ES 3219: Early
Years Education
Week 7:
Theorising early years: Johann Pestalozzi (1746-1827
return to module outline,
last updated 17.05.11.
Introduction
Pestalozzi’s work reflects the influences of Locke, Rousseau and Kant – but Pestalozzi was reluctant to identify specific sources for his
ideas and wished to assert his intellectual independence. He also resisted
presenting abstract theory - relying instead on parable and accounts of his
work with children to present his ideas.
‘My lofty ideals were pre-eminently the product of a
kind, well-meaning soul, inadequately endowed with the intellectual and
practical capacity which might have helped considerably to further my heartfelt
desire. It was the product of an extremely vivid imagination which in the
stress of my daily life proved unable to produce any important results.’ (Pestalozzi, 1912; p. 228)
Significant
impact upon contemporary theorists and practitioners who were seeking
educational reform: ideas and practices written about extensively, and on
several occasions Pestalozzi was encouraged to set up
schools specifically for the purpose of testing and demonstrating his ideas.
No
definitive statement of his philosophy/method of education, but a consistent
theme is the necessity for education to follow nature.
Promoted
a holistic education where the imagination, senses and rationality are combined
in order to cultivate the learner to become the best person s/he can be.
Pedagogical
arguments, have explicit connections and a ‘line of
development’ with Rousseau and Froebel
•
Pestalozzi’s Elementary Method arose (partially)out of his attempts
to put Rousseau’s educational ideals into practice with his own children (his
first son was called Jean-Jacques and Pestalozzi
explicitly set out to raise/educate him according to the principles presented
in Emile)
•
Froebel taught in Pestalozzi’s school
at Yverdon and developed his educational philosophy
out of his critical examination of Pestalozzi’s
method, combined with a return to Rousseau’s ideas
Pestalozzi echoed Rousseau’s criticisms of formal education offering children
abstract knowledge and reason prematurely. He despaired of this ‘superficial
verbosity’ where pupil recitation and memorisation were considered more
important than understanding
‘Ignorance is better than knowledge that is but
prejudice, a glass through which to view the world. To arrive at knowledge
slowly, by one’s own experience, is better than to learn by rote, in a hurry,
facts that other people know, and then, glutted with words, to lose one’s free,
observant and inquisitive ability to study.’ (Pestalozzi,
1900; p. 35)
Six principles can be identified
in Pestalozzi’s work:
•
Respect
for individuals: a person’s personality is sacred and constitutes their ‘inner
dignity’
•
The
‘potentiality’ of human nature: each child is a ‘little seed’ which contains
the design of the tree
•
Love
is the basis upon which a person’s physical and intellectual powers will grow
•
Doctrine
of ‘Anschauung’: the removal of meaningless words and
replacement with direct observation
•
Emphasis
upon action following direct observation: ‘A man learns by action ... not
[mere] words’
•
Emphasis
upon repetition: Intended to ‘fix’ understanding achieved through experience
These
principles can be grouped into 3 categories focussing on:
•
The
individual learner and his/her potential
•
The
love of the educator
•
Appropriate
methods of instruction
The Learner’s Potential
Each
individual has a nature which is inherently good, and containing the faculties
required to make sense of sensation-based experience. Therefore each individual
has the potential for intellectual and moral development (Bowen, 1981). The
child is
‘…endowed with all the faculties of human nature, but
none of them developed: a bud not yet opened. When the bud uncloses, each one
of the leaves unfolds, not one remains behind. Such must be the process of
education.’ (Pestalozzi, 1819, cited in Pestalozzi 1898: p. 16)
Because
each individual is blessed with all the faculties of human nature, everyone can, and
should, benefit from education.
‘… however low his earthly condition,
here too is one of our race, subject to the same sensations of alternate joy
and grief, born with the same faculties, with the same destination, with the
same hopes for a immortality.’ (Pestalozzi, 1827: p.
166)
The Love of the Educator
Evening Hours of a Hermit and Leonard and Gertrude: a Book for the People (1780). Preface
to all his further work, stating the danger of an education that requires
children to deal with words before they have encountered the real things, and
warning parents not to:
·
push
their children into working at things remote from their immediate interests
·
anticipate
the course of their children’s development
Cultivation
of the individual is best achieved by a bond of love between initially, the
mother and child, and later, the teacher and child.
