key to Pestalozzianism), “Why have I insisted so strongly on attention to
early physical and intellectual education? Because I consider these as
merely leading to a higher aim, to qualify the human being for the free
and full use of all the faculties implanted by the Creator, and to direct
all these faculties towards the perfection of the whole being of man,
that he may be enabled to act in his peculiar station as an instrument
of that All-wise and Almighty Power that has called him into life” (To
Greaves, p. 160).
§ 86. Believing in this high aim of education, Pestalozzi required a
proper early training for all alike. “Every human being,” said he, “has
a claim to a judicious development of his faculties by those to whom the
care of his infancy is confided” (_Ib._ p. 163).
§ 87. Pestalozzi therefore most earnestly addressed himself to mothers,
to convince them of the power placed in their hands, and to teach them
how to use it. “The mother is qualified, and qualified by the Creator
Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child;
... and what is demanded of her is—a _thinking love_.... God has given to
thy child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point remains
undecided—how shall this heart, this head, these hands, be employed? to
whose service shall they be dedicated? A question the answer to which
involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee....
It is recorded that God opened the heavens to the patriarch of old, and
showed him a ladder leading thither. This ladder is let down to every
descendant of Adam; it is offered to thy child. But he must be taught
to climb it. And let him not attempt it by the cold calculations of the
head, or the mere impulse of the heart; but let all these powers combine,
and the noble enterprise will be crowned with success. These powers are
already bestowed on him, but to thee it is given to assist in calling
them forth” (To Greaves, p. 21). “Maternal love is the first agent in
education.... Through it the child is led to love and trust his Creator
and his Redeemer.”
§ 88. From the theory of development which lay at the root of
Pestalozzi’s views of education, it followed that the imparting of
knowledge and the training for special pursuits held only a subordinate
position in his scheme. “Education, instead of merely considering what
is to be imparted to children, ought to consider first what they may be
said already to possess, if not as a developed, at least as an involved
faculty capable of development. Or if, instead of speaking thus in
the abstract, we will but recollect that it is to the great Author of
life that man owes the possession, and is responsible for the use, of
his innate faculties, education should not simply decide what is to be
made of a child, but rather inquire what it was intended that he should
become. What is his destiny as a created and responsible being? What
are his faculties as a rational and moral being? What are the means for
their perfection, and the end held out as the highest object of their
efforts by the Almighty Father of all, both in creation and in the page
of revelation?”
§ 89. Education, then, must consist “in _a continual benevolent
superintendence_, with the object of calling forth all the faculties
which Providence has implanted; and its province, thus enlarged, will
yet be with less difficulty surveyed from one point of view, and will
have more of a systematic and truly philosophical character, than an
incoherent mass of ‘lessons’—arranged without unity of principle, and
gone through without interest—which too often usurps its name.”
The educator’s task then is to superintend and promote the child’s
development, morally, intellectually, and physically.
§ 90. “The essential principle of education is not teaching,” said
Pestalozzi; “it is love” (R.’s G., 289). Again he says, “The child
loves and believes before it thinks and acts” (_Ib._ 378). And in a
very striking passage (_Ib._ 329), where he compares the development of
the various powers of a human being to the development of a tree, he
says, “These forces of the heart—faith and love—are in the formation of
immortal man what the root is for the tree.” So, according to Pestalozzi,
a child without faith and love can no more grow up to be what he should
be than a tree can grow without a root. Apart from this vital truth there
can be no such thing as Pestalozzianism.
“Ah yet when all is thought and said
The heart still overrules the head.”
It is our hearts and affections that lead us right or wrong far more than
our intellects. In advocating the training of the minds of the people,
Lord Derby once remarked that as Chairman of Quarter Sessions he had
found most of the culprits brought before him were stupid and ignorant.
It certainly cannot be denied that the commonest kind of criminal is
bad in every way. He has his body ruined by debauchery, his intellect
almost in abeyance, and his heart and affections set on what is vile and
degrading. If you could cultivate his intellect you would certainly raise
him out of the lowest and by far the largest of the criminal classes.
