PESTALOZZI'S EDUCATIONAL LABORS FOR THE POOR, AND FOR POPULAR SCHOOLS. แ "IT is to the charitable efforts of Pestalozzi"-remarks M. Demetz, the founder of the most complete and successful institution of reformatory education in the world, in a report on the Agricultural Reformatory Colonies of France,—“ that we owe the establishment of agricultural colonies," that is, of institutions, organized on the basis, and in the spirit of the family, with agricultural employment as the principal means of industrial training, and with methods of instruction, moral, intellectual, and physical, so far as applied, good enough for children of any class of society, and yet capable of being followed by an intelligent mother in the home of the poor. Not that Pestalozzi's own plans and methods under his own application, were eminently successful-for they were not. His institution at Neuhof, was a disastrous failure, in its immediate results, both as a school, and as a pecuniary speculation. But the christian spirit in which this excellent man labored-the family organization into which he gathered, even the outcasts of society, living among such pupils as a father, as well as pastor and teacher, and denying himself the quiet seclusion and comforts of the home which the fortune of his noble minded wife had secured for him, that he might inspire the orphan, and the abandoned and even criminal child with filial attachments, cultivate habits of self-reliance and profitable industry, and thus enable them "to live in the world like men”—this spirit, system and aim, the dream and labor of his long and troubled life, imperfectly inaugurated at Neuhof, and never fully realized at Stanz, Burgdorf, and Yverden, but widely diffused by his writings, and the better success, under more favorable conditions, of his pupils and disciples in Switzerland and Germany, have led to the establishment of new educational institutions for rich and poor, of schools of practical agriculture, as well as of agricultural reformatories, and at the same time has regenerated the methods of popular education generally. To the connected and comprehensive survey of Pestalozzi's Life and Educational System by von Raumer, we add a notice of his labors at Neuhof by Dr. Blochmann, of Dresden, and by Dr. Diesterweg, of Berlin, from discourses pronounced on the occasion of the Centennial celebration of Pestalozzi's birth-day on the 12th of January, 1846. PESTALOZZI'S POOR SCHOOL AT NEUHOF. PESTALOZZI having failed in a plantation of madder which he had commenced in connection with a mercantile house of Zurich, on an estate of about one hundred acres of land on which he commenced a house in the 12 PESTALOZZI'S POOR SCHOOL AT NEUHOF. Italian villa- style, to which he gave the name of Neuhof, projected the plan of an educational establishment respecting which Dr. Blochmann, an admiring pupil and avowed follower thus writes: It was not in Pestalozzi's nature to sink under misfortune, so long as he could pursue the attainment of the object of his life. He had early learned and deeply fixed in his mind the maxim, "Tu ne cede malis, sed contra fortior ito." He advanced like a roused lion, with resolute courage, against all unfriendly influences. In spite of the severe distress into which the unforseen withdrawal of the Zurich house plunged him, he determined to go on, and to make his landed estate the centre of operations for his educational and agricultural plans. He resolved even upon more and higher designs. Henceforward he will live amongst beggar children, and share his bread in poverty amongst them; will live like a beggar himself, that he may learn to teach beggars to live like men. He also proposed to render his establishment an institution for the poor. This undertaking attracted attention. It was considered a noble and benevolent enterprise; and his views and principles had so much influence, in spite of the mistrust of his practical ability, that he found assistance in Zurich, Bern and Basle, and was able without much difficulty to obtain the necessary funds for the institution, by the aid of a loan, for several years, without interest. His friends on all sides assisted him; more especially Iselin of Basle, whom he had met and known in the Helvetic Diet, and who introduced the beloved enterprise to public notice in his Ephemerides. The Institution for the Poor at Neuhof was opened in 1775. Poor children flocked in from all directions, many of them gathered by Pestalozzi himself from their misery, and out of the streets. He had soon fifty children, whom he kept busy in summer with field labor, and in winter with spinning and other handicrafts, instructing them all the time, and developing and clearing up their mental faculties, especially by oral recitations and mental arithmetic.† Pestalozzi had early perceived HENRY PESTALOZZI. Touches at a Picture of his Life and Labors: from his own testimony, from observation, and communication. By Dr. Karl Justus Blochmann, Privy School Councilor and Professor: Leipsic. 