HEINRICH PESTALOZZI
(1746-1826)
It was on January 14, 1789, in the desolate town of Stanz, “alone,
destitute of all tools of teaching, alone!--superintendent, bursar,
steward, and even maidservant, in a half-ruined house--surrounded by
ignorance, disease, and unwonted things of all kinds,” that a fantastic
Swiss began his career of “schoolmaster.” He had in his charge a group
of orphan children, which “increased by degrees to eighty; all of
different ages, some of good origin, others from the ranks of beggary,
and all, with a few exceptions, wholly ignorant” (13: p. 186). As
his faithful disciple Krüsi tells us, “in the matter of ordinary
acquirements and methods of teaching he was inferior to any good
village dominie” (13: p. 188, footnote). Without steadiness, without
patience, without order, without art of speech, without clearness
of thought, all that he possessed was the burning, self-forgetting
enthusiasm of a loving heart, “_die Vaterkraft meines Herzens_.”
“What a task,” he says, “imagine it; to elevate these children. What a
task!” But he “attempted it, and stood in their midst, uttered various
sounds and made them imitate them.” Lo! what was the response that came
to this seemingly nonsensical teaching? “Whoever saw it was struck
with the effect,” he writes later. “Truly it was a meteor that flashes
through the air and vanishes. No one understood its nature. I did not
understand it myself. It was the result of a simple psychological idea
which had been revealed to inward consciousness, but which I myself
was far from clearly understanding” (13: p. 186). Is not this the
beginning whereby “the laughing-stock of the passer-by,” “a straw not
fit to sustain a cat,” became the corner-stone of modern elementary
education? If one looks for an example in which the singleness of a
noble purpose and the purity of a loving zeal alone could accomplish
a great thing in the world, he will probably find no better one than
that of Pestalozzi. Indeed, there is no more interesting and inspiring,
though pathetic life, than that of this “greatest pedagogical genius
who has ever lived,” as Ziegler calls him. It is a living drama, in
which a new spirit of the age, or rather a new prophecy, struggles to
realize itself, through the fetters of misunderstanding, the opposition
of tradition, and the blows of adverse fate.
Pestalozzi was, before all, a social reformer. His pedagogy was a part
of his social philosophy, or rather the last fruit of his fervent
efforts for the betterment of his people and country. Having been
brought up in poverty and among the poor, he was well acquainted with
the actual life of the country people. The inborn tenderness of his
heart, ennobled by the influence of both his devout mother and uncle,
deepened by the constant appeal of the helplessness about him, could
not but be touched by the sight of the mass of humanity which was
without right, without comfort and even without necessities of life.
“Dear people, I will help you up!” was the utterance that came already
from the lips of his boyhood. And he confesses in his later age: “Ever
since my youthful days, the course of my feelings, rolled on like a
mighty stream, was directed to this one point; namely, to stop the
sources of that misery in which I saw the people around me immersed”
(1: p. 671).
First, his childhood fancy was attracted by the good example of his
uncle, and he wanted to follow his footsteps as a village pastor.
While a student of theology at Zürich, he came under the influence
of Rousseau, and was animated by an intense reformatory spirit. His
immediate plan was to become a defender of the people’s rights as a
lawyer. Then, finding his unfitness for the profession, he turned to
agriculture, through which he intended to realize his philanthropic
educational dream, according to Rousseauean principles. An orphanage
which he established on his farm having a mill connected with it, Paul
Monroe thinks, was probably the first “industrial school for poor
children.” After having met with a succession of failures, ending in
utter financial ruin, he turned “schoolmaster,” first at Stanz, then
at Burgdorf, lastly at Yverdun. He organized an institute for female
teachers. He became the trainer of educators who came from different
parts of Europe and America to learn his spirit and method. Yverdun
became the Mecca of pedagogues. Meanwhile he wrote extensively, not
only on education, but on politics, finance, jurisprudence, prison
systems and punishment, military affairs, industrial questions, and
social problems, such as infanticide, home, and the church. But through
all changes in his plans, circumstances, and activities, his central
purpose remained the same--namely, the elevation of humanity working
from within and from below. The poor, the destitute, the weak were
always the dearest objects to his heart.