But he might become a criminal of a type less disgusting in externals,
but in reality far more dangerous. The most atrocious miscreant of our
time, if not of all time, was a man who contrived a machine to sink ships
in mid-ocean, his only object being to gain a sum of money on a false
insurance. This man was a type of the _élite_ of criminals, had received
an intellectual training, and could not have been described by Lord Derby
as ignorant or stupid.
§ 91. Pestalozzi then, much as he valued the development of the
intellect, put first the moral and religious influence of education; and
with him moral and religious were one and the same. He protested against
the ordinary routine of elementary education, because “everywhere in it
the flesh predominated over the spirit, everywhere the divine element was
cast into the shade, everywhere selfishness and the passions were taken
as the motives of action, everywhere mechanical habits usurped the place
of intelligent spontaneity” (R.’s G., 470). Education for the people
must be different to this. “Man does not live by bread alone; every
child needs a religious development; every child needs to know how to
pray to God in all simplicity, but with faith and love” (R.’s G., 378).
“If the religious element does not run through the whole of education,
this element will have little influence on the life; it remains formal
or isolated”[160] (_Ib._ 381). And Pestalozzi sums up the essentials of
popular education in the words: “The child accustomed from his earliest
years to pray, to think, and to work, is already more than half educated”
(_Ib._ 381).
§ 92. Here we see the main requisites. First the child must pray with
faith and love. Next he must _think_.
“The child must think!” exclaims the schoolmaster: “Must he not learn?”
To which Pestalozzi would have replied, “Most certainly he must.”
Learning was not in Pestalozzi’s estimation as in Locke’s, the “last and
least” thing, but learning was with him something very different from
the learning imparted by the ordinary schoolmaster. Pestalozzi was very
imperfectly acquainted with the thoughts and efforts of his predecessors,
but the one book on education which he had studied had freed him from the
“idols” of the schoolroom. This book was the _Emile_ of Rousseau, and
from it he came no less than Rousseau himself to despise the learning
of the schoolmaster. But when he had to face the problem of organizing
a course of education for the people, Pestalozzi did not agree with
Rousseau that the first twelve years should be spent in “losing time.”
No, the children must learn, but they must learn in such a way as to
develop all the powers of the mind. And so Pestalozzi was led to what he
considered his great discovery, viz., that all instruction must be based
on “Anschauung.”
§ 93. The Germans, who have devoted so much thought and care and effort
to education, greatly honour Pestalozzi,[161] and as his disciples aim
at making all elementary instruction “anschaulich.” We English have
troubled ourselves so little about Pestalozzi, or, I might say, about
the theory of education, that we have not cared to get equivalent words
for _Anschauung_ and _anschaulich_. For _Anschauung_ “sense-impression”
has lately been tried; but this is in two ways defective; for (1) there
may be “Anschauungen” beyond the range of the senses, and (2) there is
in an “Anschauung” an active as well as a passive element, and this the
word “impression” does not convey. The active part is brought out better
by “observation”—the word used by Joseph Payne and James MacAlister; but
this seems hardly wide enough. Other writers of English borrow words
straight from the French, and talk about “intuition” and “intuitive,”
words which were taken (first I believe by Kant) from the Latin
_intueri_, “to look at _with attention and reflection_.”
§ 94. I think we shall be wise in following these writers. On good
authority I have heard of a German professor who when asked if he had
read some large work recently published in the distressing type of his
nation, replied that he had not; he was waiting for a French translation.
If the Germans find that the French express their thoughts more clearly
than they can themselves, we may think ourselves fortunate when the
French will act as interpreters. I therefore gladly turn to M. Buisson
and translate what he says about “intuition.”
