply criticised the artificial method of the school,
and insisted on the necessity of developing the soul through _what
is within_,--through interior culture:--
“The school everywhere puts the order of words before the order of
free nature.”
“The home is the basis of the education of humanity.”
“Man, it is within yourself, it is in the inner sense of your
power, that resides nature’s instrument for your development.”
491. LEONARD AND GERTRUDE.--In 1781 Pestalozzi published the
first volume of _Leonard and Gertrude_. He had written it within
the blank spaces of an old account book. This book, the most
celebrated perhaps of all Pestalozzi’s writings, is a sort of
popular romance in which the author brings upon the stage a family
of working-people. Gertrude here represents the ideas of Pestalozzi
on the education of children. The three other volumes (1783, 1785,
1787) relate the regeneration of a village through the concerted
action of legislation, administration, religion, and the school,
and especially the school, “which is the centre whence everything
should proceed.”
_Leonard and Gertrude_ is the only one of Pestalozzi’s works which
Diesterweg[219] recommends to practical teachers.
“It was my first word,” says Pestalozzi, “to the heart of the poor
and of the abandoned of the land.”
In making Gertrude the principal character of his romance,
Pestalozzi wished to emphasize one of his fundamental ideas, which
was to place the instruction and the education of the people in the
hands of mothers.
492. NEW EXPERIMENTS IN AGRICULTURE.--From 1787 to 1797 Pestalozzi
returned to farming. It is from this period that date his
relations with Fellenberg, the celebrated founder of _Agricultural
Institutes_, and with the philosopher Fichte, who showed him the
agreement of his ideas with the doctrine of Kant. His name began
to become celebrated, and, in 1792, the Legislative Assembly
proclaimed him a French citizen, in company with Washington and
Klopstock.
During these years of farm labor, Pestalozzi had meditated
different works which appeared in 1797.
493. OTHER WORKS OF PESTALOZZI.--Educational thought pervades
all the literary works of Pestalozzi. Thus his _Fables_, short
compositions in prose, all have a moral and educational tendency.
Also, in his _Researches on the Course of Nature in the Development
of the Human Race_, he sought to justify the preponderant office
which he accorded to nature in the education of man. But Pestalozzi
was not successful in philosophical dissertations.
“This book,” he says himself, “is to me only another proof of
my lack of ability; it is simply a diversion of my imaginative
faculty, a work relatively weak.... No one,” he adds, “understands
me, and it has been hinted that the whole work has been taken for
nonsense.”
This judgment is severe, but it is only just. Pestalozzi had an
intuition of truth, but he was incapable of giving a theoretical
demonstration of it. His thought all aglow, and his language all
imagery, did not submit to the concise and methodical exposition of
abstract truths.
494. THE ORPHAN ASYLUM AT STANZ (1798-1799).--Up to 1798 Pestalozzi
had scarcely found the occasion to put in practice his principles
and his dreams. The Helvetic Revolution, which he hailed with
enthusiasm as the signal of a social regeneration for his country,
finally gave him the means of making a trial of his theories,
which, by a strange destiny, had been applied by other hands before
having been applied by his own.
The Helvetic government, whose sentiments were in harmony with the
democratic sentiments of Pestalozzi, offered him the direction of
a normal school. But he declined, in order that he might remain a
teacher. He was about to take charge of a school, the plan of which
he had organized, when events called him to direct an orphan asylum
at Stanz.
495. METHODS FOLLOWED AT STANZ.--From six to eight o’clock in the
morning, and from four to eight in the afternoon, Pestalozzi heard
the lessons of his pupils. The rest of the time was devoted to
manual labor. Even during the lesson, the child at Stanz “drew,
wrote, and worked.” To establish order in a school which contained
eighty pupils, Pestalozzi had the idea of resorting to rhythm;
“and it was found,” he says, “that the rhythmical pronunciation
increased the impression produced by the lesson.” Having to do
with pupils absolutely ignorant, he kept them for a long time on
the elements; he practised them on the first elements till they
had mastered them. He simplified the methods, and sought in each
branch of instruction a point of departure adapted to the nascent
faculties of the child. The mode of teaching was simultaneous.
All the pupils repeated in a high tone of voice the words of the
teacher; but the instruction was also mutual:--
“Children instructed children; they themselves tried the
experiment; all I did was to suggest it. Here again I obeyed
necessity. Not having a single assistant, I had the idea of putting
one of the most advanced pupils between two others who were less
advanced.”
Reading was combined with writing. Natural history and geography
were taught to children under the form of conversational lessons.
But what engrossed Pestalozzi above all else was to develop the
moral sentiments and the interior forces of the conscience. He
wished to make himself loved by his pupils, to awaken among them,
in their daily association, sentiments of fraternal affection,
to excite the conception of each virtue before formulating its
precept, and to give the children moral lessons through the
influence of nature which surrounded them and through the activity
which was imposed on them.
Pestalozzi’s chimera, in the organization at Stanz, was to
transport into the school the conditions of domestic life--the
desire to be a father to a hundred children.
“I was convinced that my heart would change the condition of my
children just as promptly as the sun of spring would reanimate the
earth benumbed by the winter.”
“It was necessary that my children should observe, from dawn to
evening, at every moment of the day, upon my brow and on my lips,
that my affections were fixed on them, that their happiness was my
happiness, and that their pleasures were my pleasures.”
“I was everything to my children. I was alone with them from
morning till night.... Their hands were in my hands. Their eyes
were fixed on my eyes.”
496. RESULTS ACCOMPLISHED.--Without plan, without apparent order;
merely by the action and incessant communication of his ardent soul
with children ignorant and perverted by misery; reduced to his own
resources in a house where he was himself “steward, accountant,
footman, and almost servant all in one,” Pestalozzi obtained
surprising results.
“I saw at Stanz,” he says, “the power of the human faculties....
