of fourteen or fifteen a greater difference than between the youth and
the man of twenty; and this demands a corresponding difference in their
studies. And yet, as matters are carried on now, the child is too often
kept to the drudgery of learning by rote mere collections of hard words,
perhaps, too, in a foreign language: and absorbed in the present, he
is not much comforted by the teacher’s assurance that “some day” these
things will come in useful.
§ 109. How to educate the child is doubtless the most difficult problem
of all, and it is generally allotted to those who are the least likely to
find a satisfactory solution.
The earliest educator of the children of many rich parents is the
nursemaid—a person not usually distinguished by either intellectual or
moral excellence.[168] At an early age this educator is superseded
by the Preparatory School. Taken as a body, the ladies who open
“establishments for young gentlemen” cannot be said to hold enlarged
views, or, indeed, any views whatever, on the subject of education. Their
intention is not so much to cultivate the children’s faculties as to make
a livelihood, and to hear no complaints that pupils who have left them
have been found deficient in the expected knowledge by the master of the
next school. If anyone would investigate the sort of teaching which is
considered adapted to the capacity of children at this stage, let him
look into a standard work still in vogue (“Mangnall’s Questions”), from
which the young of both sexes acquire a great quantity and variety of
learning; the whole of ancient and modern history and biography, together
with the heathen mythology, the planetary system, and the names of all
the constellations, lying very compactly in about 300 pages.[169]
Unfortunately, moreover, from the gentility of these ladies, their
scholars’ bodies are often treated in preparatory schools no less
injuriously than their minds. It may be natural in a child to use his
lungs and delight in noise, but this can hardly be considered _genteel_,
so the tendency is, as far as possible, suppressed. It is found, too,
that if children are allowed to run about they get dirty and spoil their
clothes, and do not look like “young gentlemen,” so they are made to take
exercise in a much more genteel fashion, walking slowly two-and-two,
_with gloves on_.[170]
§ 110. At nine or ten years old, boys are commonly put to a school taught
by masters. Here they lose sight of their gloves, and learn the use of
their limbs; but their minds are not so fortunate as their bodies. The
studies of the school have been arranged without any thought of their
peculiar needs. The youngest class is generally the largest, often much
the largest, and it is handed over to the least competent and worst paid
master on the staff of teachers. The reason is, that little boys are
found to learn the tasks imposed upon them very slowly. A youth or a man
who came fresh to the Latin grammar would learn in a morning as much as
the master, with great labour, can get into children in a week. It is
thought, therefore, that the best teaching should be applied where it
will have the most obvious results. If anyone were to say to the manager
of a school, “The master who takes the lowest form teaches badly, and
the children learn nothing”; he would perhaps say, “Very likely; but if
I paid a much higher salary, and got a better man, they would learn but
little.” The only thing the school-manager thinks of is, How much do
the little boys learn of what is taught in the higher forms? How their
faculties are being developed, or whether they have any faculties except
for reading, writing, and arithmetic, and for getting grammar-rules, &c.
by heart, he is not so “unpractical” as to enquire.
§ 111. With reference to the education of the first of our “two
nations,” it seems then pretty clear that Pestalozzi would require that
the school-coach should be turned and started in a totally different
direction.