“Intuition is just the most natural and most spontaneous action of human
intelligence, the action by which the mind seizes a reality without
effort, hesitation, or go-between. It is a ‘direct apperception,’ made as
it were at a glance. If it has to do with some matter within the province
of the senses, the senses perceive it at once. Here we have the simplest
case of all, the most common, the most easily noted. If the thing
concerned is an idea, a reality, that is, beyond the reach of the senses,
we still say that we seize it by intuition when all that is necessary is
that it present itself to the mind, and the mind at once grasps it and is
satisfied with it without any need of proof or investigation. We advance
by intuition whenever our mind, acting by the senses, or by the judgment,
or by the conscience, knows things with the same amount of evidence and
the same amount of speed that a distinct view of an object affords the
eye. So intuition is no separate faculty; it is nothing strange or new
in the mind of man. It is just the mind itself ‘intuitively’ recognising
what exists in it or around it” (_Les Conférences Péd. faites aux
Instituteurs_, Delagrave, 1879, p. 331). So the “intuitive method” (to
keep the French name for it) is of very wide application. “It appeals to
this force _sui generis_, to this glance of the mind, to this spontaneous
spring of the intelligence towards truth.” It sets the pupil’s mind to
work in following his own intellectual instincts. If in our teaching we
can use it, we shall have gained, as M. Buisson says, the best helper in
the world, viz., the pupil. If he can be got to take an active part in
the instruction all difficulty vanishes at once. Instead of having to
drag him along, you will see him delighted to keep you company.
§ 95. According to M. Buisson there are three kinds of
intuition—sensuous, intellectual, and moral. Similarly M. Jullien
(_Esprit de Pestalozzi_, 1812, vol. j, p. 152) says that there are
“intuitions” of the “internal senses” as well as of the external: the
“internal senses” are four in number: first, the sense for the true;
second, the sense for the beautiful; third, the sense for the good;
fourth, the sense for the infinite.
§ 96. Without settling whether this analysis is complete we shall have
no difficulty in admitting that both body and mind have faculties by
means of which we apprehend, lay hold of, what is true and right; and it
is on the use of these faculties that Pestalozzi bases instruction. No
Englishman may have found a good word to indicate _Anschauung_, but one
Englishman at least had the idea of it long before Pestalozzi. More than
a century earlier Locke had called knowledge “the internal perception of
the mind.” “Knowing is seeing,” said he; “and if it be so, it is madness
to persuade ourselves we do so by another man’s eyes, let him use never
so many words to tell us that what he asserts is very visible” (_Supra_
p. 222).
§ 97. Thus in theory Pestalozzi was, however unconsciously, a follower
of Locke. But in practice they went far asunder. Locke’s thoughts were
constantly occupied with philosophical investigations, and he seems to
have made small account of the intellectual power of children, and to
have supposed that they cannot “see” anything at all. So he cared little
what was taught them, and till they reached the age of reason the tutor
might give such lessons as would be useful to “young gentlemen,” the
avowed object being to “keep them from sauntering.” His follower Rousseau
preferred that the child’s mind should not be filled with the traditional
lore of the schoolroom, and that the instructor, when the youth reached
the age of twelve, should find “an unfurnished apartment to let.” Then
came Pestalozzi, and he saw that at whatever age the instructor began
to teach the child, he would not find an unfurnished apartment, seeing
that every child learns continuously from the hour of its birth. And
how does the child learn? Not by repeating words which express the
thoughts, feelings, and experiences of other people,[162] but by his own
experiences and feelings, and by the thoughts which these suggest to him.
§ 98. Elementary education then on its intellectual side is teaching the
child to think. The proper subjects of thought for children Pestalozzi
held to be the children’s surroundings, the realities of their own lives,
the things that affect them and arouse their feelings and interests.
Perhaps he did not emphasize _interest_ as much as Herbart has done
since; but clearly an _Anschauung_ or “intuition” is only possible when
the child is interested in the thing observed.
