Pestalozzi

His Thought and its Relevance Today

M. R. Heafford

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315441382
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Education
• Categoría: Education General

This book, first published in 1967, begins with a description of Pestalozzi's life in which the factors which influenced his development are outlined and the history of his educational institutes described. The author then presents Pestalozzi's most important educational ideas in a systematic way. Dealing first with the various aspects of his 'Method', the author goes on to consider certain features of Pestalozzi's theories which are of special interest – his views on discipline, on the role of teachers and parents, and on general and vocational education. This title will be of interest to students of history and education.

PART ONE
Pestalozzi's Life

1 · The Early Years

Today Zürich is a large and prosperous town, the seat of one of the most famous technological universities in Europe, and a centre of world banking. In the eighteenth century the town was already a commercial and cultural centre. Then, however, unlike today, the wealth of the town was in the hands of a very few families and the rest of the population lived in poverty. The constitution was in theory a democratic one, as all citizens could vote; but for many years it had become impossible to become a citizen - citizenship being passed from father to son like a kind of title. The form of government was, therefore, almost as despotic as that in neighbouring France, with the result that, as the century drew on, there were moves, mainly initiated by liberal-minded but uninfluential citizens, for political and social reforms.

It was in Zürich that Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi was born in 1746, the second of three children.

From the cradle I was delicate and weakly; from a very early age I distinguished myself in the vigour with which I developed some of my faculties and inclinations; but just as I took a warm interest in certain objects and points of view, I equally showed myself, at just as early an age, extremely inattentive and indifferent to everything which was not in some way actively connected with one of the objects temporarily occupying my fancy.¹

An examination of Pestalozzi's early life does give some indication of why these personal characteristics should have developed. The Pestalozzi family had moved to Zurich in the sixteenth century and become citizens of the town. Therefore Pestalozzi was born into the privileged section of Zürich society. In contrast, his father had little money and when he died but six years after Pestalozzi's birth, he could only pass on a small inheritance with which to maintain his family. Thus Pestalozzi was brought up with great simplicity and came in contact with the poor far more than most young 'citizens'. The death of his father influenced not only the outward conditions in which he grew up, but also the nature of bis upbringing. For there was now only his mother and the family's faithful servant, Barbara Schmid, to look after him. The close relationship between mother and child, which Pestalozzi was to extol later on, became all-important. What Pestalozzi felt to have been lacking was that influence in home life which springs from the father. To the lack of the firm guiding hand of a father Pestalozzi attributed his over-sensitive, even unstable, character.

The family lived in the old part of Zürich in a small house with a single living-room. On occasion, however, Pestalozzi was taken to visit his grandfather in the village of Höngg, just outside Zürich. Here his grandfather was pastor - a pastor who maintained the education of the village children and who cared for the welfare of all his parishioners. The poverty of the villagers, the simplicity of their lives, and the social concern of his grandfather, all influenced Pestalozzi. Later he was to choose a country life rather than remain in Zürich, and would show an even greater concern than his grandfather for the poor, and, above all, for their education.

At school he proved a good pupil - at least in those subjects which interested him. When in 1763 he entered the higher secondary school, called the Collegium Carolinum, he came under the lively influence of such teachers as Bodmer and Breitinger. These two men were, in fact, well known in the German-speaking world of the time, for they were involved in a literary argument over the value of German as a language in comparison with French. At the beginning of the eighteenth century French was regarded as the language of culture throughout Europe and even Frederick the Great of Prussia accused the German language of being as 'barbarous as the Goths and Huns who corrupted it'.² So the views held by Bodmer and Breitinger that German could be just as expressive as French and the recommendation that German writers should turn to English works as well as French ones for inspiration were highly controversial. The progressive ideas of some of the Carolinum teachers were not limited to literary matters but spread into the field of politics. In 1762 Bodmer set up a society which was called the "Helvetische Gesellschaft zu Gerwe, The members of the society also called themselves 'Patriots' for they urged widespread political and social reform which they believed was for the good of their country. Many of the young men of Zürich, including Pestalozzi, joined the society. Later Pestalozzi looked back on his membership of the group with mixed feelings: he approved of the idealism and enthusiasm of the group, but felt that their aims had been far too impractically formulated to make a real impact.