His pedagogy was by no means a studied one, like that of Comenius or
Herbart. He is said to be the most unlettered of the great educational
writers. But the true spirit and genius of the educator, which is more
precious than everything else, was his possession. And with Pauline
enthusiasm that “I am cursed if I do not work for these little ones of
our poor fellow-creatures,” he simply threw himself single-heartedly
into the task of their education. Thus his whole educational career was
a series of experiments, and his pedagogy is its record.
If Rousseau’s plea was for the freedom of the “natural man” from the
yoke of the artificialities of existing society, Pestalozzi’s was for
the recognition of the divinity in the breast of even the humblest of
humanity and its rescue from death. The worth of the poor and little
was once proclaimed by the Founder of the religion of the universal
brotherhood. But the gospel had been long forgotten until it was
reproclaimed by the greatest lover of mankind whom the world has ever
seen since Jesus of Nazareth. He is called by Mager the “Kant of
pedagogy and didactics,” but I would rather name him “the Messiah of
modern education.” And if Comenius’s philosophy of education was the
perfect embodiment of the biblical Christianity of the seventeenth
century, Pestalozzi was the burnt offering which the new humanized
Christianity of the nineteenth century made at the altar of humanity.
“All the pure and beneficent powers of humanity,” writes Pestalozzi,
“are neither the product of art nor the results of chance. They are
really a natural possession of every man. Their development is a
universal human need” (4: p. 122). Yet how this need has hitherto been
unrecognized and neglected, especially for the lower strata of society!
And this is the source of such a deplorable inequality and consequent
instability in our social structure. The true remedy would come not
through charity nor through revolution, but only through technical,
intellectual, and moral elevation of the great neglected mass by
education. This was not a mere theory or an ideal conception for him,
but a working principle. See what confidence and hope he put into
the divine possibility of destitute children, and with what love and
reverence he protected their sanctity.
“Children, your good fortune is great. At a time when the great
majority of children go on in neglect and abandonment, with only
want for their teacher, and their passions for their guides; in
days when so many, so innumerably many, better and more fortunate
children, suffering under a combination of harshness, violence, and
bad guidance, diverted from the paths of Nature, not educated, but
trained only to a one-sided, empty show of knowledge and equally
one-sided pretense and fashion of practical efficiency, and thus
offered up to the world; in such a time, you are not given over to
abandonment and neglect; ... nor are the dubious impulses of passion
used in your training. Among us, neither vanity nor fear, neither
honor nor shame, neither reward nor punishment, as they are elsewhere
almost universally used, purposely and as a part of the method, are
used to show you the path in which you are to go. The divine nature
which is in you is counted holy in you. You are among us what the
divine nature within you and without you summon you to be. We oppose
no vile force against your gifts or your tendencies; we constrain
them not,--we only develop them. We do not instil into you what is
ours, what exists in us as corrupted by ourselves; we develop in you
what remains uncorrupted within yourselves. Among us, you are not
under the misfortune of seeing your whole being, your whole humanity,
subordinated, and thus sacrificed to the training of some single
power, some single view of your nature.... O God, No! What I seek is
to elevate human nature to its highest, its noblest; and this I seek
to do by love. Only in the holy power of love do I recognize the basis
of the development of my race to whatever of the divine and eternal
lies within its nature” (1: p. 713).
This quotation from his address delivered on New Year’s day of 1809
gives us the essence of his philosophy of education. To bring about
the natural, harmonious development of all the powers, faculties,
and qualities, which are potential in every human being, is the aim
of education. The key to open up these treasures of human, therefore
divine, nature is the most human, the most divine, power of love and
devotion.
Now let us examine more closely and minutely the meaning contained in
this fundamental concept of his, which, thus stated, seems nothing new
or striking, but if truly understood and applied would cause an entire
revolution even in the education of our present day.
First, what does Pestalozzi understand by the “natural” development?
“There is an impulse in every capacity of human nature, which compels
its development from lifeless inactivity into a developed power” (1:
p. 738). This impulse leads each one of our powers to a spontaneous
activity or exercise, and Nature develops it by “the single method
of its own activity.” This natural, organic unfolding of life, with
its multiple activities, is necessarily harmonious when unhindered by
human artifices or unfavorable environment. We must guard this natural
harmony of human nature, upon which the peace and happiness of our
individual and social life rest.