‘The material with which the educator works, which he
must be able to mould in true creative fashion, is man itself, the masterpiece
of Creation. It is man whom the educator must understand – man in his full
scope and power – as a gardener wisely tends the rarest plants, from their
first sprouting to the maturing of their fruit. The teacher must be capable of
watching man’s development, whatever direction it may take, whatever the
circumstances. No profession on earth calls for a deeper understanding of human
nature, more for greater skill in guiding it properly.’(Pestalozzi,.
1900; pp. 32-33)
Leonard and
Gertrude (1780)
Describes
how a household, and subsequently a small community were regenerated by the
noble efforts of a woman who was the wife of the village mason. Gertrude
portrayed as the model for a system of elementary education suitable for all
people, including the lower classes. Pestalozzi sees
a close connection between the woman carrying out her domestic role as created by
nature and the correct moral functioning of the nation, and presents Gertrude
as a woman that all other women can emulate and follow.
Gertrude
trains her children from infancy to maintain order in the home, to contribute
to the family’s livelihood and to attain independence. Her children continually
learn from the example and actions that she presents in her everyday life.
‘Yet she never adopted the tone of the instructor toward
her children; she did not say to them: "Child, this is your head, your nose,
your hand, your finger"; or "Where is your eye, your ear?" but
instead she would say: "Come here child, I will wash your little
hands", "I will comb your hair", or "I will cut your finger
nails". Her verbal instruction seemed to vanish in the spirit of her real
activity, in which it always had its source. […] Above all, in every occupation
of life she taught them an accurate and intelligent observation of common
objects and the forces of nature’ (Pestalozzi cited
in Rusk, 1918; pp. 190-1)
Work of
the school should be a continuation of the work of the mother and
home-education the ideal, although Pestalozzi was
forced by circumstance to adopt class-teaching methods. However, he maintained
that the affective quality of the relationship between the teacher and pupil
should remain one of ‘continual and benevolent superintendence’ (Pestalozzi, 1819 cited in Pestalozzi,
1898: p.101).
How Gertrude
Teaches her Children (1801)
These
ideas developed further in How Gertrude
teaches her Children (1801) where the role of the mother remains central
because, as Silber comments:
‘The mother is the
mediator between child and nature; through language and intuition she leads the
child to truth, and through his association of her
loved person with his environment to universal love’. (Silber, 1976, p.176.)
Pestalozzi’s most coherent
attempt to produce a general method of instruction following a psychologically
ordered sequence.
‘Its peculiar merit consists in having laid hold more
boldly and more zealously than any former method of the duty of building up the
child’s mind, of constructing in it a definite experience in the light of clear
sense-perception, not acting as if the child had already an experience but
taking care that he gets one …’ (Herbart, 1903; p.
61)
The Correct Method of Education
Pestalozzi promoted the harmonious development of all the faculties (energy,
virtue and intelligence), so that none predominate at the expense of another (Pestalozzi, 1898). Moral and intellectual education the
main focus but also asserted the need for physical education, reinstating
gymnastics in the curriculum when the rest of the
Person’s
intellectual (and consequently moral) development is to be achieved through the
doctrine of Anschauung (no explicit meaning
in the German and no straightforward translation into English!). This ambiguity
is deliberate: Pestalozzi wished to assert the
interrelatedness of a range of mental processes – sense impressions,
observations, perception, intuition and contemplation (see Letters 7, 8 and 9
of How Gertrude Teaches her Children).
Concept
of Anschauung reflects Pestalozzi’s
support for the empiricist notion of sense impressions introduced by Locke, but
goes beyond this to consider the development of every aspect of a human’s
mental operations: to embrace the conceptual movement from the merely receptive
to the analytical. At the high point of this development he identifies the
Kantian (and subsequently Piagetian) notion of the
active power of the human mind to deal with logical principles, but he starts
with sense impressions.
‘Sense impression of Nature is the only true foundation
of human instruction, because it is the only true foundation of human
knowledge. All that follows is the result of this sense impression, and the
process of abstraction from it.’
