498. How Gertrude teaches her Children. ВЂ” It is

under this title that in 1801 Pestalozzi published an exposi-

tion of his doctrine. 1 "It is the most important and the

most profound of all his pedagogical writings," says one of

his biographers. We shall not dispute this ; but this book

also proves how the mind of Pestalozzi was inferior to his

heart, how the writer was of less worth than the teacher.

Composed under the form of letters addressed to Gessner,

the work of Pestalozzi is too often a tissue of declamations,

of rambling thoughts, and of personal grievances. It is the

work of a brain that is in a state of ferment, and of a heart

that is overflowing. The thought is painfully disentangled

from oat a thousand repetitions. Why need we be aston-

ished at this literary incompetence of Pestalozzi when he

himself makes the following confession: " For thirty years

I had not read a single book ; I could not longer read them."

499. Pestalozzi's Style. — The style of Pestalozzi is the

very man himself : desultory, obscure, confused, but with

sudden flashes and brilliant illuminations in which the warmth

of his heart is exhibited. There are also too many compari-

sons ; the imagery overwhelms the idea. Within a few

pages In' will compare himself, in succession, "to a sailor,

who, having lost his harpoon, would try to catch a whale

with a hook," to depict the disproportion between his

resources and his purpose ; then to a straw, which even a

cat would not lay hold of, to tell how he was despised ;

to an owl, to express his isolation ; to a reed, to indicate

his feebleness ; to a mouse which fears a cat, to characterize

his timidity.

1 A second edition appeared in the lifetime of the author, in 1820, with

some important modifications. The French translation published in L882

by Dr. Darin was made from the first edition.

428 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

500. Analysis of the Gertrude. — It is not easy to

analyze one of Pestalozzi's books. To begin with, Hoio

Gertrude teaches her Children is a very bad title, for Gertrude

is not once mentioned in it. This proper name became for

Pestalozzi an allegorical term by which he personifies himself.

The first three letters are rather autobiographical memoirs

than an exposition of doctrine. Pestalozzi here relates his

first experiments, and makes us acquainted with his assist-

ants at Burgdorf, — Kriisi, Tobler, and Buss. In the letters

which follow, the author attempts to set forth the general

principles of his method. The seventh treats of language ;

the eighth, of the intuition of forms, of writing, and of

drawing ; the ninth, of the intuition of numbers and of com-

putation ; the tenth and twelfth, of intuition in general.

For Pestalozzi, intuition was, as we know, direct and ex-

perimental perception, either in the domain of sense, or in

the interior regions of the consciousness. Finally, the last

letters are devoted to moral and religious development.

Without designing to follow, in all its ramblings and in all

its digressions, the mobile thought of Pestalozzi, we shall

gather up some of the general ideas which abound in this

overcharged and badly composed work.

501. Methods Simplified. — The purpose of Pestalozzi

was indeed, in one sense, as he was told by one of his

friends, to mechanize instruction. He wished, in fact, to

simplify and determine methods to such a degree that they

might be employed by the most ordinary teacher, and by the

most ignorant father and mother. In a word, he hoped to

organize a pedagogical machine so well set up that it could

in a manner run alone.

" I believe," he says, " that we must not dream of making

progress in the instruction of the people as long as we have

PESTALOZZI. 429

not found the forms of instruction which make of the

teacher, at least so far as the completion of the elementary

studies is concerned, the simple mechanical instrument of a

method which owes its results to the nature of its processes,

and not to the ability of the one who uses it. I assert that

a school-book has no value, save as it can be employed by a

master without instruction as well as by one who has been

taught."

This was sheer exaggeration, and was putting too little

value' on the personal effort and merit of teachers. On this

score, it would be useless to found normal schools. Pesta-

lozzi, moreover, has given in his own person a striking

contradiction to this singular theory ; for he owed his success

in teaching much more to the influence of his living speech,

and to the ardent communication of the passion by which his

heart was animated, than to the methodical processes which

he never succeeded in combining in an efficient manner.

502. The Socratic Method. — Pestalozzi recommends

the Socratic method, and he indicates with exactness some of

the conditions necessary for the employment of that method.

He first observes that it requires on the part of the teacher

uncommon ability.

"A superficial and uncultivated intelligence," he says,

" does not sound the depths whence a Socrates made spring

up intelligence aud truth."

Besides, the Socratic method can be employed only with

pupils who already have some instruction. It is absolutely

impracticable with children who lack both the point of de-

parture, that is, preliminary notions, and the means of

expressing these notions, that is, a knowledge of language.

And as it is always necessary that Pestalozzi's thought

should wind up with a figure of speech, he adds : —

430 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

' ' In order that the goshawk and the eagle may plunder

eggs from other birds, it is first necessary that the latter

should deposit eggs in their nests."

503. Word, Form, and Number. — A favorite idea of

Pestalozzi, which remained at Yverdun, as at Burgdorf, the

principle of his exercises in teaching, is that all elemen-

tary knowledge can and should be related to three princi-

ples, — word, form, and number. To the word he attached

language, to form, writing and drawing, and to number,

computation.

"This was," he says, "like a ray of light in my re-

searches, like a Deus ex machinal" Nothing justifies such

enthusiasm. It would be very easy to show that Pestalozzi's

classification, besides that it offers no practical interest, is

not justifiable from the theoretical point of view, first be-

cause one of the elements of his trilogy, the word, or lan-

guage, comprises the other two ; and then because a large

part of knowledge, for example, all physical qualities, does not

permit the distinction of which he was superstitiously fond.

