an active and inquiring mind accustomed to chatter about everything
that interests him is sent to school. In a few weeks his vivacity
is extinguished, his abundance of talk has dried up. If you ask him
about his studies, if you desire him to give you a specimen of what he
has learnt, he repeals to you in a sing-song voice some rule for the
formation of tenses or some recipe for spelling words. Such are the
results of the teaching which should be of all teaching the most fruitful
and the most attractive!” Translated from _Quelques Mots_, &c., by M.
Bréal.
[151] In these visits he observed how the children suffered from working
in factories. These observations influenced him in after years.
[152] In these aphorisms Pestalozzi states the main principles at work in
his own mind; but this bare statement is not well suited to communicate
these principles to the minds of others. For most readers the aphorisms
have as little attraction as the enunciations, say, of a book of Euclid
would have for those who knew no geometry. But as his future life was
guided by the principles he has formulated in this paper it seems
necessary for us to bear some of these in mind.
What he mainly insists upon is that all wise guidance must proceed from
a knowledge of the nature of the creature to be guided; further that
there is a simple wisdom which must direct the course of all men. “The
path of Nature,” says he, “which brings out the powers of men must be
open and plain; and human education to true peace-giving wisdom must
be simple and available for all. Nature brings out all men’s powers
by practice, and their increase springs from _use_.” The powers of
children should be strengthened by exercise on what is close at hand;
and this should be done without hardness or pressure. A forced and rigid
sequence in instruction is not Nature’s method, says he: this would
make men one-sided, and truth would not penetrate freely and softly
into their whole being. The pure feeling for truth grows in a small
area; and human wisdom must be grounded on a perception of our closest
relationships, and must show itself in skilled management of our nearest
concerns. Everything we do against our consciousness of right weakens
our perception of truth and disturbs the purity of our fundamental
conceptions and experiences. On this account all wisdom of man rests
in the strength of a good heart that follows after truth, and all the
blessing of man in the sense of simplicity and innocence. Peace of mind
must be the outcome of right training. To get out of his surroundings
all he needs for life and enjoyment, to be patient, painstaking, and in
every difficulty trustful in the love of the Heavenly Father, this comes
of a man’s true education to wisdom. Nothing concerns the human race
so closely and intimately as—God. “God as Father of thy household, as
source of thy blessing—God as thy Father; in this belief thou findest
rest and strength and wisdom, which no violence nor the grave itself can
overthrow.” Belief in God which is a part of our nature, like the sense
of right and wrong and the feeling we can never quench of what is just
and unjust, must be made the foundation in educating the human race. The
subject of that belief is that God is the Father of men, men are the
children of God. To this divine relationship Pestalozzi refers all human
relationships as those of parent and child, of ruler and subject. The
priest is appointed to declare the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood
of men.
The only text I have seen is that reprinted by Raumer (_Gesch. d. Päd._).
From Otto Fischer (_Wichtigste Pädagogen_), I learn that this is the
edition of 1807, which differs, at least by omission, from the original
of 1780.
[153] There are now four parts, first published respectively in 1781,
1783, 1785, and 1787 (O. Fischer). The English translation in two small
vols. (1825) ends with the First Part, but Miss Eva Channing has recently
sought to weld the four parts into one (Boston, U.S.—D.C. Heath & Co.),
and in this form the book seems to me not only very instructive but
very entertaining also. Not many readers who look into it will fail to
reach the end, and few are the books connected with education of which
this could prudently be asserted. “All good teachers should read it with
care,” says Stanley Hall in his Introduction, and if they thus read it
and catch anything of the spirit of Pestalozzi both they and their pupils
will have reason to rejoice.
[154] In the pages of this Journal Pestalozzi taught that it was “the
domestic virtues which determine the happiness of a nation.” Again he
says: “On the throne and in the cottage man has equal need of religion,
and becomes the most wretched being on the earth if he forget his God.”