My pupils developed rapidly; it was another race.... The children
very soon felt that there existed in them forces which they did
not know, and in particular they acquired a general sentiment of
order and beauty. They were self-conscious, and the impression of
weariness which habitually reigns in schools vanished like a shadow
from my class-room. They willed, they had power, they persevered,
they succeeded, and they were happy. They were not scholars who
were learning, but children who felt unknown forces awakening
within them, and who understood where these forces could and would
lead them, and this feeling gave elevation to their mind and heart.”
“It is out of the folly of Stanz,” says Roger de Guimps, “that has
come the primary school of the nineteenth century.”
While the pupils prospered, the master fell sick of overwork. When
the events of the war closed the orphan asylum, it was quite time
for the health of Pestalozzi. He raised blood and was at the limit
of his strength.
497. THE SCHOOLS OF BURGDORF (1799-1802).--As soon as he had
recovered his health, Pestalozzi resumed the course of his
experiments. Not without difficulty he succeeded in having
entrusted to him a small class in a primary school of Burgdorf. He
passed for an ignoramus.
“It was whispered that I could neither write, nor compute, nor even
read decently.” Pestalozzi does not defend himself against the
charge, but acknowledges his incapacity, and even asserts that it
is to his advantage.
“My incapacity in these respects was certainly an indispensable
condition for my discovery of the simplest method of teaching.”
What troubled him most in the school at Burgdorf “was that it was
subjected to rules.” “Never in my life had I borne such a burden. I
was discouraged. I cringed under the routine yoke of the school.”
Nevertheless, Pestalozzi succeeded admirably in his little school.
Then more advanced pupils were given him, but here his success was
less. He always proceeded without a plan, and he gave himself great
trouble in obtaining results that he might have attained much more
easily with a little more system. Blunders, irregularities, and
whimsicalities were ever compromising the action of his good will.
To be convinced of this, it suffices to read the books which he
published at this period, and in particular the most celebrated, of
which we shall proceed to give a brief analysis.
498. HOW GERTRUDE TEACHES HER CHILDREN.--It is under this
title that in 1801 Pestalozzi published an exposition of his
doctrine.[220] “It is the most important and the most profound of
all his pedagogical writings,” says one of his biographers. We
shall not dispute this; but this book also proves how the mind
of Pestalozzi was inferior to his heart, how the writer was of
less worth than the teacher. Composed under the form of letters
addressed to Gessner, the work of Pestalozzi is too often a tissue
of declamations, of rambling thoughts, and of personal grievances.
It is the work of a brain that is in a state of ferment, and of a
heart that is overflowing. The thought is painfully disentangled
from out a thousand repetitions. Why need we be astonished at this
literary incompetence of Pestalozzi when he himself makes the
following confession: “For thirty years I had not read a single
book; I could not longer read them.”
499. PESTALOZZI’S STYLE.--The style of Pestalozzi is the very man
himself: desultory, obscure, confused, but with sudden flashes
and brilliant illuminations in which the warmth of his heart
is exhibited. There are also too many comparisons; the imagery
overwhelms the idea. Within a few pages he will compare himself, in
succession, “to a sailor, who, having lost his harpoon, would try
to catch a whale with a hook,” to depict the disproportion between
his resources and his purpose; then to a straw, which even a cat
would not lay hold of, to tell how he was despised; to an owl, to
express his isolation; to a reed, to indicate his feebleness; to a
mouse which fears a cat, to characterize his timidity.
500. ANALYSIS OF THE GERTRUDE.--It is not easy to analyze one
of Pestalozzi’s books. To begin with, _How Gertrude teaches her
Children_ is a very bad title, for Gertrude is not once mentioned
in it. This proper name became for Pestalozzi an allegorical term
by which he personifies himself.
The first three letters are rather autobiographical memoirs than
an exposition of doctrine. Pestalozzi here relates his first
experiments, and makes us acquainted with his assistants at
Burgdorf,--Krüsi, Tobler, and Buss. In the letters which follow,
the author attempts to set forth the general principles of his
method. The seventh treats of language; the eighth, of the
intuition of forms, of writing, and of drawing; the ninth, of the
intuition of numbers and of computation; the tenth and twelfth, of
intuition in general. For Pestalozzi, intuition was, as we know,
direct and experimental perception, either in the domain of sense,
or in the interior regions of the consciousness. Finally, the last
letters are devoted to moral and religious development.
Without designing to follow, in all its ramblings and in all its
digressions, the mobile thought of Pestalozzi, we shall gather up
some of the general ideas which abound in this overcharged and
badly composed work.
501. METHODS SIMPLIFIED.--The purpose of Pestalozzi was indeed, in
one sense, as he was told by one of his friends, to _mechanize_
instruction. He wished, in fact, to simplify and determine methods
to such a degree that they might be employed by the most ordinary
teacher, and by the most ignorant father and mother. In a word,
he hoped to organize a pedagogical machine so well set up that it
could in a manner run alone.
“I believe,” he says, “that we must not dream of making progress
in the instruction of the people as long as we have not found the
forms of instruction which make of the teacher, at least so far as
the completion of the elementary studies is concerned, the simple
mechanical instrument of a method which owes its results to the
nature of its processes, and not to the ability of the one who uses
it. I assert that a school-book has no value, save as it can be
employed by a master without instruction as well as by one who has
been taught.”
This was sheer exaggeration, and was putting too little value on
the personal effort and merit of teachers. On this score, it would
be useless to found normal schools. Pestalozzi, moreover, has given
in his own person a striking contradiction to this singular theory;
for he owed his success in teaching much more to the influence of
his living speech, and to the ardent communication of the passion
by which his heart was animated, than to the methodical processes
which he never succeeded in combining in an efficient manner.
502. THE SOCRATIC METHOD.--Pestalozzi recommends the Socratic
method, and he indicates with exactness some of the conditions
necessary for the employment of that method. He first observes that
it requires on the part of the teacher uncommon ability.
