Theoretical basis of object teaching expounded by Rousseau. The theoretical psychological basis for instruction based on sense perception has been discussed in connection with Rousseau (see p. 193), so it will not be necessary to consider it here. Rousseau emphasized the necessity of connecting reasoning, experimentation, and constructive work with observation of natural objects. The Pestalozzian movement, however, emphasized only one element in the broader position of Rousseau, namely, the element of real experiences with objects, and descriptions of these experiences.

Examples of Pestalozzi's object teaching. If we study a few examples of object teaching as they occurred in Pestalozzi's experience, we will get a concrete notion of what he meant by the "necessity of basing instruction on sense perception," and will see the relation to arithmetic, language, geography, and other studies.

Arithmetic.

In the Journal (1774), in which he described the education of his own child according to the principles of Rousseau, Pestalozzi said:

I tried to make him understand the meaning of numbers. At present he knows only their names without attaching any precise meaning to them. The child has been in the habit of associating no difference of meaning with the various names of numbers he pronounces. Why have I been so foolish as to let him pronounce important words without taking care at the same time to give him a clear idea of their meaning? (4: 41.)

In "Leonard and Gertrude" (1781) we get examples of how he followed up this theory with the spinning children at Neuhof.

The instruction [Gertrude] gave them in the rudiments of arithmetic was intimately connected with the realities of life. She taught them to count the number of steps from one end of the room to the other; and two of the rows of five panes each, in one of the windows, gave her an opportunity to unfold the decimal relations of numbers. She also made them count their threads while spinning, and the number of turns on

the reel, when they wound the yarn into skeins. Above all, in every occupation of life she taught them an accurate and intelligent observation of common objects and the forces of nature. (1: 130.)

Description of common objects. From the third class that Pestalozzi taught at Burgdorf (1800) we have one of the clearest examples of his object teaching. One of his pupils there wrote:

The language exercises were the best thing we had, especially those on the wall-paper of the schoolroom, which were real practice in sense impression. We spent hours before this old and torn paper, occupied in examining the number, form, position, and color of the different designs, holes, and rents, and expressing our ideas in more and more enlarged sentences. Thus he would ask: " Boys, what do you see?" (He never addressed the girls.)

Through the long narrow hole I see the wall.

"I see figures on the paper.

"I see black figures on the paper.

"I see round black figures on the paper.

"I see a square yellow figure on the paper

"By the side of the square yellow figure I see a round black one. "The square figure is joined to the round figure by a large black stripe, etc." (4: 181.)

At Burgdorf natural-history materials, chiefly minerals and plants, were collected by the children on their walks and examined and described, but the teachers were ignorant of any scientific classifications.

Geography. -- From Yverdon (1805) we have a good example of a sense-perception geography lesson, as described by a pupil.

The first elements of geography were taught us from the land itself. We were first taken to a narrow valley not far from Yverdon, where the river Buron runs. After taking a general view of the valley, we were

made to examine the details, until we had obtained an exact and complete idea of it. We were then told to take some of the clay which lay in beds on one side of the valley, and fill the baskets which we had brought for the purpose. On our return to the Castle, we took our places at the long tables, and reproduced in relief the valley we had just studied, each one doing the part that had been allotted to him. In the course of the next few days more walks and more explorations, each day on higher ground, and each time with a further extension of our work. Only when our relief was finished were we shown the map, which by this means we did not see until we were in a position to understand it. (4: 255.)

These examples are representative of the methods of sense perception or object teaching used by Pestalozzi in various stages of his experimentation.

Object teaching introduced oral instruction. The primary purpose in teaching through observation and real experience was to have the children get real and clear ideas instead of mere words or hazy notions. This led to a subordination or elimination of book study, which had two important effects on practice: (1) the teacher became an active instructor of groups of children, instead of a hearer of individual recitations; (2) children were given training in oral expression, which had practically no place in the elementary schools before.

New technique of teaching created by objective methods.We have seen (in Chapter V) how the Christian Brethren and the Lancasterian schools substituted group recitations for individual recitations, but with them teaching continued to be primarily hearing children recite from books. With the introduction of oral instruction based on object teaching the schoolroom activity took on an entirely different character. In the first place a single objective center of attention usually became the center of interest of both teacher and pupils, such as the hole in the wall paper at Burgdorf or the valley at Yverdon. In connection with some such center of attention, for example, in studying beans, the teacher raised questions intended to set the children to thinking actively for the answer to a problem which they felt in common, such as,

How many beans are on the table?" "What is the color of the beans?" In the absence of books, any information which the children did not possess or could not discover had to be given by the teacher; hence the teacher's knowledge of the objective world became important. This change in the emphasis from "what the book said " to what the children had experienced or were experiencing and what the teacher knew led to an elaborate development of the technique of instruction during the nineteenth century. The teacher was now confronted with such questions as, What objective experiences shall I select for children? How shall I arrange to give them these experiences? How shall I keep children actively attentive and thinking about the object? What kind of questions shall I ask in order to bring out unnoticed characteristics? How shall I systematize and arrange the child's experiences and ideas? How shall I provide for the repetition necessary for the retention of experiences, since simply rereading in a book is no longer possible? How much should the children be told, how much should they discover themselves? In telling them, what form of expression should I use?

Oral instruction develops teacher's skill. The value of oral instruction not only for the pupil but also in developing the teacher was emphasized by Superintendent Harris of St. Louis in 1870. He said:

It seems to me this phase of the subject—its value to the teacher - is worth quite as much as the immediate value of these lessons to the pupil. . . . The teacher is led to study and thoroughly prepare herself, and then in [the] lesson she is led to probe in a freer manner than ordinary, the miscellaneous fund of experience possessed by the individuals of her class; thus she cannot fail to find herself getting more and more emancipated from the slavish use of the text book and able to stand before her class with a consciousness of her strength and ability to draw out the resources of each and all her pupils and combine the same into one result.

Extreme forms of oral instruction — all questioning, all telling. - These oral methods assumed two extreme forms:

(1) the teacher simply questioned the children about their experience and told them nothing; (2) the teacher told them everything, his words being substituted for those of the textbook. The evil consequence of both these extremes was that children did not learn how to use books, which Pestalozzi sanctioned by his statement that he had not read a book for years. The influence of these extremes on the training of teachers is important. With the extreme of all questioning it was assumed that the teacher's knowledge was unimportant, a proper method of questioning being the sole requisite. Inasmuch as some people are naturally good questioners, it was assumed that they were skilled teachers. This was especially characteristic of the early work of Pestalozzi and his assistant, Kruesi, who through ignorance could only question children about such things as holes in the wall paper, or have them describe common natural objects. The extreme of lecturing by the teacher tended to emphasize the teacher's knowledge and made for the development of academic subject matter in courses for training teachers.1

With Pestalozzi himself oral instruction usually took the form of concert recitation, the children repeating after him a series of statements. An example of this method is found in the lesson on the hole in the wall paper quoted above. This was perhaps the poorest form that the oral instruction assumed, inasmuch as it involved neither useful knowledge in the teacher nor active thought by the children, but merely imitative shouting.

Training in speech and oral composition. The second large influence of oral objective teaching was to give children training in speech, sometimes in oral composition. In

1 The extremes of all questioning and all telling are approximated in an interesting way in the model lessons prepared by Frank McMurry and Charles McMurry, respectively, in their " Method of the Recitation." See the English iron-ore lesson and the Bunker Hill lesson (pp. 123-127) for examples of questioning lessons, and the battle of King's Mountain lesson (pp. 271-279) for an example of the telling or lecturing lesson in connection with the step of "presentation."