“The child at his mother’s breast is weaker and more dependent than any
creature on earth, and yet he already feels the first moral impressions
of love and gratitude.” “_Morality is nothing but a result of the
development of the first sentiments of love and gratitude felt by the
infant._ The first development of the child’s powers should come from his
participation in the work of his home; for this work is what his parents
understand best, what most absorbs their attention, and what they can
best teach. But even if this were not so, work undertaken to supply real
needs would be just as truly the surest foundation of a good education.
_To engage the attention of the child, to exercise his judgment, to
raise his heart to noble sentiments, these I think the chief ends of
education_: and how can these ends be reached so surely as by training
the child as early as possible in the various daily duties of domestic
life?” It would seem then that at this time Pestalozzi was for basing
education on domestic labour and would teach the child to be useful. But
it is hard to see how this principle could always be applied.
[155] One of these I have already given (_supra_ p. 292). I will give
another, not as by any means one of the best, but as a fit companion to
Rousseau’s “two dogs.”
“26. THE TWO COLTS.
“Two colts as like as two eggs, fell into different hands. One was bought
by a peasant whose only thought was to harness it to his plough as soon
as possible: this one turned out a bad horse. The other fell to the lot
of a man who by looking after it well and training it carefully, made a
noble steed of it, strong and mettlesome. Fathers and mothers, if your
children’s faculties are not carefully trained and directed right, they
will become not only useless, but hurtful; and the greater the faculties
the greater the danger.”
Compare Rousseau: “Just look at those two dogs; they are of the same
litter, they have been brought up and treated precisely alike, they have
never been separated; and yet one of them is sharp, lively, affectionate,
and very intelligent: the other is dull, lumpish, surly, and nobody could
ever teach him anything. Simply a difference of temperament has produced
in them a difference of character, just as a simple difference of our
interior organisation produces in us a difference of mind.” _N. Héloise._
5me P. Lettre iii.
[156] Pestalozzi was with the children at Stanz only during the first
half of 1799.
[157] As Pestalozzi wrote to Gessner (_How Gertrude, &c._): “You
see street-gossip is not always entirely wrong; I really could not
write properly, nor read, nor reckon. But people always jump to wrong
conclusions from such ‘notorious facts.’ At Stanz you saw that I could
teach writing without myself being able to write properly.” He here
anticipates a paradox of Jacotot’s.
[158] Years afterwards Napoleon, though he could not foresee Sedan, got
a notion that after all there was _something_ in Pestalozzi; and that
the aim of the system was to put the freedom and development of the
individual in the place of the mechanical routine of the old schools,
which tended to produce a mass of dull uniformity. With this aim, as
Guimps says, Napoleon was quite out of sympathy, and whenever the subject
was mentioned he would say, “The Pestalozzians are Jesuits”; thus very
inaccurately expressing an accurate notion that there was more in them
than could be understood at the first glance.
[159] Pestalozzi had from this country some more discerning visitors,
_e.g._, J. P. Greaves, to whom Pestalozzi addressed _Letters_, which
were translated and published in this country; also Dr. Mayo, who was
at Yverdun with his pupils for three years from 1818 and afterwards
conducted a celebrated Pestalozzian school at Cheam. Dr. Mayo in 1826
lectured on Pestalozzi’s system at the Royal Institution. Sir Jas.
Kay-Shuttleworth and Mr. Tufnell also drew attention to it in the
“Minutes of Council on Education.”
[160] The disciple is not above his master, and if parents and teachers
are without sympathy and religious feeling the children will also be
without faith and love. This cannot be urged too strongly on those who
have charge of the young. But there is no test by which we can ascertain
that a master has these essential qualifications. As in the Christian
ministry the unfit can be shut out only by their own consciences. But let
no one think to understand education if he loses sight of what Joseph
Payne has called “Pestalozzi’s simple but profound discovery—the teacher
must have a heart.” “Soul is kindled only by soul,” says Carlyle; “to
_teach_ religion the first thing needful and also the last and only thing
is finding of a man who _has_ religion. All else follows.”
[161] In 1872, a Congress in which more than 10,000 German elementary
teachers were represented, petitioned the Prussian Government for “the
organization of training schools in accordance with the pedagogic
principles of Pestalozzi, which formerly enjoyed so much favour in
Prussia and so visibly contributed to the regeneration of the country.”
