and Gertrude_, viz., Tobler and Buss, and this is his account of the
party: “Our society thus consisted of four very different men ... the
founder, whose chief reputation was that of a dreamy writer, incapable
in practical life, and three young men, one [Tobler] a private tutor
whose youth had been much neglected, who had begun to study late, and
whose pedagogic efforts had never produced the results his character and
talents seemed to promise; another [Buss], a bookbinder, who devoted his
leisure to singing and drawing; and a third [Kruesi himself], a village
schoolmaster who carried out the duties of his office as best he could
without having been in any way prepared for them. Those who looked on
this group of men, scarce one of them with a home of his own, naturally
formed but a small opinion of their capabilities. And yet our work
succeeded, and won the public confidence beyond the expectations of those
who knew us, and even beyond our own” (R.’s Guimps, 304).
§ 59. With assistance from the Government there was added to the united
schools of Pestalozzi and Kruesi a training class for teachers; and
elementary teachers were sent to spend a month at Burgdorf and learn of
Pestalozzi, as years afterwards they were sent to the same town to learn
of Froebel. This Institute opened in January, 1801, and had nearly three
years of complete success. In it was carried out Pestalozzi’s notion
that there should be “no gulf between the home and the school.” On one
occasion a parent visiting the establishment exclaimed, “Why, this is
not a school but a family!” and Pestalozzi declared that this was the
highest praise he could give it. The bond which united them all, both
teachers and scholars, was love of “Father Pestalozzi.” Want of space
kept the number of children below a hundred, and these enjoyed great
freedom and worked away without rewards and almost without punishments.
Both public reports and private speak very highly of the results. In
June, 1802, the President of the Council of Public Education in Bern
declares: “Pestalozzi has discovered the real and universal laws of all
elementary teaching.” A visitor, Charles Victor von Bonstetten, writes:
“The children know little, but what they know, they know well.... They
are very happy and evidently take great pleasure in their lessons, which
says a great deal for the method.... As it will be long before there is
another Pestalozzi, I fear that the rich harvest his discovery seems to
promise will be reserved for future ages.”
The success of the method was specially conspicuous in arithmetic.
A Nürnberg merchant who came prejudiced against Pestalozzi was much
impressed and has acknowledged: “I was amazed when I saw these children
treating the most complicated calculations of fractions as the simplest
thing in the world.”
§ 60. Up to this point Pestalozzi may be said to have gained by the
disposition to “reform” or revolutionise everything, which had prevailed
in Switzerland since 1798. But from the reaction which now set in he
suffered more than he had gained. Switzerland sent deputies to Paris to
discuss under the direction of the First Consul Bonaparte what should
be their future form of Government. Among these deputies Pestalozzi was
elected, and he set off thinking more of the future of the schools than
of the future of the Government. At Paris he asked for an interview
with Bonaparte, but destruction being in his opinion a much higher art
than instruction, the First Consul said he could not be bothered about
questions of A, B, C. He, however, deputed Monge to hear what Pestalozzi
had to say, but the mathematician seems to have agreed with some English
authorities that “there was nothing in Pestalozzi.”[158] On his return
to Switzerland Pestalozzi was asked by Buss, “Did you see Bonaparte?”
“No,” replied Pestalozzi, “I did not see Bonaparte and Bonaparte did
not see me.” His presumption in thus putting himself on an equality
with the great conqueror seems to have taken away the breath of his
contemporaries: but “the whirligig of time brings in his revenges,” and
before the close of the century Europe already thinks more in amount, and
immeasurably more in respect, of Pestalozzi than of Bonaparte.
§ 61. As a result of the reaction the Government of United Switzerland
ceased to exist, and the Cantons were restored. This destroyed
Pestalozzi’s hopes of Government support, and even turned his Institute
out of doors. The Castle of Burgdorf was at once demanded for the
Prefect of the District; but Pestalozzi was offered an old convent at
Münchenbuchsee near Bern, and thither he was forced to migrate.