1846. + The idea of such a school for the poor, in which agricultural and industrial labor were to De combined with instruction, accompanied Pestalozzi, to whose mind it was so new and stimulating, all his life; and even remained like a sunbeam shining from behind the dark sad clouds of the past, his last love, his last active desire. What, however, he never completely accomplished, has been done by Emanuel von Fellenberg, who was assisted in the work, not only by his certain and practical skill and experience, but especially by his good fortune in discovering in Vehrli, such a man as is very seldom to be found, but absolutely necessary in the actual realization of such a school. Whoever, like myself-and there are thousands-has be some thoroughly acquainted with Vehrli's school in Hofwyl, must be convinced that in institutions for the education of the poor so organized, conducted in such a spirit, with such love and self-sacrifice, there is to be found an inestimable blessing for the state and the people. Fel.enberg has shown from his account books, that a poor boy, received at his ninth year, and remaining in the institution through his eighteenth, pays by his labor during the last half of his stay, for the excess of the expense of maintaining him over his earnings, during the first half. Lange, in his work on "The Country Educational Institutions for Poor Children," (Landliclu Erziehungs Anstalten für Armenkinder,) has made very thorough researches into this that in the nature of every man are innate powers and means sufficient to assure him an adequate support; and that the hindrances arising from exterior circumstances, to the development of the natural endowments, are not in their nature insuperable. The usual means of benevolence and mercy (as he was accustomed to name the orphan houses, institutions for supporting the poor, &c., of the period,) seemed to him to stimulate and encourage the evil, instead of helping it. The thousand public and private ways of spending alms, with which the times were crowded to nauseation, the beggar making and hypocrite training modes of assisting the poor, seemed to him only a palliative. The only means of affording real assistance he saw to lie in this; that the inborn natural powers of every man to provide for his own necessities, and sufficiently to perform the business, duties and obligations of his being, should be developed, encouraged, and set upon an independent footing. With this conviction the impulse increased within him to labor for this definite purpose; that it should become practicable for the poorest in the land to be assured of the development of their bodily, spiritual and moral powers both in relation to their own characters, and to their personal, domestic and social relations; and through this development to obtain the sure basis of a peaceful and sufficient means of existence. He had already taken the first step in this direction, by admitting into his house beggar children and others abandoned to neglect, that he might rescue them from their debasing condition, lead them back to manhood and a higher destiny, and thus prove to himself and those around him more and more clearly the truth of his opinion. His institution was to comprise the means for a sufficient instruction in field labor, in domestic work, and in associated industry. This was not, however, the ultimate purpose. That was, a training to manhood; and for it, these other departments were only preparatory. First of all, he proposed to train his poor children to exertion and selfcontrol, by forbearing and assiduous discipline, and by the ever powerful stimulus of love. He aimed to possess himself of their hearts, and from that starting point to bring them to the consciousness and the attainment of every thing noble and great in humanity. "I had from my youth he says, "a high instinctive value of the influence of domestic training in the education of poor children, and likewise a decided preference for field labor, as the most comprehensive and unobjectionable external basis for this training, and also for another reason: as it is the condition of the manufacturing population which is increasing so rapidly amongst us, who, abandoned to the operations of a mercantile and speculating subject, not only from other writings upon institutions for the poor after the model of Fellenberg's, but from his own repeated and extensive travels and personal observation. Our own teacher's association (pädagogische verein, at Dresden,) has proposed as a chief aim of its practical efforts, the realization of an institution for the education of poor and abandoned children, after Pestalozzi's model; for which purpose, it purchased some eight years since, a property in great part already in cultivation, and with a roomy mansion house, near the Löbtaner Schlage, which was dedicated on the 12th of January, 1845, by the name of the Pestalozzi Foundation, (Pestalozzi Stiftung.) |