“No one faculty in the human child must be treated with exclusive
or indiscriminate attention, for their co-agency alone can ensure
a successful development of the whole being.” “Every one-sided
development of our powers is untrue and unnatural; it is only apparent
cultivation, ... and not human culture itself” (1: pp. 736, 737).
Pestalozzi is not only antagonistic to that kind of education which
“has an external, limited end of culture, of morality, of social
efficiency in view, and wants to fit the child to this,” but he
opposes that type of pedagogue who requires the child to conform to a
plasterlike model of a perfected man. Each particular child is always
the end, the object, the standard.
“Whatever, therefore, man may attempt to do by his tuition, he can
do no more than assist in the effort which the child makes for his
own development. To do this so that the impressions made upon him may
always be commensurate to the growth and character of the faculties
already unfolded, and at the same time, in harmony with them, is the
great secret of education. The knowledge to which the child is to be
led by instruction must, therefore, necessarily be subjected to a
certain order of succession, the beginning of which must be adapted
to the first unfolding of his powers, and the progress kept exactly
parallel to that of his development” (11: p. 611).
This method of leading or assisting the child along the course of his
successive developmental stages in a natural, progressive order is
what he terms “psychologizing education,” and this was the central
problem of his whole experimentation, so far as the individual child
was concerned. The discovery of his famous “Method of Elementary
Instruction” was the fruit of his lifelong endeavor toward this end,
but he considered his achievement only as a beginning.
Pestalozzi, in his advocacy of the natural, psychological method,
seems to be echoing the voice of one who said: “Return to Nature,
to human nature, to child nature!” But he goes deeper than Rousseau
in his insight into child nature. While Rousseau pictured the
natural growth of the child in an imaginary life, isolated from
every human institution, Pestalozzi placed the child in his natural
environment--namely, in the home under the loving care of parents. In
the eyes of both, the course of Nature was divine and inviolable. But
while Rousseau sought Nature’s work in the wilderness, Pestalozzi saw
it in the home life. It is not physical nature, but a well-ordered
home that can become the true cradle and workshop of human nature.
Indeed, there has probably never been a thinker who emphasized the
divine significance of home and mother so strongly as did Pestalozzi.
His method of elementary instruction came from the study of child life
in the home, and was first intended for home education. He was never
tired of repeating that “a man’s domestic relations are the first and
most important of his nature” (4: p. 77). He earnestly endeavored to
convince the world that “it is the domestic virtues which determine the
happiness of a nation,” and that “the home is the true basis of the
education of humanity.” According to him, it is only to supplement the
absence of proper home education that schools are needed; home ought
to have been the educational institution for children. So he speaks in
“Christopher and Alice” through the mouth of the good servant, Josiah:
“It is well that there are schools; and God forbid that I should be
ungrateful for any good that they have done to us. But with all this
I think that he must be a fool who, having plenty at home, runs about
begging; and that is the very thing which our village folk do, by
forgetting all the good lessons which they might teach their children
at home, and instead thereof sending them every day to gather up the
dry crumbs which are to be got in our miserable schools” (1: pp.
665-666).
Again he says in his address on his seventy-third birthday:
“The greatest evil of our time, and the greatest and almost
insurmountable obstacle to the operation of any thorough means is
this, that the fathers and mothers of our time have almost universally
lost the consciousness that they can do anything--everything--for
the education of their children. This great falling away from
their faith, of fathers and mothers, is the universal source of
the superficial character of our means of education.... Fathers
and mothers must, above all, learn to feel vividly how great an
advantage--as intrusted by God and their own conscience with the
duty of educating their own children--they enjoy over any others
to be employed as assistants therein. And, for like reasons, it is
indispensable that there should be a general public recognition of
the fact that a child who has lost father and mother is still a poor,
unfortunate orphan, even though his guardian can employ the first
among all masters of education in the world to teach him” (1: p. 716).
