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CHAPTER XXII

OBSERVATION AND INDUSTRIAL TRAINING IN EDUCATION

OUTLINE

Pestalozzi was the first prominent educator to develop the negative naturalism of Rousseau into positive reforms.

He desired to elevate the peasantry about him, and, failing in other expedients, undertook to accomplish this through a combination of industrial and intellectual training at Neuhof. This training he continued at Stanz, and began the development of his observational methods. In his work at Burgdorf, he was forced to suspend his industrial training, but he further developed his 'A B C of observation,' and at Yverdon the method reached its culmination.

Like Rousseau, Pestalozzi conceived of education as a natural development of innate powers, and he extended its application to all children. In his method he held that clear ideas could be formed only by means of sense perceptions, and he undertook to analyze each subject into its simplest elements and develop it by graded exercises.

While not original, practical, or scientific, Pestalozzi made education the remedy for corruption in society, and started the modern methods in the elementary studies. Pestalozzian schools and methods spread rapidly through Europe and the United States. The attempt to combine industrial training with intellectual, which Pestalozzi had to give up, was continued by his friend, Fellenberg, in his institutions at Hofwyl. Similar training was developed throughout Europe. In the United States it stimulated the 'manual labor' movement, and was later utilized as a solution for racial and other peculiar problems in education.

Pestalozzi as the Successor of Rousseau.-Having outlined the various phases of philanthropic education

and surveyed the development of the common school in America, we may now turn again to the more immediate development of the movements that found their roots in Rousseau. It has been noted how Rousseau's 'naturalistic' doctrines logically pointed to a complete demolition of the artificial society and education of the times. A pause at this point would have led to anarchy. If civilization is not to disappear, social destruction must be followed by reconstruction. Of course the negative attitude of the Emile was itself accompanied by considerable positive advance in its suggestions for a natural training, but this advice was often unpractical and extreme and its main emphasis was upon the destruction of existing education. Hence the happiest educational Development results of Rousseau's work came through Pestalozzi, of Rousseau by who especially supplemented that reformer's work upon the constructive side. Pestalozzi became the first prominent educator to develop the negative and somewhat inconsistent 'naturalism' of Rousseau into a more positive attempt to reform corrupt society by proper education and a new method of teaching.

of naturalism

Pestalozzi.

Pestalozzi's Philanthropic and Industrial Ideals.Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi was born at Zurich in 1746. After the death of his father, he was brought up almost altogether by his mother. Through her unselfishness and piety, and the example of his grandfather, pastor in mother and a neighboring village, Pestalozzi was inspired to relieve grandfather, and elevate the degraded peasantry about him. He first turned to the ministry as being the best way to accom

Example of

plish this philanthropic purpose, and later took up the and early atstudy of law, with the idea of defending the rights of tempts to elehis people, but he was not able to succeed in either pro-antry.

vate the peas

Scholastic in

struction given

while the chil

dren were working.

fession. Then, in 1769, he undertook to demonstrate to the peasants the value of improved methods of agriculture. He took up a strip of waste land at Birr, which he called Neuhof ('new farm'), but within five years this experiment also proved a lamentable failure. Meantime a son had been born to him, whom he had undertaken to rear upon the basis of the Emile, and the results, recorded in a Father's Journal, suggested new ideas and educational principles for the regeneration of the masses. He began to hold that education did not consist merely in books and knowledge, and that the children of the poor could, by proper training, be taught to earn their living and at the same time develop their intelligence and moral nature.

His Industrial School at Neuhof and the Leonard and Gertrude. Hence the failure of his agricultural venture afforded Pestalozzi the opportunity he craved to experiment with philanthropic and industrial education. Toward the end of 1774 he took into his home some twenty of the most needy children he could find. These he fed, clothed, and treated as his own. He gave the boys practical instruction in farming and gardening on small tracts, and had the girls trained in domestic duties and needlework. In bad weather both sexes gave their time to spinning and weaving cotton. They were also! trained in the rudiments, but were practiced in conversing and in memorizing the Bible before learning to read and write. The scholastic instruction was given very largely while they were working, and, although Pestalozzi had not as yet learned to make any direct connection between the occupational and the formal elements, this first attempt at an industrial education made it

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evident that the two could be combined. Within a few months there was a striking improvement in the physique, minds, and morals of the children, as well as in the use of their hands. But Pestalozzi was so enthusiastic over the success of his experiment that he greatly increased the number of children, and by 1780 was reduced to bankruptcy.

school was

lished his

Nevertheless, his wider purpose of social reform by means of education was not allowed to languish altogether, for a friend shortly persuaded him to publish his views. His first production, The Evening Hour of a Hermit, embodied most of the educational principles After the he afterward made famous, but he was advised to put closed, he pubhis thought into more popular form, and soon wrote his views. highly successful story of Leonard and Gertrude (1781). This work, with subsequent additions, gives an account of the degraded social conditions in the Swiss village of 'Bonnal' and the changes wrought in them by one simple peasant woman. 'Gertrude' reforms her drunkard husband, educates her children, and causes the whole community to feel her influence and adopt her methods. When finally a wise schoolmaster comes to the village, he learns from Gertrude the proper conduct of the school and begs for her continued coöperation. Then the government becomes interested, studies the improvements that have taken place, and concludes that the whole country can be reformed in no better way than by imitating Bonnal.

His School at Stanz and Beginning of His Observational Methods. In 1798 he was given an opportunity to carry on his philanthropic and industrial ideals in education through the orphan home and school at Stanz,

Having no other facilities,

servation' in

morals,

of which he was put in charge. Here he found it impossible to obtain any assistants, books, and materials, he instructed but he felt that none of these conventional aids could through 'obbe of service in the work he desired to do. Hence he sought to instruct the children rather by experience and observation than by abstract statements and words (Fig. 33). This was the real beginning of his teaching through 'observation,' and, while at Stanz he further developed his correlation of intellectual with manual training, his observational methods were thereafter destined to be more stressed. Religion and morals, for example, were never taught by precepts, but through instances that arose in the lives of the children he showed them the value of self-control, charity, sympathy, and gratitude. In a similarly concrete way the pupils were instructed number, lan- in number and language work by means of objects, and other subjects, in geography and history by conversation rather than by books. While they did not learn their natural history primarily from nature, they were taught to corroborate what they had learned by their own observation. About this method he said: "According to my experience, success depends upon whether what is taught to children commends itself to them as true through being closely connected with their own observation. As a general rule, I attached little importance to the study of words, even when explanations of the ideas they represented were given."

guage, and

In connection with his observational method, Pestalozzi at this time began his attempt to reduce all reducing per- perception to its lowest terms, 'the A B C of observation,' as he afterward called it. It was while at Stanz, for example, that he first adopted his well-known plan

ception to its lowest terms.

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