Learning must not be play. notion will for ever preclude solidity of knowledge, and, for want of sufficient exertions on the part of the pupils, will lead to that very result which I wish to avoid by my principle of a constant employment of the thinking powers. A child must very early in life be taught the lesson that exertion is indispensable for the attainment of knowledge "* (To G., xxiv, p. 117). But he should be taught at the same time that exertion is not an evil, and he should be encouraged, not frightened, into it. Healthy exertion, whether of body or mind, is always attended with a feeling of satisfaction amounting to pleasure, and where this pleasure is absent the instructor has failed in producing proper exertion. As Pestalozzi says, "Whenever children are inattentive and apparently take no interest in a lesson, the teacher should always first look to himself for the reason "† (7b.). * Herbart, when he visited Pestalozzi at Burgdorf, observed that though Pestalozzi's kindness was apparent to all, he took no pains in his teaching to mix the dulce with the utile. He never talked to the children, or joked, or gave them an auecdote. This, however, did not surprise Herbart, whose own experience had taught him that when the subject requires earnest attention the children do not like it the better for the teacher's "fun." "The feeling of clear apprehension," says he, "I held to be the only genuine condiment of instruction" (Herbart's Päd. Schriften, ed. by O. Willmann, j. 89). + First look to himself, but there may be other causes of failure as well. The great thing is never to put up contentedly, or even discon tentedly, with failure. In teaching classes of lads from ten to sixteen years old, when I have found the lessons in any subject were not going well, I have sometimes taken the class into my confidence, told them that they no doubt felt as I did that this lesson was a dull one, and asked them each to put on paper what he considered to be the reasons, and also to make any suggestions that occurred to him. In this way I have got some very good hints, and I have always been helped in my effort to understand how the work seemed to the pupils. Every teacher Singing and drawing. § 103. But though he took so serious a view of instruction, he made instruction include and indeed give a prominent place to the arts of singing and drawing. In the Pestalozzian schools singing found immense favour with both the masters and the pupils, and the collection of songs by Nägeli, a master at Yverdun, became famous. Drawing too was practised by all. As Pestalozzi writes to Greaves (xxiv, 117), "A person who is in the habit of drawing, especially from nature, will easily perceive many circumstances which are commonly overlooked, and will form a much more correct impression even of such objects as he does not stop to examine minutely, than one who has never been taught to look upon what he sees with an intention of reproducing a likeness of it. The attention to the exact shape of the whole and the proportion of the parts, which is requisite for the taking of an adequate sketch, is converted into a habit, and becomes productive both of instruction and amusement." § 104. I have now endeavoured to point out the main features of Pestalozzianism. The following is the summing up of these features given by Morf in his Contribution to Pestalozzi's Biography: 1. Instruction must be based on the learner's own experience. (Das Fundament des Unterrichts ist die Anschauung.) should make this effort. As Pestalozzi says, "Could we conceive the indescribable tedium which must oppress the young mind while the weary hours are slowly passing away one after another in occupations which it can neither relish nor understand we should no longer be surprised at the remissness of the schoolboy creeping like snail unwillingly to school" (To G., xxx, 150). Morf's summing-up. 2. What the learner experiences and observes must be connected with language. 3. The time for learning is not the time for judging, not the time for criticism. 4. In every department instruction must begin with the simplest elements, and starting from these must be carried on step by step according to the development of the child, that is, it must be brought into psychological sequence. 5 At each point the instructor shall not go forward till that part of the subject has become the proper intellectual possession of the learner. 6. Instruction must follow the path of development, not the path of lecturing, teaching, or telling. 7. To the educator the individuality of the child must be sacred. 8. Not the acquisition of knowledge or skill is the main object of elementary instruction, but the development and strengthening of the powers of the mind. 9. With knowledge (Wissen) must come power (Können), with information (Kenntniss) skill (Fertigkeit). 10. Intercourse between educator and pupil, and school discipline especially, must be based on and controlled by love. II. Instruction shall be subordinated to the aim of educa tion. 12. The ground of moral-religious bringing up lies in the relation of mother and child.* * With Morf's summing-up it is interesting to compare Joseph Payne's, given at the end of his lecture on Pestalozzi: I. The principles of education are not to be devised ab extra; they are to be sought for in human nature. Joseph Payne's summing-up. § 105. Having now seen in which direction Pestalozzi would start the school-coach, let us examine (with reference II. This nature is an organic nature-a plexus of bodily, intellectual and moral capabilities, ready for development, and struggling to develop theinselves. III. The education conducted by the formal educator has both a negative and a positive side. The negative function of the educator consists in removing impediments, so as to afford free scope for the learner's self-development. His positive function is to stimulate the learner to the exercise of his powers, to furnish materials and occasion for the exercise, and to superintend and maintain the action of the machinery. IV. Self-development begins with the impressions received by the mind from external objects. These impressions (called sensations), when the mind becomes conscious of them, group themselves into perceptions. These are registered in the mind as conceptions or ideas, and constitute that elementary knowledge which is the basis of all knowledge. V. Spontaneity and self-activity are the necessary conditions under which the mind educates itself and gains power and independence. VI. Practical aptness or faculty, depends more on habits gained by the assiduous oft-repeated exercise of the learner's active powers than on knowledge alone. Knowing and doing (Wissen und Können) must, however, proceed together. The chief aim of all education (including instruction) is the development of the learner's powers. VII. All education (including instruction) must be grounded on the learner's own observation (Anschauung) at first hand-on his own personal experience. This is the true basis of all his knowledge. First the reality, then the symbol; first the thing, then the word, not vice versa. VIII. That which the learner has gained by his own observation (Anschauung) and which, as a part of his personal experience, is incor. porated with his mind, he knows and can describe or explain in his own words. His competency to do this is the measure of the accuracy of his observation, and consequently of his knowledge. IX. Personal experience necessitates the advancement of the learner's mind from the near and actual, with which he is in contact, and which The "two nations.” Mother's lessons. to England only) the direction in which it is travelling at present. § 106. For educational purposes we may, with Lord Beaconsfield, regard the English as composed of two nations, the rich and the poor. Let us consider these separately. In the case of the rich we find that the worst part of our educational course-the part most wrong in theory and pernicious in practice-is the schooling of young children, say between six and twelve years old. Before the age of six some few are fortunate enough to attend a good Kindergarten; but the opportunity of doing this is at present rare, and for most children of well-to-do parents there is, up to six years old, little or no organised instruction. Pestalozzi would have every mother made capable of giving such instruction. Froebel would have every child sent to a skilled "Kindergärtnerin." It seems to me beyond question that children gain immensely from joining a properly-managed Kindergarten; but where this is impossible, perhaps the mother may leave the child to the series of impressions which come to its senses without any regular order. According to the first Lord Lytton, the mother's interference might remind us of the man who thought his bees would. make honey faster if, instead of going in search of flowers, they were shut up and had flowers brought to them. The way he can deal with himself, to the more remote; therefore from the concrete to the abstract, from particulars to generals, from the known 1) the unknown. This is the method of elementary education; the opposite proceeding-the usual proceeding of our traditional teaching—– leads the mind from the abstract to the concrete, from generals to particulars, from the unknown to the known. This latter is the Scientific method-a method suited only to the advanced learner, who it assumes is already trained by the Elementary method. |