Then, where lies the source of the peculiar educative power of the
home? We have seen before that the art of education consists in
ministering an intelligent, loving help to the natural unfolding of
the child’s powers. But this term “loving help” is really too weak,
prosaic, and conventionalized to express its deep meaning. It is more
than mere kindness, mere effort of good will, or sentimental affection
that is meant. It is giving one’s whole self, giving one’s essence
over into another’s to be absorbed there, and to become a new power.
To use Pestalozzi’s own metaphor, it is like the sun whose light and
warmth silently penetrate to the soil, and in whose light and warmth
the plants grow, bud, and blossom, unconscious of its influence. This
kind of loving help can the mother alone supply to her own children, by
virtue of the natural endowment of a maternal heart, “the most gentle
and the most intrepid power in the whole system of Nature” (1: p. 735).
Love is understanding: a dutiful mother will easily “learn to
distinguish and direct each faculty before it appears in a state of
development sufficient to evidence its own existence” (1: p. 736)--the
principal qualification for an educator. Love is _educative_ in
the etymological sense of the word: it brings out what there is in the
child into self-expression. A loving mother is able “to open children’s
hearts, and their mouths, and to draw forth their understandings, as
it were, from the hindermost corner” (1: p. 667)--the true tact of
education. Pestalozzi compares the method of the ordinary schoolmaster
with what he believes to be the method of maternal instinct in the
following words:
“The teacher starts usually from objects, you from the child himself.
The teacher connects his instruction with what he knows, in order to
teach the child; you know in the presence of your child nothing else
than himself and connect everything with his instincts and impulses.
The teacher has a form of instruction to which he subjects the child;
you subject your course of instruction to the child and surrender it
to him, when you teach, as you surrender yourself to him. With the
teacher, everything comes from the understanding, with you all gushes
out from the fullness of heart. The child is childlike toward you,
because you behave motherlike toward him; the more you are motherlike,
the more childlike he is” (16: x, p. 145).
Pestalozzi expresses his righteous indignation toward the
schoolmaster’s fondness for the everlasting disciplining, drilling,
mechanism, which only thwart the natural free development of tender
minds.
“The schoolmaster seems as if he were made on purpose to shut up
children’s mouths and hearts, and to bury their good understanding
ever so deep under ground. That is the reason why healthy and cheerful
children, whose hearts are full of joy and gladness, hardly ever like
school. Those that show best at school are the children of whining
hypocrites, or of conceited parish officers; stupid dunces, who have
no pleasure with other children; these are the bright ornaments of
schoolrooms, who hold up their heads among the other children like
the wooden king in the nine-pins among his eight fellows. But if
there is a boy who has too much good sense to keep his eyes, for
hours together, fixed upon a dozen letters which he hates; or a merry
girl, who, while the schoolmaster discourses of spiritual life, plays
with her little hands all manner of temporal fun under the desk; the
schoolmaster, in his wisdom, settles that these are goats who care not
for their everlasting salvation” (1: p. 667).
Yet, a greater, nay the greatest thing that the maternal love, and it
alone, can accomplish is to sow the living seed of moral sentiments, to
lay the solid basis of character, in the soul of the child. He says:
“The only sure foundation upon which we must build, for institutions,
for popular education, national culture, and the elevation of the
poor, is the parental heart, which, by means of the innocence, truth,
power, and purity of its love kindles in the children the belief in
love” (1: p. 715).
For “the child at his mother’s breast is already receiving the first
impressions of love and gratitude”; and there is moral instruction in
the morsel of bread he receives from his father’s hand. According to
Pestalozzi, “morality is nothing but a result of the development in the
child of these first sentiments of love and gratitude” (4: p. 92).
Another advantage of the home is the education which children get from
their participation in the domestic occupation of their parents.
“For this work is necessarily what the parents understand best,
what most absorbs their attention, and what they are most competent
to 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” (4: p. 92).
Again:
“To engage the attention of the child, to exercise his judgment, to
open his heart to noble sentiments, is, I think, the chief end of
education; and how can this end be reached so surely as by training
the child as early as possible in the various daily duties of domestic
life?” (4: p. 92).
