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acknowledged, were seldom carried out in practice.** As Sydney Smith said of Hamilton, 'his must be the credit of the man who is so deeply impressed with the importance of what he thinks he has discovered that he will take no denial, but, at the risk of fame and fortune, pushes through all opposition, and is determined the discovery shall not perish, at least for want of a fair trial.'

But Pestalozzi is distinguished from other educators not more by what he did, than by what he endeavoured to do; in other words, his differentia is rather his aim than his method.

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If we seek for the root of Pestalozzi's system, we shall find it, I think, in that which was the motive power of Pestalozzi's career, the enthusiasm of humanity.' Consumed with grief for the degradation of the Swiss peasantry, he never lost faith in their true dignity as men, and in the possibility of raising them to a condition worthy of it. He cast about for the best means of thus raising them, and decided that it could be effected, not by any improvement in their outward circumstances, but by an education which should make them what their Creator intended them to be, and should give them the use and the consciousness of all their inborn faculties. 'From my youth up,' he says, 'I felt what a high and indispensable human duty it is to labour for the poor and miserable; . . . that he may attain to a consciousness of his own dignity through his feeling of the universal powers and endowments which he possesses awakened within him; that he may not only learn to

* Letters on Early Education, vi. p. 23.

gabble over by rote the religious maxim that "man is created in the image of God, and is bound to live and die as a child of God," but may himself experience its truth by virtue of the Divine power within him, so that he may be raised, not only above the ploughing oxen, but also above the man in purple and silk who lives unworthily of his high destiny.' *

Again he says (and I quote at length on the point, as it is indeed the key to Pestalozzianism), 'Why have I insisted so strongly on attention to early physical and intellectual education? Because I consider these as merely leading to a higher aim, to qualify the human being for the free and full use of all the faculties implanted by the Creator, and to direct all these faculties towards the perfection of the whole being of man, that he may be enabled to act in his peculiar station as an instrument of that All-wise and Almighty Power that has called him into life.'t

Believing in this high aim of education, Pestalozzi required a proper early training for all alike. 'Every human being,' said he, has a claim to a judicious development of his faculties by those to whom the care of his infancy is confided.'‡

Pestalozzi therefore most earnestly addressed himself to mothers, to convince them of the power placed in their hands, and to teach them how to use it. The mother is qualified, and qualified by

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* Quoted in Barnard, p. 13.

Letters on Early Education, xxxii. p. 160.

‡ Ibid. xxxii. p. 163. For the very striking passage which follows, see Note on p. 198 infra.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE FACULTIES.

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the Creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child; . . . and what is demanded of her isa thinking love. .. God has given to thy child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point remains undecided-how shall this heart, this head, these hands, be employed? to whose service shall they be dedicated? A question the answer to which involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee. . . . It is recorded that God opened the heavens to the patriarch of old, and showed him a ladder leading thither. This ladder is let down to every descendant of Adam; it is offered to thy child. But he must be taught to climb it. And let him not attempt it by the cold calculations of the head, or the mere impulse of the heart; but let all these powers combine, and the noble enterprise will be crowned with success, These powers are already bestowed on him, but to thee it is given to assist in calling them forth.'* 'Maternal love is the first agent in education.. Through it the child is led to love and trust his Creator and his Redeemer."

...

From the theory of development which lay at the root of Pestalozzi's views of education, it followed that the imparting of knowledge and the training for special pursuits held only a subordinate position. in his scheme. Education, instead of merely considering what is to be imparted to children, ought to consider first what they may be said already to possess, if not as a developed, at least as an involved faculty capable of development. Or if, instead of

* Letters on Early Education, v. p. 21.

speaking thus in the abstract, we will but recollect that it is to the great Author of life that man owes the possession, and is responsible for the use, of his innate faculties, education should not only decide what is to be made of a child, but rather enquire, what it was intended that he should become? What is his destiny as a created and responsible being? What are his faculties as a rational and moral being? What are the means for their perfection, and the end held out as the highest object of their efforts by the Almighty Father of all, both in creation and in the page of revelation '?

Education, then, must consist in a continual benevolent superintendence, with the object of calling forth all the faculties which Providence has implanted; and its province, thus enlarged, will yet be with less difficulty surveyed from one point of view, and will have more of a systematic and truly philosophical character, than an incoherent mass of exercises-arranged without unity of principle, and gone through without interest-which too often usurps its name.'

An education of the latter description he denounced with the zeal of a Luther.

"The present race of schoolmasters,' he writes, 'sacrifice the essence of true teaching to separate and disconnected teaching in a complete jumble of subjects. By dishing up fragments of all kinds of truths, they destroy the spirit of truth itself, and extinguish the power of self-dependance which, without that spirit, cannot exist.'*

* Quoted by Carl Schmidt. Gesch. d. Päd. vol. iv. p. 87.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE AFFECTIONS.

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With Pestalozzi teaching was not so much to be thought of as training. Training must be found for the child's heart, head, and hand, and the capacities of the heart and head must be developed by practice no less than those of the hand. The heart, as we have seen, is first influenced by the mother. At a later period Pestalozzi would have the charities of the family circle introduced into the school-room (rather ignoring the difference which the altered ratio of the young to the adults makes in the conditions of the problem), and would have the child taught virtue by his affections being exercised and his benevolence guided to action. There is an interesting instance on record of the way in which he himself applied this principle. When he was at Stanz, news arrived of the destruction of Altdorf. Pestalozzi depicted to his scholars the misery of the children there. Hundreds,' said he, are at this moment wandering about as you were last year, without a home, perhaps without food or clothing.' He then asked them if they would not wish to receive some of these children among them? This, of course, they were eager to do. Pestalozzi then pointed out the sacrifices it would involve on their part, that they would have to share everything with the new comers, and to eat less and work more than before. Only when they promised to make these sacrifices ungrudgingly, he undertook to apply to Government that the children's wish might be granted. It was thus that Pestalozzi endeavoured to develope the moral and religious life of the children, which is based on trust and love.

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The child's thinking faculty is capable, according

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