Part 27

It is our hearts and affections that lead us right or wrong far more than our intellects. In advocating the training of the minds of the people, Lord Derby once remarked that as Chairman of Quarter Sessions he had found most of the culprits brought before him were stupid and ignorant. It certainly cannot be denied that the commonest kind of criminal is bad in every way. He has his body ruined by debauchery, his intellect almost in abeyance, and his heart and affections set on what is vile and degrading. If you could cultivate his intellect you would certainly raise him out of the lowest and by far the largest of the criminal classes. But he might become a criminal of a type less disgusting in externals, but in reality far more dangerous. The most atrocious miscreant of our time, if not of all time, was a man who contrived a machine to sink ships in mid-ocean, his only object being to gain a sum of money on a false insurance. This man was a type of the _élite_ of criminals, had received an intellectual training, and could not have been described by Lord Derby as ignorant or stupid.

§ 91. Pestalozzi then, much as he valued the development of the intellect, put first the moral and religious influence of education; and with him moral and religious were one and the same. He protested against the ordinary routine of elementary education, because “everywhere in it the flesh predominated over the spirit, everywhere the divine element was cast into the shade, everywhere selfishness and the passions were taken as the motives of action, everywhere mechanical habits usurped the place of intelligent spontaneity” (R.’s G., 470). Education for the people must be different to this. “Man does not live by bread alone; every child needs a religious development; every child needs to know how to pray to God in all simplicity, but with faith and love” (R.’s G., 378). “If the religious element does not run through the whole of education, this element will have little influence on the life; it remains formal or isolated”[160] (_Ib._ 381). And Pestalozzi sums up the essentials of popular education in the words: “The child accustomed from his earliest years to pray, to think, and to work, is already more than half educated” (_Ib._ 381).

§ 92. Here we see the main requisites. First the child must pray with faith and love. Next he must _think_.

“The child must think!” exclaims the schoolmaster: “Must he not learn?” To which Pestalozzi would have replied, “Most certainly he must.” Learning was not in Pestalozzi’s estimation as in Locke’s, the “last and least” thing, but learning was with him something very different from the learning imparted by the ordinary schoolmaster. Pestalozzi was very imperfectly acquainted with the thoughts and efforts of his predecessors, but the one book on education which he had studied had freed him from the “idols” of the schoolroom. This book was the _Emile_ of Rousseau, and from it he came no less than Rousseau himself to despise the learning of the schoolmaster. But when he had to face the problem of organizing a course of education for the people, Pestalozzi did not agree with Rousseau that the first twelve years should be spent in “losing time.” No, the children must learn, but they must learn in such a way as to develop all the powers of the mind. And so Pestalozzi was led to what he considered his great discovery, viz., that all instruction must be based on “Anschauung.”

§ 93. The Germans, who have devoted so much thought and care and effort to education, greatly honour Pestalozzi,[161] and as his disciples aim at making all elementary instruction “anschaulich.” We English have troubled ourselves so little about Pestalozzi, or, I might say, about the theory of education, that we have not cared to get equivalent words for _Anschauung_ and _anschaulich_. For _Anschauung_ “sense-impression” has lately been tried; but this is in two ways defective; for (1) there may be “Anschauungen” beyond the range of the senses, and (2) there is in an “Anschauung” an active as well as a passive element, and this the word “impression” does not convey. The active part is brought out better by “observation”—the word used by Joseph Payne and James MacAlister; but this seems hardly wide enough. Other writers of English borrow words straight from the French, and talk about “intuition” and “intuitive,” words which were taken (first I believe by Kant) from the Latin _intueri_, “to look at _with attention and reflection_.”

§ 94. I think we shall be wise in following these writers. On good authority I have heard of a German professor who when asked if he had read some large work recently published in the distressing type of his nation, replied that he had not; he was waiting for a French translation. If the Germans find that the French express their thoughts more clearly than they can themselves, we may think ourselves fortunate when the French will act as interpreters. I therefore gladly turn to M. Buisson and translate what he says about “intuition.”

“Intuition is just the most natural and most spontaneous action of human intelligence, the action by which the mind seizes a reality without effort, hesitation, or go-between. It is a ‘direct apperception,’ made as it were at a glance. If it has to do with some matter within the province of the senses, the senses perceive it at once. Here we have the simplest case of all, the most common, the most easily noted. If the thing concerned is an idea, a reality, that is, beyond the reach of the senses, we still say that we seize it by intuition when all that is necessary is that it present itself to the mind, and the mind at once grasps it and is satisfied with it without any need of proof or investigation. We advance by intuition whenever our mind, acting by the senses, or by the judgment, or by the conscience, knows things with the same amount of evidence and the same amount of speed that a distinct view of an object affords the eye. So intuition is no separate faculty; it is nothing strange or new in the mind of man. It is just the mind itself ‘intuitively’ recognising what exists in it or around it” (_Les Conférences Péd. faites aux Instituteurs_, Delagrave, 1879, p. 331). So the “intuitive method” (to keep the French name for it) is of very wide application. “It appeals to this force _sui generis_, to this glance of the mind, to this spontaneous spring of the intelligence towards truth.” It sets the pupil’s mind to work in following his own intellectual instincts. If in our teaching we can use it, we shall have gained, as M. Buisson says, the best helper in the world, viz., the pupil. If he can be got to take an active part in the instruction all difficulty vanishes at once. Instead of having to drag him along, you will see him delighted to keep you company.