Industry in the factory or school does not provide the continuous and
manifold changes of work, the motivation from the real needs of life
which the child shares with the rest of the family, the stimulus of
parental love, and the impulsion from the child’s own filial feeling,
which home occupation does.
Moreover, home presents real human life in its closest relations to
the child, so that he naturally and unconsciously learns its facts and
laws. Human relations are again more natural, true, and perfect in the
home than anywhere else; thus the child can develop his human qualities
here better than anywhere else. Therefore, “as a general rule, art
and books would not replace it in any way. The best story, the most
touching picture the child finds in a book, is but a sort of dream
for him, something unreal, and in a sense untrue; whereas what takes
place before his eyes, in his own house, is associated with a thousand
similar occurrences, with all his own experience as well as that of his
parents and neighbours, and brings him without fail to a true knowledge
of men, and develops in him a thoroughly observant mind” (4: p. 93).
Lastly, home is in itself a completed whole, a microcosmos of the
larger social life, while school or the factory is not. Home is the
only place where the child can live a real, organic life. And we can
find a true unity and harmony, which is dynamic and progressive only
in an organic life. Therefore, “it is only in the holiness of home
that the equal development of all the human faculties can be directed,
managed, and assured; and it is from this point that educational
efforts must be conducted, if education, as a national affair, is to
have a real reference to the wants of the people, and is to cause, by
its influence, the coinciding of external human knowledge, power, and
motives with the internal, everlasting, divine essence of our nature”
(1: p. 715).
This, then, is the war cry of Pestalozzian reform: the education of the
child for the home, in the home, through the home, and by the home. The
child should be educated to be a dutiful and efficient member of the
family, or he cannot become a dutiful and efficient member of society.
Social reform must begin with the reconstruction of the home life
of the people. Not “go back to Nature!” but “go back to the home!”
Not to build a new society on the absolutely free, independent,
_natural man_, but on the work-loving, man-loving, God-loving,
unsophisticatedly developed, social man, or rather _home man_.
For Pestalozzi, the only hope for the elevation of all mankind was in
the regeneration of the home and perfection of home education. His
idea of elementary education started from this view. “Leonard and
Gertrude” was written as an appeal to parents, to awaken them to the
sense of the most sacred duty intrusted to them and of the grandest
privilege given to them. “How Gertrude Taught Her Children” was to be
a guide to mothers for instructing their children at home. His method
of elementary instruction was to provide the simplest and easiest way
of teaching available to every mother. Lastly, in the “Swan Song”
he formulated the principles by which home education should follow
or assist the course of natural development of the child. In this,
one of his last writings, he says: “At first I desired nothing else,
but merely sought to render the ordinary means of instruction for the
people so simple as to permit of their being employed in every family”
(4: p. 375). But while he was experimenting, in the education of those
destitute and neglected children, to whom he was a “father” rather than
a master, the ardent necessity of school reform at large was impressed
upon him.
“Everywhere the course pursued was in direct opposition to that of
Nature, everywhere the flesh predominated over the spirit, and the
divine element was ignored; everywhere selfishness and the passions
were made the motives of actions, and everywhere mechanical habits
took the place of intelligent spontaneity” (4: p. 377).
The basic principle upon which he wanted every educator to work was:
“Endeavour, first to broaden your children’s sympathies, and, by
satisfying their daily needs, to bring love and kindness into such
unceasing contact with their impressions and activity, that these
sentiments may be engrafted in their hearts; then try to give them
such judgment and tact as will enable them to make a wise, sure, and
abundant use of these virtues in the circle which surrounds them” (4:
p. 157). This is, according to his insight, the principle of parental
education unconsciously going on in the home, and the school must be a
copy of the home in its spirit and method, if it is at all to have a
real and vital influence upon the child.
Pestalozzi traces in the “Swan Song” how the seeds of love, of
confidence, of gratitude, of brotherly feeling, of patience, of
obedience, and of the sense of duty unfolds in the heart of the child,
through the tender and discreet care of the mother, and by means
of family intercourse. He also shows how, out of these instinctive
domestic affections, religious sentiments are born in the human soul.
“It is life that educates,” and this is life’s method of moral culture.