It was understandable that a young man with radical views on social questions would read avidly any books which seemed to support his views. And thus it was that Pestalozzi came to read Rousseau's Entile, which had appeared in 1762. Even though he later called the work 'a highly impractical dream-book'³ he never denied the profound influence it had on him. Rousseau's idea that a child grows up through definite stages was later taken over by Pestalozzi, as were his dislike of book-learning, and above all his concept of 'natural education'. But it was the impact of the book as a whole and its plea for reform, rather than individual precepts, which filled Pestalozzi with enthusiasm. The following words, to be found in the preface to Emile, express Rousseau's challenge to the early eighteenth-century attitude to education:

We do not know children: with the false ideas we have of them, the further we proceed the more we go astray. The wisest concentrate on that which it is important for grown-ups to know, without considering what children are capable of learning. They are always looking for the man in the child without thinking of what he is before he becomes a man.⁴

It was a challenge which Pestalozzi fully recognized as he read the book:

I compared the education which I had received in a corner of my mother's living-room and in the school class which I had attended with that which Rousseau claimed and demanded for his Emile. Home education as well as public education everywhere and in all classes of society appeared to me to be exactly like a crippled figure which would be able to find a cure for the wretchedness of its existing condition in the fine ideas of Rousseau, and that it was there that it should seek this cure.⁵

It was not only Rousseau's Emile which appealed to Pestalozzi; the Social Contract, which also appeared in 1762, filled him with similar desires to improve social conditions in Zurich. How he should set about doing this Pestalozzi was not sure. He rejected his initial intention of entering holy orders, toyed with the idea of becoming a lawyer, and finally felt that it was by improving the methods of popular education that he could best fulfil his aims in life. But even having made his decision, he was none too certain how to proceed further:

I knew the way which I planned to take as little as I knew myself and had no idea where it would lead me. As I was then, I was not able even to imagine it and in blind enthusiasm at my newly adopted plan, I made the decision to devote myself whole-heartedly to agriculture.⁶

There seems little compatibility between agriculture and education, but Pestalozzi did attempt to combine them, as will be seen in the next chapter. Certainly both callings could be regarded as means of helping the poor, which was his life's ambition.

Having decided to study agricultural methods, Pestalozzi went, in 1767, to stay with J. R. Tschiffeli at his experimental farm in order to serve a sort of apprenticeship. Tschiffeli was a Bernese patrician who was interested in increasing the productivity of the land and thereby the well-being of the country population as a whole. On his estate at Kirchberg near Bern he experimented both with plant cultures and with new types of machinery. He finally succeeded in greatly increasing the agricultural value of his land and gained a considerable reputation as an innovator in farming methods. Tschiffeli had, however, little business sense and would have found himself in serious financial difficulties had he not had, in 1770, the good fortune to win first prize in a state lottery. Pestalozzi was unaware of Tschiffeli's financial situation and so, shortly after his stay at Kirchberg, he purchased land near the village of Birr fully believing that he could successfully imitate Tschiffeli's methods. On his new estate he had a house built for him the Neuhof (i.e. the New Farm).

Apart from his stay with Tschiffeli, 1767 was an important year in Pestalozzi's life. Among the 'Patriots' had been a young man called Hans Kaspar Bluntschli who was a close friend of Pestalozzi. When he died in 1767 at the age of twenty four Pestalozzi felt his loss deeply. The loss was equally felt by Bluntschli's fiancée, Anna Schulthess. In their grief the two found themselves drawn to each other. Their mutual sympathy developed into affection, their affection into love. After finally overcoming the objections of Anna's parents they married in 1769. The marriage had many tensions and difficulties to face; Pestalozzi had, for instance, to leave his wife with friends while he established his institutes; and their only son was never healthy and died at the early age of thirty-one. However, despite all the problems created by marriage to a man who was careless and above all impetuous, Anna stood by him, and, until her death in 1815, showed herself a faithful companion throughout the troubled times which lay ahead. In the Spring of 1771 they moved into the Neuhof.

Pestalozzi's situation even at this point when he was on the verge of his first educational experiment was far from enviable. Firstly, he was finding difficulty in raising the capital necessary to pay for the land, a difficulty aggravated by his having placed his trust in an unscrupulous agent when purchasing it. The land he had acquired was poor in quality and would need much time, energy, and money spent on it if it were to be improved as Tschiffeli's estate had been. In addition, his wife was in no good health and pregnant. Yet set against all the external obstacles and internal deficiencies with which he was faced, Pestalozzi had one outstanding quality - his sense of mission. Not only now but throughout his life he had supreme confidence in himself. The feeling that he was called upon to serve his country and humanity was genuine, and he accepted it with a mixture of pride and humility:

I had absolutely nothing in my favour except one deep-rooted purpose, one irrevocable motto: I will, - one belief which no experience could shatter: I can - and an indefinable feeling within me: I must.⁷

At the age of twenty-one he had written to Anna:

I will forget my own life, the tears of my wife, and my children in order to be of service to my fatherland.⁸

The channels into which he directed his energies varied daring the course of his life, but from the beginning they were aimed at attaining certain social and humanitarian ideals - above all improving the lot of the poor and underprivileged.