“A superficial and uncultivated intelligence,” he says, “does not
sound the depths whence a Socrates made spring up intelligence and
truth.”
Besides, the Socratic method can be employed only with pupils who
already have some instruction. It is absolutely impracticable
with children who lack both the point of departure, that is,
preliminary notions, and the means of expressing these notions,
that is, a knowledge of language. And as it is always necessary
that Pestalozzi’s thought should wind up with a figure of speech,
he adds:--
“In order that the goshawk and the eagle may plunder eggs from
other birds, it is first necessary that the latter should deposit
eggs in their nests.”
503. WORD, FORM, AND NUMBER.--A favorite idea of Pestalozzi, which
remained at Yverdun, as at Burgdorf, the principle of his exercises
in teaching, is that all elementary knowledge can and should be
related to three principles,--_word_, _form_, and _number_. To the
_word_ he attached language, to _form_, writing and drawing, and to
_number_, computation.
“This was,” he says, “like a ray of light in my researches, like
a _Deus ex machina!_” Nothing justifies such enthusiasm. It would
be very easy to show that Pestalozzi’s classification, besides
that it offers no practical interest, is not justifiable from the
theoretical point of view, first because one of the elements of
his trilogy, the _word_, or language, comprises the other two;
and then because a large part of knowledge, for example, all
physical qualities, does not permit the distinction of which he was
superstitiously fond.
504. INTUITIVE EXERCISES.--What is of more value is the importance
which Pestalozzi ascribes to intuition. An incident worthy of note
is that it is not Pestalozzi himself, but one of the children
of his school, who first had the idea of the direct observation
of the objects which serve as the text for the lesson. One day
as, according to his custom, he was giving his pupils a long
description of what they observed in a drawing where a window was
represented, he noticed that one of his little auditors, instead of
looking at the picture, was attentively studying the real window of
the school-room.
From that moment Pestalozzi put aside all his drawings, and took
the objects themselves for subjects of observation.
“The child,” he said, “wishes nothing to intervene between nature
and himself.”
Ramsauer, a pupil at Burgdorf, has described, not without some
inaccuracy perhaps, the intuitive exercises which Pestalozzi
offered to his pupils:--
“The exercises in language were the best we had, especially those
which had reference to the wainscoting of the school-room. He
spent whole hours before that wainscoting, very old and torn,
busy in examining the holes and rents, with respect to number,
form, position, and color, and in formulating our observations in
sentences more or less developed. Then Pestalozzi would ask us,
Boys, what do you see? (He never mentioned the girls.)
_Pupil_: I see a hole in the wainscoting.
_Pestalozzi_: Very well; repeat after me:--
I see a hole in the wainscoting.
I see a large hole in the wainscoting.
Through the hole I see the wall, etc., etc.”
505. THE BOOK FOR MOTHERS.--In 1803 Pestalozzi published a work
on elementary instruction, which remained unfinished, entitled
_The Book for Mothers_. This was another _Orbis Pictus_ without
pictures. Pestalozzi’s intention was to introduce the child to a
knowledge of the objects of nature or of art which fall under his
observation. In this he tarried too long over the description of
the organs of the body and of their functions. A French critic,
Dussault, said, with reference to this:--
“Pestalozzi gives himself much trouble to teach children that
their nose is in the middle of their face.” In his anxiety to be
simple and elementary, Pestalozzi often succeeds in reality in
making instruction puerile. On the other hand, the Père Girard
complains that the exercises in language which compose _The Book
for Mothers_, “really very well arranged, are also very dry and
monotonous.”
506. A SWISS TEACHER IN 1793.--To form a just estimate of the
efforts of Pestalozzi and his assistants, we must take into account
the wretched state of instruction at the period when they attempted
to reform the methods of teaching. Krüsi, Pestalozzi’s first
assistant, one of those who were perhaps the nearest his heart,
has himself related how he became a teacher. He was eighteen,
and till then his only employment had been that of a peddler for
his father. One day, as he was going about his business with a
heavy load of merchandise on his shoulders, he meets on the road
a revenue officer of the State, and they enter into conversation.
“Do you know,” said the officer, “that the teacher of Gais is about
to leave his school? Would you not like to succeed him?--It is
not a question of what I would like; a school-master should have
knowledge, in which I am absolutely lacking.--What a school-master
can and should know with us, you might easily learn at your
age.”--Krüsi reflected, went to work, and copied more than a
hundred times a specimen of writing which he had procured; and he
declares that this was his only preparation. He registered for
examination. The day for the trial arrived.
“There were but two competitors of us,” he says. “The principal
test consisted in writing the Lord’s Prayer, and to this I gave my
closest attention. I had observed that in German, use was made of
capital letters; but I did not know the rule for their use, and
took them for ornaments. So I distributed mine in a symmetrical
manner, so that some were found even in the middle of words. In
fact, neither of us knew anything.
“When the examination had been estimated, I was summoned, and
Captain Schœpfer informed me that the examiners had found us both
deficient; that my competitor read the better, but that I excelled
him in writing; ... that, besides, my apartment, being larger
than that of the other candidate, was better fitted for holding a
school, and, finally, that I was elected to the vacant place.”
Is it not well to be indulgent to teachers whom we meet on the
highway, who scarcely know how to write, and whom a captain
commissions?
507. THE INSTITUTE AT BURGDORF (1802).--When Pestalozzi published
the _Gertrude_ and _The Book for Mothers_, he was not simply a
school-master at Burgdorf; he had taken charge of an institute,
that is, of a boarding-school of higher primary instruction. There
also he applied the natural method, “which makes the child proceed
from his own intuitions, and leads him by degrees, and through
his own efforts, to abstract ideas.” The institute succeeded. The
pupils of Burgdorf were distinguished especially by their skill
in drawing and in mental arithmetic. Visitors were struck with
their air of cheerfulness. Singing and gymnastics were held in
honor, and also exercises on natural history, learned in the open
field, and during walks. Mildness and liberty characterized the
internal management. “It is not a school that you have here,” said
a visitor, “but a family!”