§ 99. The art of teaching in Pestalozzi’s system consists in analyzing
the knowledge that the children should acquire about their surroundings,
arranging it in a regular sequence, and bringing it to the children’s
consciousness gradually and in the way in which their minds will act upon
it. In this way they learn slowly, but all they learn is their own. They
are not like the crow drest up in peacock’s feathers, for they have
not appropriated any _dead_ knowledge (“_angelernte todte Begriffe_,”
as Diesterweg has it), and it cannot be said of them, “They know about
much, but _know_ nothing (_Sie kennen viel und wissen nichts_).” Their
knowledge is actual knowledge, for they are taught not _what_ to think
but _to think_, and to exercise their powers of observation and draw
conclusions from their own experience. The teacher simply furnishes
materials and occasions for this exercise in observing, and as it goes on
gives his benevolent superintendence.
§ 100. They learn slowly for another reason. According to Pestalozzi the
first conceptions must be dwelt upon till they are distinct and firmly
fixed. Buss tells us that when he first joined Pestalozzi at Burgdorf the
delay over the prime elements seemed to him a waste of time, but that
afterwards he was convinced of its being the right plan, and felt that
the failure of his own education was due to its incoherent and desultory
character. “Not only,” says Pestalozzi, “have the first elements of
knowledge in every subject the most important bearing on its complete
outline, but the child’s confidence and interest are gained by perfect
attainment even in the lowest stage of instruction.”[163]
§ 101. We have seen that Pestalozzi would have children learn to pray,
to think, and to _work_. In schools for the _soi-disant_ “upper classes”
the parents or friends of a boy sometimes say, “There is no need for
him to work he will be very well off.” From this kind of demoralization
Pestalozzi’s pupils were free. They would have to work, and Pestalozzi
wished them to learn to work as soon as possible. In this way he sought
to increase their self-respect, and to unite their school-life with their
life beyond it.[164]
§ 102. Pestalozzi was tremendously in earnest, and he wished the children
also to take instruction seriously. He was totally opposed to the notion
which had found favour with many great authorities as _e.g._, Locke
and Basedow, that instruction should always be given in the guise of
amusement. “I am convinced,” says he, “that such a notion will for ever
preclude solidity of knowledge, and, for want of sufficient exertions on
the part of the pupils, will lead to that very result which I wish to
avoid by my principle of a constant employment of the thinking powers.
A child must very early in life be taught the lesson that exertion is
indispensable for the attainment of knowledge”[165] (To G., xxiv, p.
117). But he should be taught at the same time that exertion is not an
evil, and he should be encouraged, not frightened, into it. Healthy
exertion, whether of body or mind, is always attended with a feeling of
satisfaction amounting to pleasure, and where this pleasure is absent
the instructor has failed in producing proper exertion. As Pestalozzi
says, “Whenever children are inattentive and apparently take no interest
in a lesson, the teacher should always first look to himself for the
reason”[166] (_Ib._).
§ 103. But though he took so serious a view of instruction, he made
instruction include and indeed give a prominent place to the arts of
singing and drawing. In the Pestalozzian schools singing found immense
favour with both the masters and the pupils, and the collection of songs
by Nägeli, a master at Yverdun, became famous. Drawing too was practised
by all. As Pestalozzi writes to Greaves (xxiv, 117), “A person who is
in the habit of drawing, especially from nature, will easily perceive
many circumstances which are commonly overlooked, and will form a much
more correct impression even of such objects as he does not stop to
examine minutely, than one who has never been taught to look upon what
he sees with an intention of reproducing a likeness of it. The attention
to the exact shape of the whole and the proportion of the parts, which
is requisite for the taking of an adequate sketch, is converted into a
habit, and becomes productive both of instruction and amusement.”
§ 104. I have now endeavoured to point out the main features of
Pestalozzianism. The following is the summing up of these features given
by Morf in his Contribution to Pestalozzi’s Biography:—
1. Instruction must be based on the learner’s own experience.
(Das Fundament des Unterrichts ist die Anschauung.)
2. What the learner experiences and observes must be connected
with language.
3. The time for learning is not the time for judging, not the
time for criticism.