§ 62. Close to Münchenbuchsee was Hofwyl where was the agricultural
institution of Emmanuel Fellenberg. Fellenberg and Pestalozzi were old
friends and correspondents, and as they had much regard for each other
and Fellenberg was as great in administration as Pestalozzi in ideas,
there seemed a chance of their benefiting by co-operation; but this could
not be. The teachers desired that the administration should be put into
the hands of Fellenberg, and this was done accordingly, “not without my
consent,” says Pestalozzi, “but to my profound mortification.” He could
not work with this “man of iron,” as he calls Fellenberg; so he left
Münchenbuchsee and accepting one of several invitations he settled in the
Castle of Yverdun near the lake of Neuchatel. Within a twelvemonth he was
followed by his old assistants, who had found government by Fellenberg
less to their taste than no-government by Pestalozzi.
§ 63. Thus arose the most celebrated Institute of which we read in the
history of education. For some years its success seemed prodigious.
Teachers came from all quarters, many of them sent by the Governments of
the countries to which they belonged, that they might get initiated into
the Pestalozzian system. Children too were sent from great distances,
some of them being intrusted to Pestalozzi, some of them living with
their own tutor in Yverdun and only attending the Institute during
the day. The wave of enthusiasm for the new ideas seemed to carry
everything before it; but there is nothing stable in a wave, and when
the enthusiasm has subsided disappointment follows. This was the case at
Yverdun, and Pestalozzi outlived his Institute. But the principles on
which he worked and the spirit in which he worked could not pass away;
and, at least in Germany, all elementary schoolmasters acknowledge how
much they are indebted to his teaching.
§ 64. Of the state of things in the early days of the Institute we have a
very lively account written for his own children by Professor Vuillemin,
who entered it in 1805 as a child of eight, and was in it for two years.
From this I extract the following portrait of Pestalozzi: “Imagine, my
children, a very ugly man with rough bristling hair, his face scarred
with small-pox and covered with freckles, an untidy beard, no neck-tie,
his breeches not properly buttoned and coming down to his stockings,
which in their turn descended on to his great thick shoes; fancy him
panting and jerking as he walked; then his eyes which at one time opened
wide to send a flash of lightning, at another were half closed as if
engaged on what was going on within; his features now expressing a
profound sadness and now again the most peaceful happiness; his speech
either slow or hurried, either soft and melodious or bursting forth like
thunder; imagine the man and you have him whom we used to call our Father
Pestalozzi. Such as I have sketched him for you we loved him; we all
loved him, for he loved us all; we loved him so warmly that when some
time passed without our seeing him, we were quite troubled about it, and
when he again appeared we could not take our eyes off him” (Guimps, 315).
§ 65. At this time he was no less loved by his assistants, who put up
with any quarters that could be found for them, and received no salary.
We read that the money paid by the scholars was kept in the room of
“the head of the family”; every master could get the key, and when they
required clothes they took from these funds just the sum requisite.
This system, or want of system, went on for some time without abuse. As
Vuillemin says, it was like a return to the early days of the Christian
Church.
§ 66. We have seen that the first Emperor Napoleon “could not be bothered
about questions of A, B, C.” His was the pride that goes before a fall.
On the other hand the Prussian Government which he brought to the dust in
the battle of Jena (1806) had the wisdom to perceive that children will
become men, and that the nature of the instruction they receive will in a
great measure determine what kind of men they turn out. How was Prussia
again to raise its head? Its rulers decided that it was by the education
of the people. “We have lost in territory,” said the king; “our power and
our credit abroad have fallen; but we must and will go to work to gain in
power and in credit at home. It is for this reason that I desire above
everything that the greatest attention be paid to the education of the
people” (Guimps, 319). About the same time the Queen (Louisa) wrote in
her private diary, “I am reading _Leonard and Gertrude_, and I delight
in being transported into the Swiss village. If I could do as I liked I
should take a carriage and start for Switzerland to see Pestalozzi; I
should warmly shake him by the hand, and my eyes filled with tears would
speak my gratitude.... With what goodness, with what zeal, he labours
for the welfare of his fellow-creatures! Yes, in the name of humanity, I
thank him with my whole heart.”
So in the day of humiliation Prussia seriously went to work at the
education of the people, and this she did on the lines pointed out by
Pestalozzi. To him they were directed by their philosopher Fichte, who
in his _Addresses to the German Nation_ (delivered at Berlin 1807-8)
declared that education was the only means of raising a nation, and that
all sound reform of public instruction must be based on the principles of
Pestalozzi.