508. JOURNEY TO PARIS.--It was at this period that Pestalozzi
made a journey to Paris, as a member of the _consulta_ called by
Bonaparte to decide the fate of Switzerland. He hoped to take
advantage of his stay in France to disseminate his pedagogical
ideas. But Bonaparte refused to see him, saying that he had
something else to do besides discussing questions of _a b c_.
Monge, the founder of the Polytechnic School, was more cordial, and
kindly listened to the explanations of the Swiss pedagogue. But
he concluded by saying, “It is too much for us!” More disdainful
still, Talleyrand had said, “It is too much for the people!”
On the other hand, at the same period, the philosopher Maine
de Biran, then sub-prefect at Bergerac, called a disciple of
Pestalozzi, Barraud, to found schools in the department of
Dordogne, and he encouraged with all his influence the application
of the Pestalozzian method.
509. THE INSTITUTE AT YVERDUN (1805-1825).--In 1803 Pestalozzi
was obliged to leave the castle of Burgdorf. The Swiss government
gave him in exchange the convent of München-Buchsee. Pestalozzi
transferred his institute to this place, but only for a little
time. In 1805 he established himself at Yverdun, at the foot of
Lake Neufchâtel, in French Switzerland; and here, with the aid of
several of his colleagues, he developed his methods anew, with
brilliant success at first, but afterwards through all sorts of
vicissitudes, difficulties, and miseries.
The institute at Yverdun was rather a school of secondary
instruction, devoted to the middle classes, than a primary school
proper. Pupils poured in from all sides. The character of the
studies, however, was poorly defined, and Pestalozzi found himself
somewhat out of his element in his new institution, since he
excelled only in elementary methods and in the education of little
children.
510. SUCCESS OF THE INSTITUTE.--Numerous visitors betook themselves
to Yverdun, some through simple love of strolling. The institute
of Yverdun made a part, so to speak, of the curiosities of
Switzerland. People visited Pestalozzi as they went to see a
lake or a glacier. As soon as notice was given of the arrival of
a distinguished personage, Pestalozzi summoned one of his best
masters, Ramsauer or Schmid.
“Take your best pupils,” he said, “and show the Prince what we are
doing. He has numerous serfs, and when he is convinced, he will
have them instructed.”
These frequent exhibitions entailed a great loss of time. Disorder
reigned in the instruction. The young masters whom Pestalozzi had
attached to his fortunes were overwhelmed with work, and could not
give sufficient attention to the preparation of their lessons.
Pestalozzi was growing old, and did not succeed in completing his
methods.
511. THE TENTATIVES OF PESTALOZZI.--The teaching of Pestalozzi was
in reality but a long groping, an experiment ceaselessly renewed.
Do not require of him articulate ideas, and methods definitely
established. Always on the alert, and always in quest of something
better, his admirable pedagogic instinct never came to full
satisfaction. His merit was that he was always on the search for
truth. His theories almost always followed, rather than preceded,
his experiments. A man of intuition rather than of reasoning, he
acknowledges that he went forward without considering what he
was doing. He had the merit of making many innovations, but he
was wrong in taking counsel of no one but himself, and of his
personal feelings. “We ought to read nothing,” he said; “we ought
to discover everything.” Pestalozzi never knew how to profit by the
experience of others.
He never arrived at complete precision in the establishment of his
methods. He complained of not being understood, and he was not
in fact. One of his pupils at Yverdun, Vulliemin, thus expresses
himself:--
“That which was called, not without pretense, the _method_
of Pestalozzi was an enigma for us. It was for our teachers
themselves. Each of them interpreted the doctrine of the master
in his own way; but we were still far from the time when these
divergencies engendered discord; when our principal teachers, after
each had given out that he alone had comprehended Pestalozzi, ended
by asserting that Pestalozzi himself was not understood; that he
had not been understood except by Schmid, said Schmid, and by
Niederer, said Niederer.”
512. METHODS AT YVERDUN.--The writer whom we have just quoted
gives us valuable information on the methods which were in use at
Yverdun:--
“Instruction was addressed to the intelligence rather than to the
memory. Attempt, said Pestalozzi to his colleagues, to _develop_
the child, and not to _train_ him as one trains a dog.”
“Language was taught us by the aid of intuition; we learned to see
correctly, and through this very process to form for ourselves a
correct idea of the relations of things. What we had conceived
clearly we had no difficulty in expressing clearly.”
“The first elements of geography were taught us on the spot....
Then we reproduced in relief with clay the valley of which we had
just made a study.”
“We were made to invent geometry by having marked out for us the
end to reach, and by being put on the route. The same course was
followed in arithmetic; our computations were made in the head and
_viva voce_, without the aid of paper.”
513. DECADENCE OF THE INSTITUTE.--Yverdun enjoyed an extraordinary
notoriety for some years. But little by little the faults of the
method became apparent. Internal discords and the misunderstanding
of Pestalozzi’s colleagues, of Niederer, “the philosopher of
the method,” and of Schmid, the mathematician, hastened the
decadence of an establishment in which order and discipline had
never reigned. Pestalozzi was content with being the spur of the
institute. He became more and more unfit for practical affairs.
He allowed all liberty to his assistants, and also to his pupils.
At Yverdun the pupils addressed their teachers in familiar style.
The touching fiction of paternity transported into the school,
which was successful with Pestalozzi in his first experience
in teaching, and with a small number of pupils, was no longer
practicable at Yverdun, with a mass of pupils of every age and of
every disposition.
514. JUDGMENT OF PÈRE GIRARD.--In 1809 the Père Girard[221] was
commissioned by the Swiss government to inspect the institute.
The result was not favorable, though Girard acknowledges that he
conceived the idea of his own method from studying at first hand
that of Pestalozzi.