[162] Did Pestalozzi make due allowance for the system of thought
which every child inherits? Croom Robertson in “How we came by our
Knowledge” (_Nineteenth Century_, No. 1, March, 1877), without mentioning
Pestalozzi, seems to differ from him. Croom Robertson says that “Children
being born into the world are born into society, and are acted on by
overpowering social influences before they have any chance of being
their proper selves.... The words and sentences that fall upon a child’s
ear and are soon upon his lips, express not so much his subjective
experience as the common experience of his kind, which becomes as it were
an objective rule or measure to which his shall conform.... He does, he
must, accept what he is told; and in general he is only too glad to find
his own experience in accordance with it.... We use our incidental, by
which I mean our natural subjective experience, mainly to decipher and
verify the ready-made scheme of knowledge that is given us _en bloc_ with
the words of our mother-tongue” (pp. 117, 118).
[163] One of the most interesting and most difficult problems in teaching
is this:—How long should the beginner be kept to the rudiments? With
young children, to whom ideas come fast, the main thing is no doubt to
take care that these ideas become distinct and are made “the intellectual
property” of the learners. But after a year or two children will be
impatient to “get on,” and if they seem “marking time” will be bored
and discouraged. Then again in some subjects the elementary parts seem
clear only to those who have a conception of the whole. As Diderot says
in a passage I have seen quoted from _Le Neveu de Rameau_, “Il faut
être profond dans l’art ou dans la science pour en bien posséder les
éléments.” “C’est le milieu et la fin qui éclaircissent les ténèbres du
commencement.” The greatest “coach” in Cambridge used to “rush” his men
through their subjects and then go back again for thorough learning. To
be sure, the “scientific method” suitable for young men differs greatly
from the “heuristic” or “method of investigation,” which is best for
children. (See Joseph Payne’s Lecture on Pestalozzi.) But even with
children we should bear in mind Niemeyer’s caution, “Thoroughness itself
may become superficial by exaggeration; for it may keep too long to a
part and in this way fail to complete and give any notion of the whole”
(Quoted by O. Fischer, _Wichtigste Päd._ 213).
[164] Nearly 20 years ago (1871) appeared a paper on “Elementary National
Education” in which “John Parkin, M.D.,” advocated making all our
elementary schools industrial, not only for practical purposes, but still
more for the sake of physical education. The paper attracted no notice
at the time, but now we are beginning to see that the body is concerned
in education as well as the mind, and that the mind learns through it
“without book.” The application of this truth will bring about many
changes.
[165] Herbart, when he visited Pestalozzi at Burgdorf, observed that
though Pestalozzi’s kindness was apparent to all, he took no pains in
his teaching to mix the _dulce_ with the _utile_. He never talked to
the children, or joked, or gave them an anecdote. This, however, did
not surprise Herbart, whose own experience had taught him that when the
subject requires earnest attention the children do not like it the better
for the teacher’s “fun.” “The feeling of clear apprehension,” says he, “I
held to be the only genuine condiment of instruction” (Herbart’s _Päd.
Schriften_, ed. by O. Willmann, j. 89).
[166] _First_ look to himself, but there may be other causes of failure
as well. The great thing is never to put up contentedly, or even
discontentedly, with failure. In teaching classes of lads from ten to
sixteen years old, when I have found the lessons in any subject were not
going well, I have sometimes taken the class into my confidence, told
them that they no doubt felt as I did that this lesson was a dull one,
and asked them each to put on paper what he considered to be the reasons,
and also to make any suggestions that occurred to him. In this way I have
got some very good hints, and I have always been helped in my effort to
understand how the work seemed to the pupils. Every teacher should make
this effort. As Pestalozzi says, “Could we conceive the indescribable
tedium which must oppress the young mind while the weary hours are slowly
passing away one after another in occupations which it can neither relish
nor understand ... we should no longer be surprised at the remissness of
the schoolboy creeping like snail unwillingly to school” (To G., xxx,
150).
[167] With Morf’s summing-up it is interesting to compare Joseph Payne’s,
given at the end of his lecture on _Pestalozzi_:
I. The principles of education are not to be devised _ab extra_; they are
to be sought for in human nature.