§ 95. According to M. Buisson there are three kinds of intuition—sensuous, intellectual, and moral. Similarly M. Jullien (_Esprit de Pestalozzi_, 1812, vol. j, p. 152) says that there are “intuitions” of the “internal senses” as well as of the external: the “internal senses” are four in number: first, the sense for the true; second, the sense for the beautiful; third, the sense for the good; fourth, the sense for the infinite.

§ 96. Without settling whether this analysis is complete we shall have no difficulty in admitting that both body and mind have faculties by means of which we apprehend, lay hold of, what is true and right; and it is on the use of these faculties that Pestalozzi bases instruction. No Englishman may have found a good word to indicate _Anschauung_, but one Englishman at least had the idea of it long before Pestalozzi. More than a century earlier Locke had called knowledge “the internal perception of the mind.” “Knowing is seeing,” said he; “and if it be so, it is madness to persuade ourselves we do so by another man’s eyes, let him use never so many words to tell us that what he asserts is very visible” (_Supra_ p. 222).

§ 97. Thus in theory Pestalozzi was, however unconsciously, a follower of Locke. But in practice they went far asunder. Locke’s thoughts were constantly occupied with philosophical investigations, and he seems to have made small account of the intellectual power of children, and to have supposed that they cannot “see” anything at all. So he cared little what was taught them, and till they reached the age of reason the tutor might give such lessons as would be useful to “young gentlemen,” the avowed object being to “keep them from sauntering.” His follower Rousseau preferred that the child’s mind should not be filled with the traditional lore of the schoolroom, and that the instructor, when the youth reached the age of twelve, should find “an unfurnished apartment to let.” Then came Pestalozzi, and he saw that at whatever age the instructor began to teach the child, he would not find an unfurnished apartment, seeing that every child learns continuously from the hour of its birth. And how does the child learn? Not by repeating words which express the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of other people,[162] but by his own experiences and feelings, and by the thoughts which these suggest to him.

§ 98. Elementary education then on its intellectual side is teaching the child to think. The proper subjects of thought for children Pestalozzi held to be the children’s surroundings, the realities of their own lives, the things that affect them and arouse their feelings and interests. Perhaps he did not emphasize _interest_ as much as Herbart has done since; but clearly an _Anschauung_ or “intuition” is only possible when the child is interested in the thing observed.

§ 99. The art of teaching in Pestalozzi’s system consists in analyzing the knowledge that the children should acquire about their surroundings, arranging it in a regular sequence, and bringing it to the children’s consciousness gradually and in the way in which their minds will act upon it. In this way they learn slowly, but all they learn is their own. They are not like the crow drest up in peacock’s feathers, for they have not appropriated any _dead_ knowledge (“_angelernte todte Begriffe_,” as Diesterweg has it), and it cannot be said of them, “They know about much, but _know_ nothing (_Sie kennen viel und wissen nichts_).” Their knowledge is actual knowledge, for they are taught not _what_ to think but _to think_, and to exercise their powers of observation and draw conclusions from their own experience. The teacher simply furnishes materials and occasions for this exercise in observing, and as it goes on gives his benevolent superintendence.

§ 100. They learn slowly for another reason. According to Pestalozzi the first conceptions must be dwelt upon till they are distinct and firmly fixed. Buss tells us that when he first joined Pestalozzi at Burgdorf the delay over the prime elements seemed to him a waste of time, but that afterwards he was convinced of its being the right plan, and felt that the failure of his own education was due to its incoherent and desultory character. “Not only,” says Pestalozzi, “have the first elements of knowledge in every subject the most important bearing on its complete outline, but the child’s confidence and interest are gained by perfect attainment even in the lowest stage of instruction.”[163]

§ 101. We have seen that Pestalozzi would have children learn to pray, to think, and to _work_. In schools for the _soi-disant_ “upper classes” the parents or friends of a boy sometimes say, “There is no need for him to work he will be very well off.” From this kind of demoralization Pestalozzi’s pupils were free. They would have to work, and Pestalozzi wished them to learn to work as soon as possible. In this way he sought to increase their self-respect, and to unite their school-life with their life beyond it.[164]

§ 102. Pestalozzi was tremendously in earnest, and he wished the children also to take instruction seriously. He was totally opposed to the notion which had found favour with many great authorities as _e.g._, Locke and Basedow, that instruction should always be given in the guise of amusement. “I am convinced,” says he, “that such a 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”[165] (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”[166] (_Ib._).

§ 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.)

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.