To bring these principles to bear on popular education, the Prussian
Government sent seventeen young men for a three years’ course to
Pestalozzi’s Institute, “where,” as the Minister said in a letter to
Pestalozzi, “they will be prepared not only in mind and judgment, but
also in heart, for the noble vocation which they are to follow, and will
be filled with a sense of the holiness of their task, and with new zeal
for the work to which you have devoted your life.”
§ 67. Among the eminent men who were drawn to Yverdun were some who
afterwards did great things in education, as _e.g._, Karl Ritter, Karl
von Raumer the historian of education, the philosopher Herbart, and a
man who was destined to have more influence than anyone, except perhaps
Pestalozzi himself—I mean Friedrich Froebel. Ritter’s testimony is
especially striking. “I have seen,” says he, “more than the Paradise of
Switzerland, for I have seen Pestalozzi, and recognised how great his
heart is, and how great his genius; never have I been so filled with a
sense of the sacredness of my vocation and the dignity of human nature
as in the days I spent with this noble man.... Pestalozzi knew less
geography than a child in one of our primary schools, yet it was from him
that I gained my chief knowledge of this science; for it was in listening
to him that I first conceived the idea of the natural method. It was he
who opened the way to me, and I take pleasure in attributing whatever
value my work may have entirely to him.”
§ 68. At this time we read glowing accounts of the healthy and happy life
of the children; and throughout Pestalozzi never lost a single pupil by
illness. With a body of very able assistants, instruction was carried
on for ten hours out of the twenty-four; but in these hours there was
reckoned the time spent in drill, gymnastics, hand-work, and singing. The
monotony of school-life was also broken by frequent “festivals.”
§ 69. And yet the Institute had taken into it the seeds of its own ruin.
There were several causes of failure, though these were not visible till
the house was divided against itself.
§ 70. First, Pestalozzi based the morality and discipline of the school
on the relations of family life. He would be the “father” of all the
children. At Burgdorf this relation seemed a reality, but it completely
failed at Yverdun when the Institute became, from the number of the
pupils and their differences in language, habits, and antecedents, a
little world. The pupils still called him “Father Pestalozzi,” but he
could no longer know them as a father should know his children. Thus
the discipline of affection slowly disappeared, and there was no school
discipline to take its place.
§ 71. Next, we can see that even at Burgdorf, and still more at Yverdun,
Pestalozzi was attempting to do impossibilities. According to his system,
the faculties of the child were to be developed in a natural unbroken
order, and the first exercises were to give the child the power of
surmounting later difficulties by its own exertions. But this education
could not be started at any age, and yet children of every age and every
country were received into the Institution. It was not likely that the
fresh comers could be made to understand that they “knew nothing,” and
must start over again on a totally different road. The teachers might
take such pupils to the water of “sense-impressions,” but they could not
inspire the inclination to drink, nor induce the lad to learn what he
supposed himself to know already. (_Cfr. supra_ p. 64, § 4.)
§ 72. But there was a greater mischief at work than either of these. In
his discourse to the members of the Institution on New Year’s Day, 1808,
Pestalozzi surprised them all by his gloom. He had had a coffin brought
in, and he stood beside it. “This work,” said he, “was founded by love,
but love has disappeared from our midst.” This was only too true, and the
discord was more deeply rooted than at first appeared. Among the brood
of Pestalozzians there was a Catholic shepherd lad from Tyrol, Joseph
Schmid by name, and he, in the end, proved a veritable cuckoo. As he
shewed very marked ability in mathematics, he became one of the assistant
masters; and a good deal of the fame of the Institution rested on the
performances of his pupils. But his ideas differed totally from those of
his colleagues, especially from those of Niederer, a clergyman with a
turn for philosophy, who had become Pestalozzi’s chief exponent.