II. This nature is an organic nature—a plexus of bodily, intellectual
and moral capabilities, ready for development, and struggling to develop
themselves.
III. The education conducted by the formal educator has both a negative
and a positive side. The negative function of the educator consists
in removing impediments, so as to afford free scope for the learner’s
self-development. His positive function is to stimulate the learner to
the exercise of his powers, to furnish materials and occasion for the
exercise, and to superintend and maintain the action of the machinery.
IV. Self-development begins with the impressions received by the mind
from external objects. These impressions (called sensations), when the
mind becomes conscious of them, group themselves into perceptions. These
are registered in the mind as conceptions or ideas, and constitute that
elementary knowledge which is the basis of all knowledge.
V. Spontaneity and self-activity are the necessary conditions under which
the mind educates itself and gains power and independence.
VI. Practical aptness or faculty, depends more on habits gained by the
assiduous oft-repeated exercise of the learner’s active powers than on
knowledge alone. Knowing and doing (_Wissen und Können_) must, however,
proceed together. The chief aim of all education (including instruction)
is the development of the learner’s powers.
VII. All education (including instruction) must be grounded on the
learner’s own observation (_Anschauung_) at first hand—on his own
personal experience. This is the true basis of all his knowledge. First
the reality, then the symbol; first the thing, then the word, not _vice
versâ_.
VIII. That which the learner has gained by his own observation
(_Anschauung_) and which, as a part of his personal experience, is
incorporated with his mind, he _knows_ and can describe or explain in his
own words. His competency to do this is the measure of the accuracy of
his observation, and consequently of his knowledge.
IX. Personal experience necessitates the advancement of the learner’s
mind from the near and actual, with which he is in contact, and which he
can deal with himself, to the more remote; therefore from the concrete
to the abstract, from particulars to generals, from the known to the
unknown. This is the method of elementary education; the opposite
proceeding—the usual proceeding of our traditional teaching—leads the
mind from the abstract to the concrete, from generals to particulars,
from the unknown to the known. This latter is the Scientific method—a
method suited only to the advanced learner, who it assumes is already
trained by the Elementary method.
[168] Most parents do not seem to think with Jean Paul, “If we regard
all life as an educational institution, a circumnavigator of the world
is less influenced by all the nations he has seen than by his nurse.”
(_Levana_, quoted in Morley’s _Rousseau_.)
[169] I will quote the first paragraph of this work which is still
considered mental pabulum suited to the digestions of young ladies and
children:—
“_Name some of the most Ancient Kingdoms._—Chaldēa, Babylonia, Assyria,
China in Asia, and Egypt in Africa. Nimrod, the grandson of Ham, is
supposed to have founded the first of these B.C. 2221, as well as the
famous cities of Babylon and Nineveh; his kingdom being within the
fertile plains of Chaldēa, Chalonītis, and Assyria, was of small extent
compared with the vast empires that afterwards arose from it, but
included several large cities. In the district called Babylonia were the
cities of Babylon, Barsīta, Idicarra, and Vologsia,” &c., &c.
[170] I shall always feel gratitude and affection for the two old ladies
(sisters) to whom I was entrusted over half a century ago. More truly
Christian women I never met with. But of the science and art of education
they were totally ignorant; and moreover the premises they occupied were
unfit for a school. As all the boys were under ten years old, it will
seem strange, but is alas! too true, that there were vices among them
which are supposed to be unknown to children and which if discovered
would have made the old ladies close their school. The want of subjects
in which the children can take a healthy interest will in a great measure
account for the spread of evil in such schools. On this point some
mistresses and most parents are dangerously ignorant.
[171] Having watched the “teaching” of pupil-teachers, I find that some
of them (I may say many) never address more than one child at a time,
and never attempt to gain the attention of more than a single child. So,
by a very simple calculation, we can get at the maximum time each child
is “under instruction.” If the pupil-teacher has but three-quarters of
the pupils for whom the Department supposes him “sufficient,” each child
cannot be under instruction _more_ than two minutes in the hour. The rest
of the time the children must sit quiet, or be cuffed if they do not.
