Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827)
As both an educational psychologist and innovative teacher,
Pestalozzi was the first modern campaigner for educational reform. He was also
the first educationist to consider
the practicalities of teacher-training, teaching-practice, school-management and finance
in a reformed system of education.
For the first half of his adult life, after quickly going broke trying to
run a school which was supposed to finance itself, he wrote books and articles
about the family and the needs of abandoned children, starting with a successful novel,
Leonard and Gertrude.
Throughout his life, he saw education as both a human right and an
extension of family life. "Within the living room of every
household are united the basic elements of all true human education in its whole range."
In 1804 he was asked by the Helvetic Republic (Switzerland)
to organise higher education. Having campained for
primary education for 30 years, he interpreted this brief from the government quite radically. He started
a primary school. "As a little seed contains the design of the tree, so in each child is the promise
of their potential... Education is nothing more than the polishing of each single link in the great
chain that binds humanity together and gives it unity."
He was given the use of the castle in Yverdon-les-Bains, near Neuchâtel, where he
took in 150 boys from the ages of 7 to 15. Some paid fees. Others, destitute, were taken in
for nothing. The education was on the basis of individual needs, abilities
and differences. The syllabus covered mathematics, astronomy, languages, biology, drawing,
writing, singing, physical exercise, model-making, collecting, map-making, gymnastics.
There was group-work and field-trips.
He drew pupils from all over Europe. Visiting
educators became his students. One of the most famous was Friedrich Fröbel.
Pestalozzi began with the here-and-now before moving on
to anything abstract - an idea which is still viewed as a foundation of good practice in education.
He developed the idea of an "object lesson" to learn about
shapes and their names, with children tracing or drawing them, before going on to count them, and then
manipulate numbers by the four operations of arithmetic. The first step was what he called
'Anschauung' or 'observation', using all the senses. This was a far-cry from rote-learning -
or anything which had gone before. Children worked things out for themselves.
They even played a part in deciding what they did. Respecting the individuality of both child and teacher,
Pestalozzi thought of education as a science. But what mattered was the process of decision,
not the slavish following of a procedure.
"I wish to wrest education from the outworn order of doddering old hacks,"
he wrote, "as well as from the new-fangled order of cheap, artificial teaching tricks,
and entrust it to the eternal powers of nature herself."
He set out to create a "psychological method of instruction" based on the "laws of
human nature". But an essential quality of the teacher was a love of children. To the consternation
of many observers, flogging was banned.
Two years later, he set up a similar school for girls, and then in 1813 he set up one
of the first ever schools for children with disabilities, those with hearing and/or speech
defects.
He took many of his ideas from Jean-Jacques Rousseau. But unlike Rousseau,
he put his ideas into practice. He wrote, "It is all well and good for children
to learn something, but the really important thing is for them to be something.
The life that shapes us is not a matter of words but action."
Pigeon Post can be used to let children learn to read and write on just such a basis.
Sending a pigeon post is doing something.