Impact of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi on modern Christian education origins

¶ … Johann Heinrich Pestalozz on the origins of Modern Christian Education

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi was born in Zurich, Switzerland, on January 12, 1746. Life made him lose his father at the age of 6, remaining in the care of his mother as only guide, which led him to grow in a very loving and warm atmosphere that he would later try to recreate in his educational method. When attending school, he found himself in a somewhat hostile environment that didn't inspire him to learn and caused him to be a rather unsuccessful pupil. This may have been the inspiration for the theories of the new educational method that should be based on intuition and feeling, rather than discipline, endless preaching and memorizing.

When his attempt for agriculture failed his farm was transformed into an establishment for teaching poor children, where they were to be educated by work. This was his first attempt for teaching and turned out very successful. It was then that he developed new ideas for pedagogical methods, aimed to understand and help children through teaching.

In his writings he presents education as a key to get over the poverty of the people and lead them to happiness and virtue. His concepts promoted religion as human feelings, more than church dogmas, that had the purpose of moralizing the people, not just follow a cult. He analyzes the failures of the organization of social life, proposing ideas to correct them. He built his work parting from sketches and multiple essays of what he called the education of humanity. He has inspired numerous dissertations and pedagogical postures.

His work inspired many other pedagogues that sought the improvement of humanity through education. He proposed a complete and systematic reform of all scholar institutions, claiming that there is no more genuine education than a democratic one. Perhaps today some of those innovations might appear simple compared to the new pedagogical theories, but his concept of faith in humanity is still valid today, in spite of all the progress that modern education has achieved.

His pedagogical schemes are not based on scientific study, but came from the intuition of the author. He perfected methods for teaching reading and writing, language and numbers. The school situation of his period left a lot to be desired and he aspired to improve it radically; especially the rural schools that were in a terrible state. When he was appointed Director of the Stanz orphanage he found a chance to apply his method: manual and intellectual work alternated in the warmth of a recreated home, where the affective part was not neglected, and aided by severity, considered necessary, to induce pupils to concentration, learning and good relations.

Pestalozzi elaborated his pedagogy almost in the moment's intuition, walking in the dark, improvising and starting again, always in a rush and often overdue. When the normal school of masters in Berthoud was created Pestalozzi was asked -to experiment there- a new teaching method for reading. What Pestalozzi did there was to shout the ABC from morning to night. Trying to simplify as much as possible the elements of spelling, to present them under proper forms of psychology rules, that would lead the child, gradually and without gaps, from the first step to the second. After testing the pupils, the inspector's report was full of praise.

By publishing controversy work and founding schools Pestalozzi had become a public figure by the age of 60. His pedagogic fame had reached beyond the borders of his country. His preoccupations for instructing the poor, create didactic innovations, received a larger audience. Other countries in Europe adopted his methods and obtained great results from the experiments. Modern education was based on confidence on the children, acceptance of their nature, help them discover the world. His method promoted ideas such as the improvement of the children's memory with simple and easy explanations of objects. Also in presenting things rather than just talk about them teaching them to describe and understand their perceptions. Teaching the child, through drawing, to measure objects that he perceives to acquire the abilities to reproduce he made them exercise their manual abilities for writing. Teaching the children to consider each object they are given as a unity, separated from those they are associated with and adding one by one to help the children learn the relation between numbers. Start with the simplest things before they continue to more complicated subjects. Familiarize them as soon as possible with all the names of the things they are learning about, thus covering the basics of knowledge: what is it? How is it called? What is it looks like? What does it do and how?

Pestalozzi's method was logical and based on analytic and systematic conception. The main objective was to integrate children of limited means to the learning of a craft. The teacher was not seen as an authority but rather as an aid for the children, that should be at the service of their needs. They had to stimulate the children's confidence in their own capacities. And the school was very linked to the learning of a craft, more like workshops that actual schools combining teaching of reading, writing, drawing and religion with agriculture and practical activities.

The main interest for him was democratic education, including poor and outcast people. He used the method of teaching both sexes (coeducation). Since there were a great number of children, he also tried teaching some using others for help. He saw the importance of creative and productive education and including moral and religion in the pedagogic process to build the children's character as well as their minds. He consider that affective relations between children and their families influence the development of positive feelings, which means social education must be started at home and continued in school.

Trying to integrate poor children into society through work is a concept still valid today. The intuition, the use of feelings in the learning process is very important for this kind of education. The relation between the children and their environment, their perception of things, their relation with the world is the key to learn about it. Learning is the result of intuition, and so the child must be presented the things around him, before the explanations about all of them.