(Pestalozzi, 1894; p. 200)
Potential
for this intellectual achievement is evident in everyone, but has to be
cultivated in order to flourish. Therefore, entire curriculum should be
designed to develop from the essential elements of an aspect of knowledge, and
organise the child’s acquisition of this knowledge in a series of logically
related steps.
Three
aspects of Anschauung: number; form; and language
Steps in
the development of a child’s knowledge occur in following way:
‘… number, form and language
are, together the elementary means of instruction, because the whole of the sum
of the external properties of any object is comprised by its outline and its
number, and is brought home to my consciousness through language. It must then
be an immutable law of the technique of instruction to start from and work
within this threefold principle:
1. To teach children to look upon every object that is brought
before then as a unit, that is, as separated from those with which it is
connected
2. To teach them the form of every object, that is, its size and
its proportions
3. As soon as possible to make them acquainted with all the words
and names descriptive of objects known to them
And as the instructions of children should proceed from
these three elementary points, it is evident that the first efforts of the
technique of instruction should be directed to the primary faculties of
counting, measuring, and speaking, which lie at the basis of accurate knowledge
of objects of sense. We should cultivate then with strictest psychological
technique of instruction, endeavour to strengthen and make them strong, and to
bring them, as a means of development and culture, to the highest pitch of
simplicity, consistency and harmony.’ (Pestalozzi
1801; pp. 86-8)
Greater
goal than mere empirical knowledge of the world: wanted to support learners in
their development towards an appreciation of the spiritual foundation of
reality, and the interrelatedness and interdependence of all phenomena in
nature.
Wished
to cultivate in learners a sense of the divinely ordained meaning of life, in
order to achieve –‘the elevation of man to the true dignity of a spiritual
being’ (Pestalozzi, 1818 cited in Pestalozzi
1898: p. 79).
Spiritual
goal gives education a moral imperative – if education is the means by which
individuals achieve their full humanity, it must be made available to all
References
Adams,
Bowen,
James (1981) A History of Western Education, Vol 3: The Modern West,
Darling,
J. (1982) ‘Education as Horticulture: some growth theorists and their critics’ Journal of Philosophy of Education 16 (2) pp. 173-185
de Guimps, R. (1900) ‘Pestalozzi’s
elementary method’ Life of Pestalozzi (2nd
Edition)
Elias, John.L. (2002) A
History of Christian Education: Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Perspectives
Green,
J. A. (1905) The Educational Ideas of Pestalozzi
Holman,
H. (1908) Pestalozzi. An Account of his
life and work
Latham,
Jackie. E.M. (2002) ‘Pestalozzi and James Perrepont Greaves: a shared educational philosophy’ History of Education, Vol
31 (1) pp.59-70. (Available online).
Pestalozzi, J. (1818) ‘Letter XVI,
Pestalozzi, J. (1819) ‘Letter XI, 4 February’ cited in Pestalozzi,
J. (1898) Letters on Early Education:
Addressed to J.P.Greaves, Esq. by Pestalozzi
Pestalozzi, J. (1819) ‘Letter XXIX, 4 April’ cited in Pestalozzi,
J. (1898) Letters on Early Education:
Addressed to J.P.Greaves, Esq. by Pestalozzi
Pestalozzi, J. H. (1827) Letters on Early Education: Addressed to J. P.
Graves esq. By Pestalozzi
Pestalozzi, J. H. (1894) ‘An Account of the method’ How Gertrude Teaches her
Children
Pestalozzi, J. (1898) Letters on Early
Education: Addressed to J.P.Greaves, Esq. by Pestalozzi
Pestalozzi, J. H. (1907) Leonard and Gertrude Boston: Heath
Pestalozzi, J. H. (1918) The Education of
Man: Aphorisms
Pestalozzi, J. (1966) How Gertrude
Teaches Her Children: An Attempt to Help Mothers To
Teach Their Own Childen and An Account of the Method
Pinloche,
A. (1902) Pestalozzi and the Foundations of
the
Rusk, R.
(1965) Doctrines of the Great Educators
Silber,
Kate, (1976) Pestalozzi: The Man and his Work
Stewart,
W.A.C. and McCann, W.P. (1967) The Educational
Innovators 1750-1880