504. Intuitive Exercises. — What is of more value is

the importance which Pestalozzi ascribes to intuition. An

incident worthy of note is that it is not Pestalozzi himself,

but one of the children of his school, who first had the idea

of the direct observation of the objects which serve as the

text for the lesson. One day as, according to his custom, he

was giviug his pupils a loug description of what they

observed in a drawing where a window was represented, he

noticed that one of his little auditors, instead of looking at

the picture, was attentively studying the real window of the

school-room.

From that moment Pestalozzi put aside all his drawings,

and took the objects themselves for subjects of observation.

PESTALOZZI. 431

"The child," he said, "wishes nothing to intervene be-

tween nature and himself."

Ramsauer, a pupil at Burgdorf, has described, not with-

out some inaccuracy perhaps, the intuitive exercises which

Pestalozzi offered to his pupils : —

"The exercises in language were the best we had, espe-

cially those which had reference to the wainscoting of the

school-room. He spent whole hours before that wainscot-

ing, very old and torn, busy in examining the holes and

rents, with respect to number, form, position, and color, and

in formulating our observations in sentences more or less de-

veloped. Then Pestalozzi would ask us, Boys, what do you

see? (He never mentioned the girls.)

Pupil : I see a hole in the wainscoting.

Pestalozzi: Very well ; repeat after me : —

I see a hole in the wainscoting.

I see a large hole in the wainscoting.

Through the hole I see the wall, etc., etc."

505. The Book for Mothers. — In 1803 Pestalozzi pub-

lished a work on elementary instruction, which remained un-

finished, entitled The Book for Mothers. This was another

Orbis Pictus without pictures. Pestalozzi's intention was to

introduce the child to a knowledge of the objects of nature

or of art which fall under his observation. In this he tar-

ried too long over the description of the organs of the body

and of their functions. A French critic, Dussault, said,

with reference to this : —

" Pestalozzi gives himself much trouble to teach children

that their nose is in the middle of their face." In his anxiety

to be simple and elementary, Pestalozzi often succeeds in

reality in making instruction puerile. On the other hand,

the Pere Girard complains that the exercises in language

432 THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

which compose The Book for Mothers, ' ' really very well arВ°

ranged, are also very dry and monotonous."

506. A Swiss Teacher in 1793. — To form a just esti-

mate of the efforts of Pestalozzi and his assistants, we must

take into account the wretched state of instruction at the

period when they attempted to reform the methods of teach-

ing. Kriisi, Pestalozzi's first assistant, one of those who

were perhaps the nearest his heart, has himself related how

he became a teacher. He was eighteen, and till then his

only employment had been that of a peddler for his father.

One clay, as he was going about his business with a heavy

load of merchandise on his shoulders, he meets on the road a

revenue officer of the State, and they enter into conversation.

" Do you know," said the officer, " that the teacher of Gais

is about to leave his school ? Would you not like to succeed

him ? — It is not a question of what I would like ; a school-

master should have knowledge, in which I am absolutely lack-

ing. — What a school-master can and should know with us,

you might easily learn at your age." — Kriisi reflected, went

to work, and copied more than a hundred times a specimen

of writing which he had procured ; and he declares that this

was his only preparation. He registered for examination.

The da}- for the trial arrived.

" There were but two competitors of us," he says. " The

principal test consisted in writing the Lord's Prayer, and to

this I gave my closest attention. I had observed that in

German, use was made of capital letters ; but I did not know

the rule for their use, and took them for ornaments. So I

distributed mine in a symmetrical manner, so that some were

found even in the middle of words. In fact, neither of us

knew anything.

Wk When the examination had been estimated, I was sum-

PESTALOZZI. 433

moned, and Captain Sehoepfer informed me that the exam-

iners had found us both deficient ; that my competitor read

the better, but that I excelled him in writing ; . . . that,

besides, my apartment, being larger than that of the other

candidate, was better fitted for holding a school, and, finally,

that I was elected to the vacant place."

Is it not well to be indulgent to teachers whom we meet on

the highway, who scarcely know how to write, and whom a

captain commissions ?

507. The Institute at Burgdorf (1802). — When Pes-

talozzi published the Gertrude and The Book for Mothers, he

was not simply a school-master at Burgdorf ; he had taken

charge of an institute, that is, of a boarding-school of higher

primary instruction. There also he applied the natural

method, " which makes the child proceed from his own intui-

tions, and leads him by degrees, and through his own efforts,

to abstract ideas." The institute succeeded. The pupils of

Burgdorf were distinguished especially by their skill in draw-

ing and in mental arithmetic. Visitors were struck with their

air of cheerfulness. Singing and gymnastics were held in

honor, and also exercises on natural history, learned in the

open field, and during walks. Mildness and liberty charac-

terized the internal management. "It is not a school that

you have here," said a visitor, " but a family ! "

508. Journey to Paris. — It was at this period that Pes-

talozzi made a journej* to Paris, as a member of the consulta

called by Bonaparte to decide the fate of Switzerland. He

hoped to take advantage of his stay in France to disseminate

his pedagogical ideas. But Bonaparte refused to see him,

saying that he had something else to do besides discussing

questions of a b c. Monge, the founder of the Polytechnic

School, was more cordial, and kindly listened to the explana-

AM THE HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY.

tions of the Swiss pedagogue. But he concluded by saying,

" It is too much for us ! ' More disdainful still, Talleyrand

had said, " It is too much for the people ! "

On the other hand, at the same period, the philosopher

Maine de Biran, then sub-prefect at Bergerac, called a disciple

of Pestalozzi, Barraud, to found schools in the department of

Dordogne, and he encouraged with all his influence the appli-

cation of the Pestalozzian method.