4. In every department instruction must begin with the simplest
elements, and starting from these must be carried on step by
step according to the development of the child, that is, it
must be brought into psychological sequence.
5. At each point the instructor shall not go forward till
that part of the subject has become the proper intellectual
possession of the learner.
6. Instruction must follow the path of development, not the
path of lecturing, teaching, or telling.
7. To the educator the individuality of the child must be
sacred.
8. Not the acquisition of knowledge or skill is the main
object of elementary instruction, but the development and
strengthening of the powers of the mind.
9. With knowledge (_Wissen_) must come power (_Können_), with
information (_Kenntniss_) skill (_Fertigkeit_).
10. Intercourse between educator and pupil, and school
discipline especially, must be based on and controlled by love.
11. Instruction shall be subordinated to the aim of _education_.
12. The ground of moral-religious bringing up lies in the
relation of mother and child.[167]
§ 105. Having now seen in which direction Pestalozzi would start the
school-coach, let us examine (with reference to England only) the
direction in which it is travelling at present.
§ 106. For educational purposes we may, with Lord Beaconsfield, regard
the English as composed of two nations, the rich and the poor. Let us
consider these separately.
In the case of the rich we find that the worst part of our educational
course—the part most wrong in theory and pernicious in practice—is the
schooling of young children, say between six and twelve years old.
Before the age of six some few are fortunate enough to attend a good
Kindergarten; but the opportunity of doing this is at present rare, and
for most children of well-to-do parents there is, up to six years old,
little or no organised instruction. Pestalozzi would have every mother
made capable of giving such instruction. Froebel would have every child
sent to a skilled “Kindergärtnerin.” It seems to me beyond question that
children gain immensely from joining a properly-managed Kindergarten; but
where this is impossible, perhaps the mother may leave the child to the
series of impressions which come to its senses without any regular order.
According to the first Lord Lytton, the mother’s interference might
remind us of the man who thought his bees would make honey faster if,
instead of going in search of flowers, they were shut up and had flowers
brought to them. The way in which young children turn from object to
object, like the bees from flower to flower, seems to show that at this
stage their intellectual training goes on whether we help it or not.
There is no doubt an education for children however young, and the mother
is the teacher, but the lessons have more to do with the heart than the
head.
§ 107. But the time for regular teaching comes at last, and what is to be
done then? Let us consider briefly what _is_ done.
Hitherto, the only defence ever made of our school-course leading up to
residence at a University, has been that it aims not at giving knowledge
but at training the mind. Youths then are supposed to be engaged, not in
gaining knowledge, but in training their faculties for adult life. But
when we come to provide for the “education” of children, we never think
of training their faculties for youth, but endeavour solely to inculcate
what will then come in useful. We see clearly enough that it would
be absurd to cram the mind of a youth with laws of science or art or
commerce which he could not understand, on the ground that the getting-up
of these things might save him trouble in after-life. But we do not
hesitate to sacrifice childhood to the learning by heart of grammar
rules, Latin declensions, historical dates, and the like, with no thought
whatever of the child’s faculties, but simply with a view of giving
him knowledge (so-called) that will come in useful five or six years
afterwards. We do not treat youths thus, probably because we have more
sympathy with them, or at least understand them better. The intellectual
life to which the senses and the imagination are subordinated in the man
has already begun in the youth. In an inferior degree he can do what the
man can do, and understand what the man can understand. He has already
some notion of reasoning, and abstraction, and generalisation. But with
the child it is very different. His active faculties may be said almost
to differ in kind from a man’s. He has a feeling for the sensuous world
which he will lose as he grows up. His strong imagination, under no
control of the reason, is constantly at work building castles in the air,
and investing the doll or the puppet-show with all the properties of the
things they represent. His feelings and affections, easily excited, find
an object to love or dislike in every person and thing he meets with. On
the other hand, he has only vague notions of the abstract, and has no
interest except in actual known persons, animals, and things.