§ 112. What about the education of the other “nation,” a nation of which
the verb “to rule” has for many centuries been used in the passive
voice, but can be used in that voice no longer? A century ago, with
the partial exception of Scotland and Massachusetts, there was no such
thing as school education for the people to be found anywhere in Europe
or America. But from 1789 onwards power has been passing more and more
from the few to the many; and as a natural consequence folk-schools
(for which we have not yet found a name) have become of vast importance
everywhere. The Germans, as we have seen, have been the disciples of
Pestalozzi, and their elementary education in everything bears traces
of his ideas. The English have organised a great system of elementary
education in total ignorance of Pestalozzi. As usual, we seem to have
supposed that the right system would come to us “in sleep.” But has it
come? The children of the poor are now compelled by the law to attend an
elementary school. What sort of an education has the law there provided
for them? The Education Department professes to measure everything by
results. Let us do the same. Suppose that on his leaving school we
wished to forecast a lad’s future. What should we try to find out about
him? No doubt we should ask what he knew; but this would not be by any
means the main thing. His skill would interest us, and still more would
his state of health. But what we should ask first and foremost is this,
Whom does he love? Whom does he admire and imitate? What does he care
about? What interests him? It is only when the answers to these questions
are satisfactory, that we can think hopefully of his future; and it
is only in so far as the school-course has tended to make the answers
satisfactory, that it deserves our approval. Schools such as Pestalozzi
designed would have thus deserved our approval; but we cannot say this
of the schools into which the children of the English poor are now
driven. In these schools the heart and the affections are not thought of,
the powers of neither mind nor body are developed by exercise, and the
children do not acquire any interests that will raise or benefit them.
§ 113. An advocate of our system would not deny this, but would probably
say, “The question for us to consider is, not what is the best that in
the most favourable circumstances might be attempted, but what is the
best that in very restricted and by no means favourable circumstances,
we are likely to get. The teachers in our schools are not self-devoting
Pestalozzis, but only ordinary men and women, and still worse, ordinary
boys and girls.[171] It would be of no use talking to our teachers
(still less our pupil-teachers) about developing the affections and
the mental or bodily powers of the children. All such talk could end
in nothing but silly cant. As for character, we expect the school to
cultivate in the children habits of order, neatness, industry. Beyond
this we cannot go.”
And yet, though this seems reasonable, we feel that it is not quite
satisfactory. If so much depends in all of us on “admiration, hope, and
love,” we can hardly consider a system of education that entirely ignores
them to be well adapted to the needs of human nature. If Pestalozzi
was right, we must be wrong. We have never supposed the object of the
school to be the development of the faculties of heart, of head, and
of hand, but we have thought of nothing but learning—learning first of
all to read, write, and cipher, and then in “good” schools, one or more
“extra subjects” may be taken up, and a grant obtained for them. The sole
object, both of managers and teachers, is to prepare for the Inspector,
who comes once a year, and from an examination of five hours or so,
pronounces on what the children have learnt.
§ 114. The engineer most concerned in the construction of this machine,
the Right Hon. Robert Lowe, announced that there could be “no such thing
as a science of education;” and as when we have no opinion of our own
we always adopt the opinion of some positive person, we took his word
for it. But what if the confident Mr. Lowe was mistaken? What if there
_is_ such a science, and the aim of it is that children should grow up
not so much to _know_ something as to _be_ something? In this case we
shall be obliged sooner or later to give up Mr. Lowe and to come round to
Pestalozzi.[172] Science is correct inferences drawn from the facts of
the universe; and where such science exists, confident assertions that
it does not and cannot exist are dangerous for the confident persons and
for those who follow them. Even if “there is no such thing as a science
of education,” such a thing as _education_ there is; and this is just
what Mr. Lowe, and we may say the English, practically deny. They make
arrangements for instruction and mete out “the grant” according to the
results obtained, but they totally fail to conceive of the existence of
_education_, education which has instruction among its various agents.