§ 73. After Pestalozzi’s gloomy speech, the masters, with the exception
of Schmid, urged Pestalozzi to apply for a Government inquiry into the
state of the Institution. This Pestalozzi did, and Commissioners were
appointed, among them an educationist, Père Girard of Freiburg, by whom
the Report was drawn up. The Report was not favourable. Père Girard
was by no means inclined to sit at the feet of Pestalozzi, as he had
principles of his own. Pestalozzi, he thought, laid far too much stress
on mathematics, and he drew from him a statement that everything taught
to a child should seem as certain as that two and two made four. “Then,”
said Girard, “if I had thirty children I would not intrust you with one
of them. You could not teach him that I was his father.” Thus the Report,
though very friendly in tone, was by no means friendly in spirit. The
Commissioners simply compared the performances of the scholars with what
pupils of the same age could do in good schools of the ordinary type, and
Père Girard stated, though not in the Report, that the Institution was
inferior to the Cantonal School of Aargau. But the comparison of these
incommensurables only shews that Girard was not capable of understanding
what was going on at Yverdun. Indeed, he asserts “not only that the
mother-tongue was neglected,” but also that the children, “though they
had reached a high pitch of excellence in abstract mathematics, were
inconceivably weak in all ordinary practical calculations.” This is
absurd. In Pestalozzian teaching the abstract never went before ordinary
practical calculations. The good Father evidently blunders, and takes
“head-reckoning” for abstract, and pen or pencil arithmetic for practical
work. Reckoning with slate or paper is no doubt “ordinary,” but a
distinction has often to be drawn between what is ordinary and what is
practical.
§ 74. Soon after this the disputes between Schmid and his colleagues
waxed so fierce that Schmid was virtually driven away. In 1810 he left
Yverdun, and declared the Institution “a disgrace to humanity.” Great
was the disorder into which the Institution now fell from having over it
only a genius with “an unrivalled incapacity to govern.” The days which
“remind us of the early Church” were no more, and financial difficulties
naturally followed them. For the next five years things went from bad
to worse, and the masters were then driven to the desperate, and, as it
proved, the fatal step of inviting the able and strong-willed Schmid
back again. He came in 1815, he acquired entire control over Pestalozzi,
and drove from him all his most faithful adherents, among them not only
Niederer, who had invited the return of his rival, but even Kruesi and
the faithful servant, Elizabeth Naef, now Mrs. Kruesi, the widow of
Kruesi’s brother. Pestalozzi’s grandson married Schmid’s sister, and thus
united with him by family ties, Schmid took entire possession of the old
man and kept it till the end. His former colleagues seem to have been
deceived in their estimate both of Schmid’s integrity and ability. He
completed the ruin of the Institution, and he was finally expelled from
Yverdun by the Magistrates.
§ 75. But while Pestalozzi seemed falling lower and lower to the eyes of
the inhabitants of Yverdun, and so had little honour in his own country,
his fame was spreading all over Europe. Of this Yverdun was to reap the
benefit. In 1813-14, Austrian troops marched across Switzerland to invade
France. In January, 1814, the Castle and other buildings in Yverdun were
“requisitioned” for a military hospital, many of the Austrian soldiers
being down with typhus fever. In a great fright the Municipality sent
off two deputies to headquarters, then at Basel, to petition that this
order might be withdrawn. As the order threatened the destruction of
his Institution, Pestalozzi went with them, and it was entirely to him
they owed their success. On their return they reported that “no military
hospital would be established at Yverdun, and that M. Pestalozzi had been
received with most extraordinary favour.”
§ 75. On this occasion Pestalozzi took the opportunity of preaching to
the Emperor Alexander on the necessity of establishing good schools and
of emancipating the serfs. The Emperor took the lecture in good part, and
allowed the philanthropist to drive him into a corner and “button-hole”
him.
§ 76. In 1815 Pestalozzi received a visit from an Englishman, or more
accurately Scotsman—Dr. Bell, who, however, like most of our compatriots,
could find nothing in Pestalozzi. Whatever we may think of Bell as an
educationist, he was certainly a poor prophet. On leaving Yverdun he
said, “In another twelve years mutual instruction will be adopted by the
whole world and Pestalozzi’s method will be forgotten.”[159]
§ 77. In December, 1815, Pestalozzi was thrown more completely into the
power of Schmid by losing the only companion from whom nothing but death
could separate him—his wife. At the funeral Pestalozzi, standing by the
coffin, and as if heard by her whose earthly remains were in it, ran
over the disasters and trials they had passed through together, and the
sacrifices she had made for him. “What in those days of affliction,” said
he, “gave us strength to bear our troubles and recover hope?” and taking
up a Bible he went on, “_This_ is the source whence you drew, whence we
both drew courage, strength, and peace.”