What is called “simultaneous” teaching in, say, reading, consists in the
pupil-teacher reading from the book, and as he pronounces each word, the
children shout it after him; but no one except the pupil-teacher knows
the place in the book.
But perhaps the dangers from employing boys and girls to teach and govern
children are greater morally than intellectually. Whether he report on
it or not, the Inspector has less influence on the moral training than
the youngest pupil-teacher. Channing has well said: “A child compelled
for six hours each day to see the countenance and hear the voice of an
unfeeling, petulant, passionate, unjust teacher is placed in a school
of vice.” Those who have never taught day after day, week after week,
month after month, little know what demands school-work makes on the
temper and the sense of justice. The harshest tyrants are usually those
who are raised but a little way above those whom they have to control;
and when I think of the pupil-teacher with his forty pupils to keep in
order, I heartily pity both him and them. Is there not too much reason to
fear lest in many cases the school should prove for both what Channing
has well described as “a school of vice”? (R. H. Q. in _Spectator_, 1st
March, 1890.)
[172] Since the above was written, another “New Code” has appeared
(March, 1890), in which the system of measuring by “passes,” a
system maintained (in spite of the remonstrances of all interested
in _education_) for nearly 30 years, is at length abandoned. We are
certainly travelling, however slowly, away from Mr. Lowe. Far as we are
still from Pestalozzi there seems reason to hope that the distance is
diminishing.
[173] This short sketch of Froebel’s life is mainly taken, with Messrs.
Black’s permission, from the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, for which I wrote
it.
[174] This office was first filled by Langethal and afterwards by
Ferdinand Froebel. I learned this at Burgdorf from Herr Pfarrer Heuer,
whose father had himself been Waisenvater.
[175] For this quotation, and for much besides (as will appear later
on), I am indebted to Mr. H. Courthope Bowen. See his paper _Froebel’s
Education of Man_.
[176] The educator _as teacher_ has his activity limited, according to
DeGarmo, to these two things; “(1) The _preparation_ of the child’s
mind for a rapid and effective assimilation of new knowledge; (2) The
_presentation_ of the matter of instruction in such order and manner
as will best conduce to the most effective assimilation” (_Essentials
of Method_ by Chas. DeGarmo, Boston, U.S., D. C. Heath, 1889). Besides
this he must make his pupils _use_ their knowledge both new and old, and
reproduce it in fresh connexions.
[177] “Little children,” says Joseph Payne, “are scarcely ever contented
with simply doing nothing; and their fidgetiness and unrest, which often
give mothers and teachers so much anxiety, are merely the strugglings of
the soul to get, through the body, some employment for its powers. Supply
this want, give them an object to work upon, and you solve the problem.
The divergence and distraction of the faculties cease as they converge
upon the work, and the mind is at rest in its very occupation.” _V. to
German Schools._
[178] I entirely agree with Joseph Payne that where the language
spoken is not German, it would be well to discard _Kindergarten_,
_Kindergärtner_, and _Kindergärtnerin_. All who have to do with children
should master some great principles taught by Froebel, but there is no
need for them to learn German or to use German words. The French seem
satisfied with _Jardin d’Enfants_, but we are not likely to be with
_Children-Garden_. _Playschool_ _might_ do.
[179] Contrast this with what has been said by an eminent thinker of
our time: “No art of equal importance to mankind has been so little
investigated scientifically as the art of teaching.” Sir H. S. Maine,
quoted in J. H. Hoose’s _M. of Teaching_.
[180] Here Jacotot’s notion of teaching reminds one of the sophism quoted
by Montaigne—“A Westphalia ham makes a man drink. Drink quenches thirst.
Therefore a Westphalia ham quenches thirst.”
[181] _See_ H. Courthope Bowen on “Connectedness in Teaching”
(_Educational Times_, June, 1890). Mr. Bowen quotes from H.
Spencer—“Knowledge of the lowest kind is _un-unified_ knowledge: science
is _partially unified_ knowledge: philosophy is _completely unified_
knowledge.”