§ 115. In one respect the analogy between the educator and child and
the gardener and plant, an analogy in which Pestalozzi no less than
Froebel delighted, entirely breaks down. The gardener has to study the
conditions necessary for the health and development of the plant, but
these conditions lie outside his own life and are independent of it. With
the educator it is different. Like the gardener he can create nothing
in the child, but unlike the gardener he can further the development
only of that which exists in himself. He _draws out_ in the young
the intelligence and the sense of what is just, the love of what is
beautiful, the admiration of what is noble, but this he can do only
by his own intelligence and his own enthusiasm for what is just and
beautiful and noble. Even industry is in many cases _caught_ from the
teacher. In a volume of essays (originally published in the _Forum_),
in which some men, distinguished as scholars or in literature in the
United States, have given an account of their early years, we find that
almost in every case they date their intellectual industry and growth
from the time when they came under the influence of some inspiring
teacher. Thus even for instruction and still more for education, the
great force is _the teacher_. This is a truth which all our “parties”
overlook. They wage their controversies and have their triumphs and
defeats about unessentials, and leave the essentials to “crotchety
educationists.” In such questions as whether the Church Catechism shall
or shall not be taught, whether natural science shall or shall not figure
in the time-table (without scientific teachers it can figure nowhere
else), whether the parents or the Government shall pay for each child
twopence or threepence a week, whether the ratepayers shall or shall
not be “represented” among the Managers in “voluntary” schools, in all
questions of this kind _education_ is not concerned; and yet these are
the only questions that we think about. In the end it will perhaps dawn
upon us that in every school what is important for education is not
the time-table but the teacher, and that so far as pupil-teachers are
employed education is impossible. Elsewhere (_infra_ p. 476) I have told
of a man in the prime of life (he seemed between 40 and 50 years old)
whose time was entirely taken up in teaching a large class of children,
boys and girls, of six or seven years. He most certainly could and did
educate them both in heart and mind. He made their lessons a delightful
occupation to them, and he exercised over them the influence of a good
and wise father. Here was the right system seen at its best. I do not
say that all or even most adult teachers would have exercised so good
an influence as this gentleman; but so far as they come up to what they
ought to be and might be they do exercise such an influence. And this of
course can be said of no _pupil_-teacher.
§ 116. As regards schools then, schools for the rich and schools for the
poor, the great educating force is the personality of the teacher. Before
we can have Pestalozzian schools we must have Pestalozzian teachers.
Teachers must catch something of Pestalozzi’s spirit and enter into his
conception of their task. Perhaps some of them will feel inclined to
say: “Fine words, no doubt, and in a sense very true, that education
should be the unfolding of the faculties according to the Divine idea;
but between this high poetical theory and the dull prose of actual
school-teaching, there is a great gulf fixed, and we cannot attend to
both at the same time.” I know full well the difference there is between
theories and plans of education as they seem to us when we are at leisure
and can think of them without reference to particular pupils, and when
all our energy is taxed to get through our day’s teaching, and our
animal spirits jaded by having to keep order and exact attention among
veritable schoolboys who do not answer in all respects to “the young”
of the theorists. But whilst admitting most heartily the difference
here, as elsewhere, between the actual and the ideal, I think that
the dull prose of school-teaching would be less dull and less prosaic
if our aim was higher, and if we did not contentedly assume that our
present performances are as good as the nature of the case will admit
of. Many teachers (perhaps I may say most) are discontented with the
greater number of their pupils, but it is not so usual for teachers to be
discontented with themselves. And yet even those who are most averse from
theoretical views, which they call unpractical, would admit, as practical
men, that their methods are probably susceptible of improvement, and that
even if their methods are right, they themselves are by no means perfect
teachers. Only let the _desire_ of improvement once exist, and the
teacher will find a new interest in his work. In part, the treadmill-like
monotony so wearing to the spirits will be done away, and he will at
times have the encouragement of conscious progress. To a man thus
minded, theorists may be of great assistance. His practical knowledge
may, indeed, often show him the absurdity of some pompously enunciated
principle, and even where the principles seem sound, he may smile at
the applications. But the theorists will show him many aspects of his
profession, and will lead him to make many observations in it, which
would otherwise have escaped him. They will save him from a danger caused
by the difficulty of getting anything done in the school-room, the danger
of thinking more of means than ends. They will teach him to examine what
his aim really is, and then whether he is using the most suitable methods
to accomplish it.
Such a theorist is Pestalozzi. He points to a high ideal, and bids us
measure our modes of education by it. Let us not forget that if we are
practical men we are Christians, and as such the ideal set before us is
the highest of all. “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is
perfect.”