11. Instruction shall be subordinated to the aim of _education_.

12. The ground of moral-religious bringing up lies in the relation of mother and child.[167]

§ 105. Having now seen in which direction Pestalozzi would start the school-coach, let us examine (with reference 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 in which young children turn from object to object, like the bees from flower to flower, seems to show that at this stage their intellectual training goes on whether we help it or not. There is no doubt an education for children however young, and the mother is the teacher, but the lessons have more to do with the heart than the head.

§ 107. But the time for regular teaching comes at last, and what is to be done then? Let us consider briefly what _is_ done.

Hitherto, the only defence ever made of our school-course leading up to residence at a University, has been that it aims not at giving knowledge but at training the mind. Youths then are supposed to be engaged, not in gaining knowledge, but in training their faculties for adult life. But when we come to provide for the “education” of children, we never think of training their faculties for youth, but endeavour solely to inculcate what will then come in useful. We see clearly enough that it would be absurd to cram the mind of a youth with laws of science or art or commerce which he could not understand, on the ground that the getting-up of these things might save him trouble in after-life. But we do not hesitate to sacrifice childhood to the learning by heart of grammar rules, Latin declensions, historical dates, and the like, with no thought whatever of the child’s faculties, but simply with a view of giving him knowledge (so-called) that will come in useful five or six years afterwards. We do not treat youths thus, probably because we have more sympathy with them, or at least understand them better. The intellectual life to which the senses and the imagination are subordinated in the man has already begun in the youth. In an inferior degree he can do what the man can do, and understand what the man can understand. He has already some notion of reasoning, and abstraction, and generalisation. But with the child it is very different. His active faculties may be said almost to differ in kind from a man’s. He has a feeling for the sensuous world which he will lose as he grows up. His strong imagination, under no control of the reason, is constantly at work building castles in the air, and investing the doll or the puppet-show with all the properties of the things they represent. His feelings and affections, easily excited, find an object to love or dislike in every person and thing he meets with. On the other hand, he has only vague notions of the abstract, and has no interest except in actual known persons, animals, and things.

§ 108. There is, then, between the child of eight or nine and the youth of fourteen or fifteen a greater difference than between the youth and the man of twenty; and this demands a corresponding difference in their studies. And yet, as matters are carried on now, the child is too often kept to the drudgery of learning by rote mere collections of hard words, perhaps, too, in a foreign language: and absorbed in the present, he is not much comforted by the teacher’s assurance that “some day” these things will come in useful.

§ 109. How to educate the child is doubtless the most difficult problem of all, and it is generally allotted to those who are the least likely to find a satisfactory solution.

The earliest educator of the children of many rich parents is the nursemaid—a person not usually distinguished by either intellectual or moral excellence.[168] At an early age this educator is superseded by the Preparatory School. Taken as a body, the ladies who open “establishments for young gentlemen” cannot be said to hold enlarged views, or, indeed, any views whatever, on the subject of education. Their intention is not so much to cultivate the children’s faculties as to make a livelihood, and to hear no complaints that pupils who have left them have been found deficient in the expected knowledge by the master of the next school. If anyone would investigate the sort of teaching which is considered adapted to the capacity of children at this stage, let him look into a standard work still in vogue (“Mangnall’s Questions”), from which the young of both sexes acquire a great quantity and variety of learning; the whole of ancient and modern history and biography, together with the heathen mythology, the planetary system, and the names of all the constellations, lying very compactly in about 300 pages.[169]

Unfortunately, moreover, from the gentility of these ladies, their scholars’ bodies are often treated in preparatory schools no less injuriously than their minds. It may be natural in a child to use his lungs and delight in noise, but this can hardly be considered _genteel_, so the tendency is, as far as possible, suppressed. It is found, too, that if children are allowed to run about they get dirty and spoil their clothes, and do not look like “young gentlemen,” so they are made to take exercise in a much more genteel fashion, walking slowly two-and-two, _with gloves on_.[170]

§ 110. At nine or ten years old, boys are commonly put to a school taught by masters. Here they lose sight of their gloves, and learn the use of their limbs; but their minds are not so fortunate as their bodies. The studies of the school have been arranged without any thought of their peculiar needs. The youngest class is generally the largest, often much the largest, and it is handed over to the least competent and worst paid master on the staff of teachers. The reason is, that little boys are found to learn the tasks imposed upon them very slowly. A youth or a man who came fresh to the Latin grammar would learn in a morning as much as the master, with great labour, can get into children in a week. It is thought, therefore, that the best teaching should be applied where it will have the most obvious results. If anyone were to say to the manager of a school, “The master who takes the lowest form teaches badly, and the children learn nothing”; he would perhaps say, “Very likely; but if I paid a much higher salary, and got a better man, they would learn but little.” The only thing the school-manager thinks of is, How much do the little boys learn of what is taught in the higher forms? How their faculties are being developed, or whether they have any faculties except for reading, writing, and arithmetic, and for getting grammar-rules, &c. by heart, he is not so “unpractical” as to enquire.

§ 111. With reference to the education of the first of our “two nations,” it seems then pretty clear that Pestalozzi would require that the school-coach should be turned and started in a totally different direction.