Are schools places for interminable experimentation on children? The pendulum seems to swing between making children acquire information and making children discover the world with only a bit of guidance. “Don’t feel like learning this today? What would you like to learn?”
Heraclitus framed the dilemma in one of his fragments: You can’t have understanding without facts, and you can’t have facts without understanding.” We’ve bounced between the two since he wrote that, but after 1775, we’ve leaned a little more toward understanding without the acquisition of facts. Why that year? That’s the year in Neuhof that Johann Heinrich Pestolozzi started an educational movement that is still with us. Pestolozzi introduced compassion into eighteenth century education. Working with his small group and showing love for his students, Johann achieved success: His students thrived in the nurturing environment.
But then.
But then his educational system spread. He established a larger school in Burgdorf. It, too, seemed to be a successful venture. Teachers went to learn his methods. The Swiss government bought into the methodology. The system spread. Spread to larger and larger school units, units with more students. And when Pestolozzi had acquired a national and international reputation, he moved on in his later years to become master at Yverdon. That’s when the system failed, becoming no more successful a methodology than any previous educational system. You probably want to know why.
As George Ripley writes in “Pestalozzi’s Method of Education,” “As a practical school-teacher Pestalozzi was nevertheless a failure in the end, because he relied on no force but that of personal affection to control his pupils. This divinest of methods succeeded remarkably while his schools were so small as to bring him into close paternal contact with every child. But at the large institution at Yverdon…the method broke down badly.”* Ripley goes on to say that Pestalozzi’s critics did not realize, in the words of a Mr. Quick, that the school reformer had changed the object in education. In Quick’s words, “The main object of the school should not be to teach, but to develop,” an idea that Ripley says is the “key to all modern education.”
Ripley then writes that “not every teacher even to-day has digested fully the idea that his duty is less that of stuffing a child full of facts than of developing its character and abilities, encouraging whatever of value exists within itself.” There you have it. In that statement lies the dilemma for schools. Facts or understanding? Chicken or egg? Affection or demand?
Pestalozzi gained his reputation and spread his system in the “ideal” teaching environment: One teacher and few pupils. Outside of that ratio, the system broke down. So, look at where we are today. We make teachers take courses in developmental psychology so they can understand individuals, and then we put them in large classrooms where knowing each student is challenging. We introduce variations of Pestalozzi’s methodology to introduce affection, and we then complain that students lack factual learning. We realize that character development is integral to education, so we declare that school officials stand in loco parentis, in the role of the parent, but we restrict by popular demand the discipline parents can instill.
The word teacher derives from tacn, “sign or mark.” The Old English verb taecan means “guide, show, declare, warn, and persuade.” There’s even a relationship between the word teacher and “index finger,” the pointer finger that shows the way when people are lost. In literal pointing, we give the unlearned nonverbal instruction on how to reach a destination. The question we have to ask concerns the destination. Are teachers in the business of pointing students in the direction of reaching a destination that had always lain within themselves?
Education changed in that Burgdorf classroom in the eighteenth century when the Swiss government adopted Pestalozzi’s methodology. How did the change affect you? How do you put into practical use the quandary posed by Heraclitus? How do you adapt a system of compassion to a large population of children?
An underlying premise of the Pestalozzi formula according to Mr. Quick is that there is something of value that already exists in the child. Uncovering this a priori value in the Pestalozzi system is the chief role of the teacher. Is the premise valid? If it isn’t, then we can understand all those failing versions of the Pestalozzi system. If it is, then we have to ask ourselves how we enhance those inherent values with information. Facts or Understanding? One more than the other? How do you think we should balance the two?
*George Ripley, “Pestalozzi’s Method of Education, A.D. 1775” in The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13, edited by Rossiter Johnson, Charles Horne, and John Rudd, Gutenberg EBook #30186 online at
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170511120207.htm
Heraclitus framed the dilemma in one of his fragments: You can’t have understanding without facts, and you can’t have facts without understanding.” We’ve bounced between the two since he wrote that, but after 1775, we’ve leaned a little more toward understanding without the acquisition of facts. Why that year? That’s the year in Neuhof that Johann Heinrich Pestolozzi started an educational movement that is still with us. Pestolozzi introduced compassion into eighteenth century education. Working with his small group and showing love for his students, Johann achieved success: His students thrived in the nurturing environment.
But then.
But then his educational system spread. He established a larger school in Burgdorf. It, too, seemed to be a successful venture. Teachers went to learn his methods. The Swiss government bought into the methodology. The system spread. Spread to larger and larger school units, units with more students. And when Pestolozzi had acquired a national and international reputation, he moved on in his later years to become master at Yverdon. That’s when the system failed, becoming no more successful a methodology than any previous educational system. You probably want to know why.
As George Ripley writes in “Pestalozzi’s Method of Education,” “As a practical school-teacher Pestalozzi was nevertheless a failure in the end, because he relied on no force but that of personal affection to control his pupils. This divinest of methods succeeded remarkably while his schools were so small as to bring him into close paternal contact with every child. But at the large institution at Yverdon…the method broke down badly.”* Ripley goes on to say that Pestalozzi’s critics did not realize, in the words of a Mr. Quick, that the school reformer had changed the object in education. In Quick’s words, “The main object of the school should not be to teach, but to develop,” an idea that Ripley says is the “key to all modern education.”
Ripley then writes that “not every teacher even to-day has digested fully the idea that his duty is less that of stuffing a child full of facts than of developing its character and abilities, encouraging whatever of value exists within itself.” There you have it. In that statement lies the dilemma for schools. Facts or understanding? Chicken or egg? Affection or demand?
Pestalozzi gained his reputation and spread his system in the “ideal” teaching environment: One teacher and few pupils. Outside of that ratio, the system broke down. So, look at where we are today. We make teachers take courses in developmental psychology so they can understand individuals, and then we put them in large classrooms where knowing each student is challenging. We introduce variations of Pestalozzi’s methodology to introduce affection, and we then complain that students lack factual learning. We realize that character development is integral to education, so we declare that school officials stand in loco parentis, in the role of the parent, but we restrict by popular demand the discipline parents can instill.
The word teacher derives from tacn, “sign or mark.” The Old English verb taecan means “guide, show, declare, warn, and persuade.” There’s even a relationship between the word teacher and “index finger,” the pointer finger that shows the way when people are lost. In literal pointing, we give the unlearned nonverbal instruction on how to reach a destination. The question we have to ask concerns the destination. Are teachers in the business of pointing students in the direction of reaching a destination that had always lain within themselves?
Education changed in that Burgdorf classroom in the eighteenth century when the Swiss government adopted Pestalozzi’s methodology. How did the change affect you? How do you put into practical use the quandary posed by Heraclitus? How do you adapt a system of compassion to a large population of children?
An underlying premise of the Pestalozzi formula according to Mr. Quick is that there is something of value that already exists in the child. Uncovering this a priori value in the Pestalozzi system is the chief role of the teacher. Is the premise valid? If it isn’t, then we can understand all those failing versions of the Pestalozzi system. If it is, then we have to ask ourselves how we enhance those inherent values with information. Facts or Understanding? One more than the other? How do you think we should balance the two?
*George Ripley, “Pestalozzi’s Method of Education, A.D. 1775” in The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13, edited by Rossiter Johnson, Charles Horne, and John Rudd, Gutenberg EBook #30186 online at
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170511120207.htm
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