2 · The Neuhof Experiment

The first years spent in the Neuhof were a struggle against financial difficulties. Not only Pestalozzi's wife, but several of her relations too, gave or lent money so that the young couple would not sink too deeply into debt. Despite the critical state of his finances Pestalozzi decided to go ahead with a plan which involved taking poor children into the Neuhof and giving them a simple education. As well as their lessons the children would do a certain amount of work by means of which, Pestalozzi hoped, they would earn their keep. The immediate motives behind his decision, he explained as follows:

I saw in a poor district the misery of those children who were hired out to the farmers by the municipalities; I saw how the oppressive harshness of self-interest, I might almost say, condemned nearly all these children in body and in soul; I saw how many, ailing and without courage and energy, could never grow up with those feelings of humanity, with those powers, which would be beneficial to themselves and to the fatherland.¹

Pestalozzi realized that the education which these children received, if indeed they received any, was that given either by village schoolmasters who had usually chosen that profession because they were capable of none other, or by parents who, whether they pampered the children or maltreated them, did nothing to adapt them to the place in society they would have to fill. A few charitable institutions for the poor had been opened by rich benefactors, but these could never be successful as they failed to take into account the sort of life a poor child would lead when he came to leave the institution:

The poor must be educated for poverty and this, is the key test by which it can be discovered whether such an institution is really a good one. Education of the poor demands a deep and accurate knowledge of the real needs, limitations, and environment of poverty, and detailed knowledge of the probable situation in which they will spend their lives. . . .²

To be able to educate the poor it was necessary to experience their way of life:

The friend of humanity must descend into the lowest hovel of misery and must see the poor man in his gloomy room, his wife in a kitchen full of smoke, and his child, all going about their almost unendurable daily duties. For that is the hovel in which a publicly educated child will some day have to live. . . .³

Pestalozzi hoped to combine a basic general education with some vocational education in such a way that the poor child would be able to grow into his station in society and at the same time become a responsible member of it.

The first children arrived in the Neuhof in 1774; in 1776 there were twenty two and by 1778 the numbers had increased to thirty seven. The children were given elementary instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as in religion. The boys were also engaged on simple agricultural jobs about the farm and did some weaving, while the girls were occupied with spinning, gardening, and cooking. Pestalozzi soon realized, however, that the task he had undertaken was not as easy as it had appeared. Many of the children had previously lived by begging or had remained inactive at home, and such children did not adapt themselves willingly to the strict routine and discipline which were necessary in a large community. Nor at first were there any signs of gratitude from either the children or the parents. The parents often waited until the children had reached working age or had received new clothes, and then persuaded them to run away from the Neuhof and return home.

As the months went by, the children began to settle down and even to thrive. Already in 1775 Pestalozzi noticed that the children were becoming more cheerful and more healthy and in 1777 he could write enthusiastically:

It is an indescribable joy to see boys and girls, who had been wretched, growing and thriving, to see peace and satisfaction in their faces, to train their hands to work, and to lift their hearts towards their Creator . . .⁴

If Pestalozzi was proving correct in his belief that a simple but regular life would benefit the children, he was wrong in thinking that the work they were doing would pay for their keep. At the end of 1775 he found himself forced to make an appeal to those he felt might be prepared to support his enterprise and in the following years he made further similar appeals. At first the response appears to have been favourable, but few people were prepared to contribute a substantial sum of money year after year. In 1779 Pestalozzi had no alternative but to sell some of the land, and in the following year it became clear that the whole enterprise could not continue. The children had to be sent away and Pestalozzi was left exhausted and depressed in what remained of his property.

Pestalozzi recognized that the necessary ending of the experiment was not the result of the poor quality of the land nor of the lack of support of his friends so much as of himself and of his tendency

to try and climb to the top rung of the ladder leading to my aims, before I had set my foot firmly on the bottom rung.⁵

If he had been slightly less ambitious in his project - by ensuring that he was...