Lowe or Pestalozzi?

If Pestalozzi was

adapted to the needs of human nature. right, we must be wrong. We have never supposed the object of the school to be the development of the faculties ɔf heart, of head, and of hand, but we have thought of aothing 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 its 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.* 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

* 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. are still from Pestalozzi there seems reason to hope that the distance is diminishing.

Far as we

Chief force, personality of the teacher.

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

English care for unessentials.

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 timetable 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

Aim at the ideal.

faculties according to the Divine idea; but between this high poetical theory and the dull prose of actual schoolteaching, 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 and he will at times have the encouragement of away, conscious progress. To a man thus minded, theorists may be of great assistance. His practical knowledge ma, in. deed, often show him the absurdity of some pompously enunciated principle, and even where the principles seem

Use of theorists. Books.

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.)