The Pestalozzian literature in German and even in French is now
considerable, but it is still small in English. The book I have
made most use of is _Histoire de Pestalozzi par R. de Guimps_
(Lausanne, Bridel), with its translation by John Russell
(London: Sonnenschein. Appleton’s: N. Yk.). In Henry Barnard’s
_Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism_ are collected some good
papers, among them Tilleard’s trans. from Raumer. We also have
H. Kruesi’s _Pestalozzi_ (Cincinatti: Wilson, Hinkle, & Co.). I
have already mentioned Miss Channing’s _Leonard and Gertrude_.
The _Letters to Greaves_ are now out of print. A complete
account of Pestalozzi and everything connected with him,
bibliography included, is given in M. J. Guillaume’s article
_Pestalozzi_, in Buisson’s _Dictionnaire de Pédagogie_. (See
also _Pestalozzi_ par J. Guillaume (Hachette) just published.)
XVII.
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL.
(1783-1852.)
§ 1. I now approach the most difficult part of my subject. I have
endeavoured to give some account of the lessons taught us by the chief
Educational Reformers. No doubt my selection of these has been made in a
fashion somewhat arbitrary, and there are names which do not appear and
yet might reasonably be looked for if all the chief Educational Reformers
were supposed to be included. But the plan of my book has restricted
me to a few, and I am by no means sure that some to whom I have given
a chapter are as worthy of it as some to whom I have not. I have in a
measure been guided by fancy and even by chance. One man, however, I dare
not leave out. All the best tendencies of modern thought on education
seem to me to culminate in what was said and done by Friedrich Froebel,
and I have little doubt that he has shown the right road for further
advance. Of what he said and did I therefore feel bound to give the
best account I can, but I am well aware that I shall fail, even more
conspicuously than in other cases, to do him justice. There are some
great men who seem to have access to a world from which we ordinary
mortals are shut out. Like Moses “they go up into the Mount,” and the
directions they give us are based upon what they have seen in it. But we
cannot go up with them; so we feel that we very imperfectly understand
them; and when there can be not the smallest doubt of their sincerity
we at times hesitate about the nature of their visions. For myself I
must admit that I very imperfectly understand Froebel. I am convinced,
as I said, that he has pointed out the right road for our advance in
education; but he was perhaps right in saying: “Centuries may yet pass
before my view of the human creature as manifested in the child, and of
the educational treatment it requires, are universally received.” It
has already taken centuries to recover from the mistakes made at the
Renascence. For the full attainment of Froebel’s standpoint perhaps a few
additional centuries may be necessary.
§ 2. Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel[173] was born at Oberweissbach, a
village of the Thuringian Forest, on the 21st April, 1783. He completed
his seventieth year, and died at Marienthal, near Bad-Liebenstein, on the
21st June, 1852. Like Comenius, with whom he had much in common, he was
neglected in his youth; and the remembrance of his own early sufferings
made him in after life the more eager in promoting the happiness of
children. His mother he lost in his infancy, and his father, the pastor
of Oberweissbach and the surrounding district, attended to his parish
but not to his family. Friedrich soon had a stepmother, and neglect was
succeeded by stepmotherly attention; but a maternal uncle took pity on
him, and for some years gave him a home a few miles off at Stadt-Ilm.
Here he went to the village school, but like many thoughtful boys he
passed for a dunce. Throughout life he was always seeking for hidden
connexions and an underlying unity in all things. In his own words: “Man,
particularly in boyhood, should become intimate with nature—not so much
with reference to the details and the outer forms of her phenomena as
with reference to the Spirit of God that lives in her and rules over
her. Indeed, the boy feels this deeply and demands it” (_Ed. of M._,
Hailmann’s trans., p. 162). But nothing of this unity was to be perceived
in the piecemeal studies of the school; so Froebel’s mind, busy as it
was for itself, would not work for the masters. His half-brother was
therefore thought more worthy of a university education, and Friedrich
was apprenticed for two years to a forester (1797-1799). Left to himself
in the Thuringian Forest, Froebel now began to “become intimate with
nature;” and without scientific instruction he obtained a profound
insight into the uniformity and essential unity of nature’s laws.
