order that is determined by the way in which the pupil learns most readily and effectively. It means omission of materials and ideas that children cannot comprehend at any given stage in their maturing or training, and careful choice for each stage of activities that the children can understand and master. It means adaptation of subject matter to the capacities and interests of the pupils.

History of efforts at psychological organization explains present practices. The substitution of a psychological organization of elementary-school subject matter for forms of organization determined merely by the subjects themselves constitutes a continuous trend of improvement in elementary school teaching since 1800. Inasmuch as many persons still adhere to the practice of organizing material regardless of the order best adapted to pupils, and since many efforts to determine the best psychological order have been mistaken, we shall review briefly the historical changes through which the leaders in educational thinking have arrived at the present point of view. We have found this historical procedure helpful in earlier chapters, especially in presenting the social point of view as represented by two great educational writers, Spencer and Dewey. The social point of view and the psychological idea of organizing subject matter as children learn it best constitute the two great features of modern pedagogy. In presenting the history of the psychological effort we shall introduce three other great educational thinkers. The first of these is Rousseau (Rōo-sō'), the firebrand of the French Revolution of 1789, one of the most influential figures in modern history.

Rousseau said study childhood to determine organization of teaching. - Among Rousseau's notable writings was an epoch-making book on education, published in 1762, in which he described the training of an imaginary boy, "Émile" (A-meel'), after whom the book is named. In

the preface of it Rousseau formulated his purpose in the following words, which summarize the psychological point of view in teaching:

We do not know childhood. Acting on the false ideas we have of it, the farther we go the farther we wander from the right path. Those who are wisest are attached to what is important for men to know, without considering what children are able to apprehend. They are always looking for the man in the child, without thinking of what he was before he became a man. This is the study upon which I am most intent. . . . Begin, then, by studying your pupils more thoroughly, for it is very certain that you do not know them. Now, if you read this book of mine with this purpose in view, I do not believe that it will be without profit to you. (3: 187)

...

Rousseau set Pestalozzi on fire. - Hundreds of thousands of persons did read Rousseau's "Émile," for he was a wonderful writer, a great literary genius. Many of these condemned the book, but many others were inspired to a remarkable degree by its powerful message. Among those who were set on fire was a humble Swiss university student named Pestalozzi, who said:

The moment Rousseau's "Émile" appeared, my visionary and highly speculative mind was enthusiastically seized by the visionary and highly speculative book. I compared the education which I enjoyed in the corner of my mother's parlor, and also in the school which I frequented, with that which Rousseau demanded for the education of his Émile. The home as well as the public education of the whole world and of all ranks of society appeared to me altogether as a crippled thing, which was to find a universal remedy for its present pitiful condition in Rousseau's lofty ideas. (3: 274)

Pedagogical pilgrims flocked to Pestalozzi's schools, 1800-1825. -After many years of toil and hardship, this humble Swiss student became the greatest and most influential practical educator of modern times, and to his experimental schools, maintained in Switzerland from 1800

to 1825, pedagogical pilgrims, statesmen, and tourists flocked from all over the world. The serious-minded went there to

learn from Pestalozzi;

the frivolous and cu

rious went as they

would flock to see a lake or a glacier.

Pestalozzi desired to psychologize teaching; methods widely

used. Pestalozzi's

influence in changing
methods of teaching
in elementary schools
was as great as his
fame. To him and
his followers we owe
some of our best
present-day practices
in teaching arithme-
tic, geography, and
nature study.
equally profound in-
fluence was exerted
upon the methods
of teaching reading,
writing, drawing, and
gymnastics. In all
these reforms Pesta-
lozzi's slogan was, "I
desire to psychologize

An

AND CAPACITIES

teaching." As indicated above, his psychologizing was very helpful in some subjects. Unfortunately, he was quite mistaken in his efforts to psychologize the teaching of reading, writing, drawing, and gymnastics, and his false methods in

these subjects, as well as some of those developed in the kindergarten by his disciple Froebel, have persisted in common use until recent years and are still followed in many places.

"From simple to complex" led Pestalozzi astray; alphabet methods. The idea which led Pestalozzi astray in his methods of teaching was the apparently harmless statement that teaching should "proceed from the simple to the complex." Pestalozzi interpreted this statement to mean that in each subject an alphabet of the elements of it should be organized, just as there is an alphabet of letters used in reading. Pestalozzi called these alphabets his "ABC's." In describing his earliest efforts to use them with primary children in school, he said:

I once more began crying my ABC's from morning to night. . . . I was indefatigable in putting syllables together and arranging them in a graduated series. I did the same for numbers; I filled whole notebooks with them; I sought by every means to simplify the elements of reading and arithmetic, and by grouping them psychologically [to] enable the child to pass easily and surely from the first step to the second, from the second to the third, and so on. The pupils no longer drew letters on their slates, but lines, curves, angles, and squares. (3: 365)

It appears from this quotation that Pestalozzi's notion of psychologizing the teaching of a subject was to break it into its elements and then to feed these elements in regular order to the pupils. Hence, he said:

In every branch of popular knowledge or talent, I set to work to organize a graduated series of exercises, the starting point of which was within everybody's comprehension, and the unbroken action of which, always exercising the child's powers without exhausting them, resulted in a continuous, easy, and attractive progress. (3: 366)

Phonic alphabets used in beginning reading and spelling. In the teaching of reading and spelling he made his alphabet

from the elementary sounds of the language. Speaking of this work, he said:

The spelling book must contain the entire range of sounds of which the language consists, and portions of it should be repeated daily in every family. . . No one imagines to what a degree the attention of infants is aroused by the repetition of such simple sounds as ba, ba, ba, da, da, da, ma, ma, ma, la, la, la. (3: 367)

Lines and angles constituted elements in writing and drawing. In teaching handwriting, he found the elements in "lines, curves, angles," etc., and, as suggested in the quotation above, "the children no longer drew letters on their slates," but drew these elements instead. The same elements served as the starting point for teaching drawing.

These methods still used in some places. — The reader will recognize in these descriptions the methods of teaching reading, writing, and drawing which are still in vogue in some parts of the country, beginning with letters or elementary sounds in reading, and with practice in drawing straight lines, curved lines, ovals, angles, squares, etc. in handwriting and drawing. The predominance of such methods during the nineteenth century was largely due to the work of Pestalozzi and his followers.

ABC of gymnastics gave calisthenic systems still widely used. The systems of gymnastic exercises in which children perform all kinds of elementary movements also originated in the Pestalozzian theory of organizing an alphabet for each subject. To exercise the arms properly, according to this theory, they must be moved up and down, backwards and forwards, in straight lines and in circles, in all possible ways. Similarly, with the legs the same process should be carried out. After all the "elementary" movements have been mastered, then more complex combinations are practiced, eventually resulting in complicated contortions involving simultaneous use of all parts of the body. The