The principal criticism of Girard bears on the abuse of
mathematics, which, under the influence of Schmid, became in fact
more and more the principal occupation of teachers and pupils.
“I made the remark,” he says, “to my old friend Pestalozzi,
that the mathematics exercised an unjustifiable sway in his
establishment, and that I feared the results of this on the
education that was given. Whereupon he replied to me with spirit,
as was his manner: ‘This is because I wish my children to believe
nothing which cannot be demonstrated as clearly to them as that two
and two make four.’ My reply was in the same strain: ‘In that case,
if I had thirty sons, I would not entrust one of them to you, for
it would be impossible for you to demonstrate to him, as you can
that two and two make four, that I am his father, and that I have
a right to his obedience.’”
It is evident that Pestalozzi was deviating from his own
inclinations. The general character of his pedagogy is in fact to
avoid abstraction, and in all things to aim at concrete and living
intuition. Even in religion, he deliberately excluded dogmatic
teaching, precise and literal form, and sought only to awaken in
the soul a religious sentiment, sincere and profound. The Père
Girard had remarked to him that the religious instruction of his
pupils was vague and indeterminate, and that their aspirations
lacked the doctrinal form. “The form,” replied Pestalozzi, “I am
still looking for it!”
515. THE LAST YEARS OF PESTALOZZI.--Disheartened by the decadence
of his institute, Pestalozzi left Yverdun in 1824, and sought
a retreat at Neuhof, on the farm where he had tried his first
experiments in popular education. It is here that he wrote his
last two works,--_The Swan’s Song_ and _My Destinies_. January 25,
1827, he was taken to Brugg to consult a physician. He died there
February 17; and two days after he was buried at Birr. It is there
that the Canton of Argovia erected a monument to him in 1846, with
the following inscription:--
“Here lies Henry Pestalozzi, born at Zurich, January 12, 1746,
died at Brugg, February 17, 1827, savior of the poor at Neuhof,
preacher of the people in _Leonard and Gertrude_, father of orphans
at Stanz, founder of the new people’s school at Burgdorf and at
München-Buchsee, educator of humanity at Yverdun, man, Christian,
citizen: everything for others, nothing for himself. Blessed be his
name.”
516. ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES.--Pestalozzi never took the trouble to
formulate the essential principles of his pedagogy. Incapable of
all labor in abstract reflection, he borrowed from his friends,
on every possible occasion, the logical exposition of his own
methods. In his first letter to Gessner, he is only too happy to
reproduce the observations of the philanthropist Fischer, who
distinguished five essential principles in his system:--
1. To give the mind an intensive culture, and not simply extensive:
to form the mind, and not to content one’s self with furnishing it;
2. To connect all instruction with the study of language;
3. To furnish the mind for all its operations with fundamental
data, mother ideas;
4. To simplify the mechanism of instruction and study;
5. To popularize science.
On several points, indeed, Pestalozzi calls in question the
translation which Fischer has given of his thought; but,
notwithstanding these reservations, powerless to find a more exact
formula, he accepts as a finality this interpretation of his
doctrine.
Later, another witness of the life of Pestalozzi, Morf, also
condensed into a few maxims the pedagogy of the great teacher:--
1. Intuition is the basis of instruction;
2. Language ought to be associated with intuition;
3. The time to learn is not that of judging and of criticising;
4. In each branch, instruction ought to begin with the simplest
elements, and to progress by degrees while following the
development of the child, that is to say, through a series of steps
psychologically connected;
5. We should dwell long enough on each part of the instruction for
the pupil to gain a complete mastery of it;
6. Instruction ought to follow the order of natural development,
and not that of synthetic exposition;
7. The individuality of the child is sacred;
8. The principal end of elementary instruction is not to cause the
child to acquire knowledge and talents, but to develop and increase
the forces of his intelligence;
9. To wisdom there must be joined power; to theoretical knowledge,
practical skill;
10. The relations between master and pupil ought to be based on
love;
11. Instruction proper ought to be made subordinate to the higher
purpose of education.
Each one of these aphorisms would need a long commentary. It is
sufficient, however, to study them in the aggregate, in order to
form an almost exact idea of that truly humane pedagogy which
reposes on psychological principles.
Krüsi could say of his master: “With respect to the ordinary
knowledge and practices of the school, Pestalozzi was far below
a good village _magister_; but he possessed something infinitely
superior to that which can be given by a course of instruction,
whatever it may be. He knew that which remains concealed from a
great number of teachers,--the human spirit and the laws of its
development and culture, the human heart and the means of vivifying
it and ennobling it.”
517. PEDAGOGICAL PROCESSES.--The pedagogy of Pestalozzi is no less
valid in its processes than in its principles. Without presuming
to enumerate everything, we will indicate succinctly some of the
scholastic practices which he employed and recommended:--
The child should know how to speak before learning to read.
For reading, use should be made of movable letters glued on
pasteboard. Before writing, the pupil should draw. The first
exercises in writing should be upon slates.
In the study of language, the evolution of nature should be
followed, first studying nouns, then qualificatives, and finally
propositions.
The elements of computation shall be taught by the aid of material
objects taken as units, or at least by means of strokes drawn on a
board. Oral computation shall be the most employed.
The pupil ought, in order to form an accurate and exact idea of
numbers, to conceive them always as a collection of strokes or of
concrete things, and not as abstract figures. A small table divided
into squares in which points are represented, serves to teach
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
There was neither book nor copy-book in the schools of Burgdorf.
The children had nothing to learn by heart. They had to repeat all
at once and in accord the instructions of the master. Each lesson
lasted but an hour, and was followed by a short interval devoted to
recreation.
Manual labor, making paper boxes, working in the garden,
gymnastics, were associated with mental labor. The last hour of
each day was devoted to optional labor. The pupils said, “We are
working for ourselves.”
A few hours a week were devoted to military exercises.