Years afterwards the celebrated Jahn (the “Father Jahn” of the German
gymnasts) told a Berlin student of a queer fellow he had met, who made
out all sorts of wonderful things from stones and cobwebs. This “queer
fellow” was Froebel; and the habit of making out general truths from the
observation of nature, especially of plants and trees, dated from his
solitary rambles in the Forest. No training could have been better suited
to strengthen his inborn tendency to mysticism; and when he left the
Forest at the early age of seventeen, he seems to have been possessed by
the main ideas which influenced him all his life. The conception which
in him dominated all others was the _unity of nature_; and he longed to
study natural sciences that he might find in them various applications
of nature’s universal laws. With great difficulty he got leave to join
his elder brother at the university of Jena; and there for a year he
went from lecture-room to lecture-room hoping to grasp that connexion of
the sciences which had for him far more attraction than any particular
science in itself. But Froebel’s allowance of money was very small, and
his skill in the management of money was never great; so his university
career ended in an imprisonment of nine weeks for a debt of thirty
shillings. He then returned home with very poor prospects, but much more
intent on what he calls the course of “self-completion” (_Vervollkommnung
meines selbst_) than on “getting on” in a worldly point of view. He
was soon sent to learn farming, but was recalled in consequence of the
failing health of his father. In 1802 the father died, and Froebel, now
twenty years old, had to shift for himself. It was some time before he
found his true vocation, and for the next three-and-a half years we
find him at work now in one part of Germany now in another,—sometimes
land-surveying, sometimes acting as accountant, sometimes as private
secretary.
§ 3. But in all this his “outer life was far removed from his inner
life.” “I carried my own world within me,” he tells us, “and this it
was for which I cared and which I cherished.” In spite of his outward
circumstances he became more and more conscious that a great task lay
before him for the good of humanity; and this consciousness proved fatal
to his “settling down.” “To thee may Fate soon give a settled hearth and
a loving wife” (thus he wrote in a friend’s album in 1805); “me let it
keep wandering without rest, and allow only time to learn aright my true
relation to the world and to my own inner being. Do thou give bread to
men; be it my effort to give men to themselves” (K. Schmidt’s _Gesch. d.
Päd._, 3rd ed. by Lange, vol. iv, p. 277).
§ 4. As yet the nature of the task was not clear to him, and it
seemed determined by accident. While studying architecture in
Frankfort-on-the-Main, he became acquainted with the director of a model
school who had caught some of the enthusiasm of Pestalozzi. This friend
saw that Froebel’s true field was education, and he persuaded him to give
up architecture and take a post in the model school. “The very first
time,” he says, “that I found myself before thirty or forty boys, I felt
thoroughly at home. In fact, I perceived that I had at last found my
long-missed life-element; and I wrote to my brother that I was as well
pleased as the fish in the water: I was inexpressibly happy.”
§ 5. In this school Froebel worked for two years with remarkable success;
but he felt more and more his need of preparation, so he then retired
and undertook the education of three lads of one family. Even in this he
could not satisfy himself, and he obtained the parents’ consent to his
taking the boys to Yverdun, and there forming with them a part of the
celebrated institution of Pestalozzi. Thus from 1807 till 1809 Froebel
was drinking in Pestalozzianism at the fountain head, and qualifying
himself to carry on the work which Pestalozzi had begun. For the science
of education had to deduce from Pestalozzi’s experience principles
which Pestalozzi himself could not deduce; and “Froebel, the pupil of
Pestalozzi, and a genius like his master, completed the reformer’s
system; taking the results at which Pestalozzi had arrived through the
necessities of his position, Froebel developed the ideas involved in
them, not by further experience but by deduction from the nature of man,
and thus he attained to the conception of true human development and to
the requirements of true education” (Schmidt’s _Gesch. d. Päd._).