“On the intellectual side, it is again life that educates; for life
develops, in turn, the power of receiving impressions, the power
of speaking, and the power of thinking.” Let us see how these are
developed. “The power of receiving impressions by observations
and experience furnishes the child with ideas and sentiments” (4:
p. 378). This power, which Pestalozzi calls “_Anschauung_,”
is the starting-point of all intellectual activities. “These
impressions excite and animate in the mind its inherent principle of
self-development.” Therefore, “with perception comes the necessity
for expression, and naturally the first attempts of the child are
imitative, but the greatest need is that of human speech,” which
is “an extension of the power thought” (1: p. 739). The desire and
capacity for speech is parallel to the development of vocal organs and
acquirements of knowledge through perception. “The power to speak does
not proceed from the knowledge of language, it is rather the knowledge
of language which proceeds from the power to speak.” Language is a
vital mental power only when it has grown out of the child’s own life.
But forcing the language from outside upon the child “neither develops
the powers of the mind nor produces anything but an empty verbiage” (4:
pp. 378-379). Nevertheless, “Art ... can greatly relieve the tedium of
Nature’s methods in teaching the child to speak, and education must
investigate the means, and present an orderly succession of exercises
adapted to that end.” For instance, “the mother must allow the charms
of seeing, hearing, feeling, and tasting to have full play in the
child. These sense impressions will awaken the desire to give them
expression, that is, to speak. The mother continually varies her tones,
speaking now loudly, now softly, sometimes singing, and sometimes
laughing, so as to awaken the desire to imitate. The sense of sight
must also be enlisted by exhibiting different objects and associating
the impressions with fitting words. Each object should be presented
in the greatest possible variety of relations and positions, and care
should be taken that each impression, matured in the child’s mind
through perception, is properly expressed” (1: pp. 739-740). In this
way the vocal organs are to be trained, a good command of words is to
be given, and the power of expressing related ideas to be cultivated.
“Now when a child’s sense impressions have resulted in clear and settled
ideas, when he can express these ideas in speech, he feels the need
of examining, separating, and comparing them; this is a pleasure to
which life itself invites him, and in which he finds the surest aid
for the development of his judgment and power of thinking.” Education
at all times has aimed to encourage, facilitate, and strengthen this
development. Yet it has failed miserably, because “it has paid little
heed to the laws of Nature and of life.” Pestalozzi condemns the usual
method of “putting before the child a mass of ready-made judgments
that his memory alone has been able to grasp, and which, instead of
strengthening his thought, have allowed it to wither in inactivity.” He
also makes light of logic, which, to his conception, is “a system, more
subtle than clear, of the eternal rules which regulate human thought;
rules, however, which are but a closed book for the child who does
not yet possess the power of thinking” (4: p. 379). What he himself
proposes as the best gymnastics for the child’s thinking power is what
he calls exercises in number and form. As singing is introduced for the
training of the speech faculty, arithmetic, geometry, drawing, writing
are introduced for the training of the power of thought. “But,” he
says, “if the study of number and form is to have any real educational
value, it must consist not in shortened, mechanical methods, but
in a series of exercises so well graduated that the child may take
pleasure in the study, and succeed in it; that his thinking powers
may be always active; that his judgments may be really his own, and
that all he does must be closely connected with his real life” (4:
pp. 379-380). Thus, to summarize, language (including sounds, words,
connected ideas), number, and form are to be the three essential means
of intellectual culture, or the three fundamental elements of mental
upbuilding, and “it is the business of education to present these
elements to the child’s mind in the simplest possible manner, and in
psychological and progressive order.”
In regard to manual skill, again, “it is in the conditions and needs of
actual life, and in the heart of the family, that the child must first
learn how to use and improve his powers” (4: p. 380). The work, when
separated from life, is a mere mechanism. Therefore, “the exercises
intended to develop the industrial and artistic powers must also be
determined by the general circumstances of the child’s life” (4: p.
380). The principle of elementary education applies to the manual
powers as well as to the mental and moral: “It encourages the child’s
activity from the very first; it leads him to produce results which
are really his own, and it gives him at the same time both the power
and the will to rise without slavishly copying others” (4: p. 380).