Surely everything is not to be commended in the processes which
we have just indicated. It is not necessary, for example, that
the child conceive, when he computes, the content of numbers,
and Pestalozzi sometimes makes an abuse of sense intuition. He
introduces analysis, and an analysis too subtile and too minute,
into studies where nature alone does her work. “My method,” he
said, “is but a refinement of the processes of nature.” He refines
too much.
518. PESTALOZZI AND ROUSSEAU.--Pestalozzi has often acknowledged
what he owed to Rousseau. “My chimerical and unpractical spirit was
taken,” he said, “with that chimerical and impracticable book....
The system of liberty ideally established by Rousseau, excited in
me an infinite longing for a wider and more bounteous sphere of
activity.”
The great superiority of Pestalozzi over Rousseau, is that he
worked for the people,--that he applied to a great number of
children the principles which Rousseau embodied only in an
individual and privileged education. Émile, after all, is an
aristocrat. He is rich, and of good ancestry; and is endowed with
all the gifts of nature and fortune. Real pupils do not offer,
in general, to the action of teachers, material as docile and
complaisant. Pestalozzi had to do only with children of the common
people, who have everything to learn at school, because they have
found at home, with busy or careless parents, neither encouragement
nor example,--because their early years have been only a long
intellectual slumber. For these benumbed natures, many exercises
are necessary which would properly be regarded as useless if it
were a question of instructing children of another condition.
Before condemning, before ridiculing, the trifling practices of
Pestalozzi, and of teachers of the same school, we should consider
the use to which these processes were applied. The real organizer
of the education of childhood and of the people, Pestalozzi has a
right to the plaudits of all those who are interested in the future
of the masses of the people.
519. CONCLUSION.--We should not flatter ourselves that merely by
means of an analysis of Pestalozzi’s methods, we can comprehend
the service of a man who excelled in the warmth of his charity, in
his ardor of devotion and of propagandism, and in I know not what
that makes a grand personality, more than by the clearness and the
exactness of his theories. It is somewhat with Pestalozzi as with
those great actors who carry with them to their tomb a part of the
secret of their art.
He was especially great in heart and in love. To read some of his
writings, we would sometimes be tempted to say that his intellect
was far inferior to the expectation excited by his name; but what
a splendid revenge he takes in the domain of sentiment!
He passionately loved the people. He knew their sufferings, and
nothing turned him from his anxiety to cure them. In the presence
of a beautiful landscape, he thought less of the charming scene
that was displayed before his eyes than of the poor people who,
under those splendors of nature, led a life of misery.
That which assures him an immortal glory is the high purpose that
he set before himself,--his ardor to regenerate humanity through
instruction. Of what consequence is it that the results obtained
were so disproportionate to his efforts, and that he could say,
“The contrast between what I would and what I could is so great
that it cannot be expressed”? Even the French Revolution did
not succeed in the matter of instruction, in making its works
commensurate with its aspirations.
The love and the admiration of all the friends of instruction are
forever secured to Pestalozzi. He was the most suggestive, the
most stimulating, of modern educators. If it was not given him to
act sufficiently on French pedagogy, he was in Germany the great
inspirer of reform in popular education. While he was despised by
Bonaparte, he obtained, in 1802, from the philosopher Fichte, this
fine compliment, “It is from the institute of Pestalozzi that I
expect the regeneration of the German nation.”
[520. ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.--1. _Inveniam viam aut faciam._ To know
the end is to find the way; and to be possessed of an impulse to
reach an end is to make a way. There are thus two categories of
educational reformers. Some see a goal by the light of reason
and reflection, and then lay out a logical route to it which
they may or may not traverse, but which some one will ultimately
traverse. Others are dominated by an intense feeling, and grope
their uncertain way towards a goal whose outline and position are
only dimly discerned through the mists of emotion. With some,
the motive is intellectual, with others, it is emotional; and
in their higher manifestations these endowments are mutually
exclusive.
2. Pestalozzi belongs pre-eminently to the emotional reformers.
He felt intensely, but he saw vaguely. His impulses were the
highest and the noblest that can animate the human soul, but
at every stage in his career his success was compromised by
his inability to see things in their normal relations and
proportions. Conscious of his inability to frame a rational
defence of his system, he was glad to borrow philosophic insight
from abroad; but he could not live with colleagues who would test
the logic of his methods.
3. Tested by the simplest rules of order, symmetry, and economy,
the schools organized by Pestalozzi were failures; but tested by
the exalted humanity, the heroic devotion, and self-sacrifice of
their founder, and by the new life which, through his example,
was henceforth to animate the teaching profession, his schools
were successful beyond all precedent. Judged by modern standards,
Pestalozzi was a poor teacher, but an unsurpassed educator.
4. The conception which the humanitarian warmth of Pestalozzi’s
nature converted into a motive, was that true education is a
growth, the outward evolution of an inward life. The conception
itself was as old as David and Socrates, but it had ceased to
have the power of a living truth.
5. The history of human thought shows that there has ever
been a tendency to separate form from content, or letter from
spirit, and as constant a predilection for form or letter, as
distinguished from content or spirit; and the essential work of
reform has consisted in reanimation. This illustrates and defines
Pestalozzi’s mission as an educator. The story of his devotion
and suffering is the most pathetic in the history of education,
and it should be unnecessary to repeat the lesson that was taught
at such cost.]
FOOTNOTES:
[216] Besides Basedow, there should be mentioned among the
educators who have become noted in Germany under the name of
Philanthropists, Salzman (1744-1811) and Campe (1746-1818).
[217] What a painstaking soul to be so exact in his accounts!
Doubtless he had an eye to the future publication of his record
as a _maître de fouet_! This account is rather too exact to be
trustworthy. (P.)
[218] See interesting quotations from the “_Journal d’un père_,” in
the excellent biography of Pestalozzi, by Roger de Guimps.
[219] See Chap. XIX.