§ 78. The “death agony of the Institution,” as Guimps calls it, lasted
for some years, but in this gloomy period there are only two incidents I
will mention. The first is the publication of Pestalozzi’s writings, for
which Schmid and Pestalozzi sought subscriptions; and the appeal was so
cordially answered that Pestalozzi received £2,000. This sum he wished
to devote to the carrying out of a plan he had always cherished of an
orphanage at Neuhof; but the money seems to have melted we do not know
how.
§ 79. The other incident is that of Pestalozzi’s last success. In
spite of Schmid he would open a school for twelve neglected children
at Clindy, a hamlet near Yverdun. Here he produced results like those
which had crowned his first efforts at Neuhof, Stanz, and Burgdorf. Old,
absent-minded, and incapable as he seemed in ordinary affairs, he, as
though by enchantment, gained the attention and the affection of the
children, and bent them entirely to his will. In a few months the number
of children had risen to thirty, and wonderful progress had been made.
Clindy at once became celebrated. Pestalozzi was induced to admit some
children whose friends paid for them, and Schmid then persuaded the old
man to remove the school into the Castle.
§ 80. In 1824 the Institution, which had lasted for twenty years, was
finally closed, and Pestalozzi went to spend his remaining days (nearly
three years as it proved) at Neuhof, which was then in the hands of his
grandson. The year before his death he visited an orphanage conducted on
his principles by Zeller at Beuggen near Rheinfelden. The children sang
a poem of Goethe’s quoted in _Leonard and Gertrude_, and had a crown of
oak ready to put on the old man’s head; but this he declined. “I am not
worthy of it,” said he, “keep it for innocence.”
§ 81. On 17th February, 1827, at the age of eighty-one, Pestalozzi fell
asleep.
§ 82. “The reform needed,” said Pestalozzi, “is not that the school-coach
should be better horsed, but that it should be turned right round and
started on a new track.” This may seem a violent metaphor, but perhaps
it is not more violent than the change that was (and in this country
still is) necessary. Let us try to ascertain what is the right road
according to Pestalozzi, and then see on what road the school-coach is
now travelling.
§ 83. The grand change advocated by Pestalozzi was a change of _object_.
The main object of the school should not be to _teach_ but to _develop_.
§ 84. This change of object naturally brings many changes with it.
Measured by their capacity for acquiring school knowledge and skill young
children may be considered, as one of H.M. Inspectors considered them,
“the fag-end of the school.” But if the school exists not to teach but to
develop, young children, instead of being the “fag-end,” become the most
important part of all. In the development of all organisms more depends
on the earlier than on the later stages; and there is no reason to doubt
that this law holds in the case of human beings. On this account, from
the days of Pestalozzi educational science has been greatly, I may say
mainly, concerned with young children. For the dominating thought has
been that the young human being is an undeveloped organism, and that in
education that organism is developed. So the essence of Pestalozzianism
lies not so much in its method as in its aim, not more in what it does
than in what it endeavours to do.
§ 85. And thus it was that Pestalozzi (in Raumer’s words) “compelled
the scholastic world to revise the whole of their task, to reflect on
the nature and destiny of man, and also on the proper way of leading
him from his youth towards that destiny.” And it was his love of his
fellow-creatures that raised him to this standpoint. He was moved by “the
enthusiasm of humanity.” Consumed with grief for the degradation of the
Swiss peasantry, he never lost faith in their true dignity as men, and
in the possibility of raising them to a condition worthy of it. He cast
about for the best means of thus raising them, and decided that it could
be effected, not by any improvement in their outward circumstances, but
by an education which should make them what their Creator intended them
to be, and should give them the use and the consciousness of all their
inborn faculties. “From my youth up,” he says, “I felt what a high and
indispensable human duty it is to labour for the poor and miserable;
... that he may attain to a consciousness of his own dignity through
his feeling of the universal powers and endowments which he possesses
awakened within him; that he may not only learn to gabble over by rote
the religious maxim that ‘man is created in the image of God, and is
bound to live and die as a child of God,’ but may himself experience its
truth by virtue of the Divine power within him, so that he may be raised,
not only above the ploughing oxen, but also above the man in purple and
silk who lives unworthily of his high destiny” (Quoted in Barnard, p. 13).