Further, for industrial skill “to be completely useful, it must be the
outcome of the harmonious development of heart, mind, and body” (4:
p. 374). For, what is skill but “the facile and artful expression of
what is conceived in the mind?” And without perfection of heart, “the
highest development of intellect, art, or industry brings no rest,
but leaves the man full of trouble, uneasiness, and discontent” (4:
p. 375). Therefore, to bring about the subordination of the physical
powers to the moral and intellectual powers is the essential work of
education. This due subordination of the lower to the higher elements
of human nature, in which the harmony of life consists, is naturally
found in “a well-regulated and industrious family life.” So here,
again, the school must learn from the home.
Pestalozzi’s exaltation of home education is certainly a great
rebellion against scholastic and academic training. No less
revolutionary is his advocacy of industrial education as the only real
education for the mass of people. Hitherto, education was conceived
from the standpoint of aristocracy, or purely from the abstract ideal
of perfected man in a perfected society. But now “the fatherland must
learn to educate her poor as the poor” (16: xii, p. 513). The child of
poverty should not be educated to an unpractical and unhappy man who
cannot fulfil the task or duty which his particular circumstances and
position require of him. First, “he must learn to know, handle, and
use those things on which his bread and his quiet will depend through
life” (1: p. 666). To give the power to support himself and his family
is the first remedy for the misery and slavery of the poor: “He is
without rights, because he has no gain,” and “the poor man is poor
mostly because he is not trained to earn his wants” (16: iii, p. 247).
So the first school which he established at Neuhof was intended to be
an industrial school, embracing agriculture, manufacture, and commerce.
This ended in financial ruin before his plan was fully executed, but he
reflects in his later life upon this school as if it were a lost child,
and says: “It is true that, with all the experience of after-life, I
have found but little reason to modify the views I then entertained”
(1: p. 671).
Comenius and Locke both introduced manual work into their curriculum,
but without intending that it should be of much practical use in later
life. Neither did Basedow emphasize the vocational aspect. Locke,
indeed, had an unrealized plan for establishing a “working school” for
the poor. Still, it was to be nothing more than the combination of
a common workshop and a day nursery. We owe to Pestalozzi the first
definite conception of an industrial education and its noble philosophy.
The first aim of an industrial education is of course vocational: the
inculcation of skill in productive labor. But it is more than this: it
is the mental and moral culture as well. Racially and individually,
industrial labor is “the true and holy and eternal means of combining
the whole range of our powers into one common power, the power of
manhood.” It compels our mind to “an unbroken attention, carefulness,
and deliberateness--the fundamental educational basis of all thinking”;
it necessitates in us the belief in the truth and immutability of
natural laws. So he proclaims: “It is the essence of the true art of
human education to transform various works and branches of industry
into the means of human culture” (16: x, p. 357), and “for the laboring
man, the sufficient and efficient cultivation of his senses and limbs
to the service of all of what constitutes the blessings of his life, is
the stepladder, by which he is called to climb up to the right thinking
that would make him happy in his positions and relations.” This, then,
is the other great Pestalozzian motto: Education through and for work.
Of the tributes paid to the merits of Pestalozzi there is no end, and
rightly so. Karl Schneider testifies that “not only a new form was
introduced by him into the school instruction of Germany, but that
her people have come to look upon the work of education as a national
affair is due to him and his disciples” (25: p. 59). But his influence
extends far beyond his fatherland and his adopted country. And through
all the civilized world “the ideas which he set forth are now through
pain and struggle endeavoring to get themselves realized” (22: p. 58).
If Comenius gave us the universal school in form, Pestalozzi put the
soul into it. Locke was the pedagogue of the gentlemen, Basedow of
the bourgeois. But Pestalozzi, as Harnisch well said, was “a people’s
pedagogue, a people’s prophet” (27: p. 42), and “with a higher light
in the head and more warmth in the heart than the world was wont to
have” proclaimed the education of the masses for the masses. Truly, as
Fichte said, “his love was so blessed to him that he found more than
he sought” (26: p. 245). In trying to save the poor, neglected mass of
his country he gave the world “the only remedy for the entire body of
humanity”--the spirit and principles of vitalized and vitalizing, of
humanized and humanizing education.
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