[220] A second edition appeared in the lifetime of the author, in
1820, with some important modifications. The French translation
published in 1882 by Dr. Darin was made from the first edition.
[221] See the following chapter.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE SUCCESSORS OF PESTALOZZI.--FRŒBEL AND THE PÈRE GIRARD.
THE PEDAGOGY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY; FRŒBEL (1782-1852); YOUTH
OF FRŒBEL; DIFFERENT EMPLOYMENTS; CALL TO TEACH; FRŒBEL AND
PESTALOZZI; TREATISE ON THE SPHERICAL; NEW STUDIES; INSTITUTE OF
KEILHAU; THE EDUCATION OF MAN; ANALYSIS OF THAT WORK; LOVE FOR
CHILDREN; UNITY OF EDUCATION; DIFFERENT STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT
OF MAN; NATURALISM OF FRŒBEL; NEW EXPERIMENTS IN TEACHING;
KINDERGARTENS; ORIGIN OF THE KINDERGARTENS; THE GIFTS OF FRŒBEL;
APPEAL TO THE INSTINCTS OF THE CHILD; IMPORTANCE OF SPORTS;
PRINCIPAL NEEDS OF THE CHILD; FAULTS IN FRŒBEL’S METHOD; THE LAST
ESTABLISHMENTS OF FRŒBEL; FRŒBEL AND DIESTERWEG; POPULARITY OF
FRŒBEL; THE PÈRE GIRARD (1765-1850); LIFE OF THE PÈRE GIRARD;
PLAN OF EDUCATION FOR HELVETIA; LAST YEARS OF THE PÈRE GIRARD;
TEACHING OF THE MOTHER TONGUE; GRAMMAR OF IDEAS; DISCREET USE OF
RULES; EDUCATIVE COURSE IN THE MOTHER TONGUE; ANALYSIS OF THAT
WORK; MORAL ARITHMETIC; MORAL GEOGRAPHY; INFLUENCE OF GIRARD;
ANALYTICAL SUMMARY.
521. THE PEDAGOGY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.--Pestalozzi really
belongs to our century by the close of his career, and especially
by the posthumous glory of his name. With Frœbel and the Père
Girard, we enter completely upon the nineteenth century; both, in
different degrees and with characteristics of their own, continue
the work of Pestalozzi.
522. FRŒBEL (1782-1852).--It may be said of Frœbel as of
Pestalozzi, that in France at least, he is more praised than
known, more celebrated than studied. We have been tardy in
speaking of him,--it is scarcely twenty years since; but it seems
that our admiration has sought to atone for the slowness of its
manifestation by its vivacity and its ardor. The name of the
founder of _Kindergartens_ has become almost popular, while his
writings have remained almost unknown.
An impartial and thorough study of Frœbel’s work will abate rather
than encourage this excessive infatuation and this somewhat
artificial enthusiasm. Assuredly, Frœbel had grand qualities as a
teacher; but he lacked a profound classical culture and also the
sense of proportion. Like most of the Germans of this century,
he has ventured on the conceptions of a nebulous philosophy, and
following the steps of Hegel, he has too often deserted the route
of observation and experiment, to strike out into metaphysical
divagations. Frœbel’s imagination magnifies and distorts
everything. He cannot see objects as they are, but lends them a
symbolical meaning, and wanders off into transcendental and obscure
considerations. But his practical work is worth more than his
writings, and he cannot be denied the glory of having been a bold
and happy innovator in the field of early education.
523. THE YOUTH OF FRŒBEL.--Frœbel was born in Thuringia in 1782. He
lost his mother almost at birth, and was educated by his father and
his uncle, both village pastors. We recollect that by a contrary
destiny, Pestalozzi was brought up by his mother. From his earliest
years he manifested remarkable traits of character, and also mental
tendencies which were a little singular. He was dreamy and wholly
penetrated with a profound religious sentiment. Thus, the day
when he believed that he was assured by peremptory reasoning that
he was not doomed to eternal flames, was an event in his life.
Ardently enamored of nature, he considers her as the true inspirer
of humanity. This had also been the conception of Rousseau and of
Pestalozzi, but it exhibits itself with much more power in the case
of Frœbel.
It is difficult to comprehend the exaggeration of his thought when
he says that nature, attentively observed, appears to us as the
symbol of the highest aspirations of human life.
“Entire nature, even the world of crystals and stones, teaches us
to recognize good and evil, but nowhere in a more living, tranquil,
clear, and evident way than in the world of plants and flowers.”
Morality, thus understood, is a little vague. We do not deny that
the calm life of the fields contributes to surround us with a
pure atmosphere, and to beget within us wholesome and elevated
aspirations; but one must have a singularly sentimental temperament
to believe that nature can give us “the clearest and the most
obvious” lessons in morals.
524. DIFFERENT OCCUPATIONS.--The first part of Frœbel’s life
gives evidence of a certain unsteadiness of mind. Inconstant in
his tastes, he cannot settle on a fixed mode of life. Improvident
and poor, like Pestalozzi, he is in turn forester, intendant,
architect, preceptor; he feels his way up to the day when his
vocation as a teacher is suddenly revealed to him. Moreover, he
studies everything,--law, mineralogy, agriculture, mathematics.
525. VOCATION TO TEACH.--It was in 1805, at Frankfort, that Frœbel
began to teach. He was then twenty-three. The teacher Gruner
offered him a position as instructor in the model school which he
directed; Frœbel accepted, but he was of that number who do nothing
artlessly.
“An accidental circumstance determined my decision. I received news
that my certificates were lost [certificates that he had sent to
an architect to secure a position with him]. I then concluded that
Providence had intended, by this incident, to take from me the
possibility of a return backward.”
At the end of a few days he wrote to his brother Christopher:--
“It is astonishing how my duties please me. From the first lesson
it seemed to me that I had never done anything else, and that I
was born for that very thing. I could no longer make it seem to me
that I had previously thought of following any occupation but this,
and yet I confess that the idea of becoming a teacher had never
occurred to me.”
526. FRŒBEL AND PESTALOZZI.--At the school in Frankfort, Frœbel,
still a novice in the art of teaching, attempted scarcely more than
scrupulously to apply the Pestalozzian methods.
And upon many points Frœbel remained to the end a faithful disciple
of Pestalozzi. Intuition is the fundamental principle of his
method, and we might say that his effort in pedagogy consists
chiefly in organizing into a system the sense intuitions which
Pestalozzi proposed to the child somewhat at random and without
plan.
Frœbel had had direct relations with Pestalozzi. In 1808 he went to
Yverdun with three of his pupils, and there spent two years, taking
part in the work of the institute, and becoming acquainted with the
methods of the master. He declares that it was a “decisive” epoch
in his life.
But let us note, in passing, the difference in character between
Pestalozzi and Frœbel. While Pestalozzi is ever ready to accuse
himself with a touching humility, Frœbel regards himself as almost
infallible. He never attributes failure to his own insufficiency,
but lays the blame on destiny or on the ill-will of others.
Pestalozzi is ever forgetting himself, and he is so neglectful as
to be uncouth in his attire. “He never knew how to dress,” say his
biographers; “his distraction made him forget sometimes his cravat,
and at others his garters.” Frœbel, on the contrary, affected an
elegant and theatrical bearing. He studied effect. At certain
periods, as we are told, he wore Hessian boots and a Tyrolese cap
with high plumes.
527. THE TREATISE ON SPHERICITY (1811).--It was about 1811 that
the peculiar originality of Frœbel manifested itself, and this
was done, it must be confessed, in an unfortunate way, by the
publication of his _Treatise on Sphericity_.
Pestalozzi somewhere wrote: “If my life is entitled to any credit,
it is that of having placed the square at the basis of an intuitive
instruction which has never yet been given to a people.”[222] This
language coming from Pestalozzi is certainly calculated to surprise
us; but at least Pestalozzi meant square in the proper sense of
the term, as a geometrical figure, or as a form for drawing. When
Frœbel speaks to us of the sphere, and makes of it the basis of
education, it is a wholly different thing.
In reading the _Treatise on Sphericity_, we are sometimes tempted
to inquire whether we have to do with a well-balanced mind, or
whether an exuberant imagination has not caused the author to lose
the consciousness of reality.
According to Frœbel, the sphere is the ideal form:--
“The sphere seems like the prototype or the unity of all bodies
and of all forms. Not an angle, not a line, not a plane, not
a surface, is shown in it, and yet it has all points and all
surfaces.”
Let this pass; but besides this, the sphere has mysterious
relations with spiritual things; it teaches the perfection of the
moral life.
“To labor conscientiously at the development of the spherical
nature of a being, is to effect the education of a being.”
An incident borrowed from the life of Frœbel will complete the
picture. He enlisted as a volunteer in 1812, and made the campaigns
of 1812-1813, with Langethal and Middendorf, who were afterward to
be his colleagues. After the war, he returned to Berlin, passing
through the whole of Germany. During the whole journey, he says, “I
was seeking something, but without reaching a definite idea of what
I was in quest of, and nothing could satisfy me. Wholly engrossed
in this thought, I entered one day into a very beautiful garden,
ornamented with plants the most various. I admired them, and yet
none of them brought relief to my inmost feeling.
“Passing them in review, at a glance, in my soul, I suddenly
discovered that among them there was no lily.... Then I knew what
was lacking in that garden, and what I was looking for. How could
my inmost feeling have manifested itself to me in a more beautiful
way? You seek, I said to myself, tranquil peace of heart, harmony
of life, and purity of soul, in the image of the lily, that
peaceful flower, simple and pure. The garden, with all its varied
flowers, but without the blossoms of the lily, was for me like life
agitated and variegated, but without harmony and without unity.”
528. NEW STUDIES.--Frœbel returned to Berlin in 1814, and there
obtained an assistant’s place in the mineralogical museum. He
there studied at leisure the geometrical forms of crystals, and
reflected anew on their symbolical meaning. Perhaps he derived
from these studies the idea of the first gifts which he afterwards
introduced into his _Kindergartens_. It was not till two years
afterwards that he formed the definite resolution to devote
himself to the education of youth (1816). He first established
himself at Griesheim, and then at Keilhau (a league’s distance
from Rudolstadt), where, with five pupils, all his nephews, he
opened a school which he called by a pompous title, and one hardly
justifiable at the beginning, the _General German Institute of
Education_. He succeeded in associating with himself Langethal
and Middendorf. The establishment was administered at first on a
very modest scale, as the resources were slender; but it prospered
little by little, and in 1826 it numbered more than fifty pupils.
529. INSTITUTE AT KEILHAU.--The principles of Pestalozzi were
applied at Keilhau. Langethal and Middendorf passed their
apprenticeship in the Pestalozzian method under the direction of
Frœbel. The three professors met in the common hall, and there
were frequently heard as echoes from their discussion the words:
_intuition_, _personal initiative_, _proceeding from the known to
the unknown_. “They are learning the system,” said the children who
heard them.
At Keilhau, physical, intellectual, and moral education marched
abreast. The master was to attempt to penetrate the individuality
of each child, to the end that he might thence provoke the free
development of that individuality. The government was austere and
the fare frugal. The system of physical hardening was carried to an
extreme. The pupils, winter and summer, wore a blouse and cotton
trousers. A considerable time was devoted to religious exercises.
Frœbel always remained attached to the Lutheran Church, though
his orthodoxy might have seemed open to suspicion, and he always
thought that education ought to be essentially religious.
“All education that is not founded on religion is sterile.” And he
adds, “All education that is not founded on the Christian religion
is defective and incomplete.”[223]
530. THE EDUCATION OF MAN.--It was at Keilhau in 1826, that Frœbel
published his principal work, _The Education of Man_.[224]