Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich. – Pedagogue and one of the pioneers of modern education, born in Zurich on 12 January 1746, from a family originally from Chiavenna that had converted to the Reformation and emigrated to Switzerland in the 16th century, died on 17 February 1827 at Neuhof.
I. LIFE
At first he was drawn to the vocation of “pastor”; but, having faltered at his first sermon and moreover fired by social reforms after reading Rousseau’s *Émile* and *The Social Contract*, he joined the “Helvetic Society of Patriots,” a revolutionary group with humanitarian aims. When the society was dissolved by the authorities and he developed a more measured conception of social renewal, he moved with his wife—his faithful collaborator—to Neuhof (1769), bought a farm there, and opened a school for poor and abandoned children, where they would learn not only to read, write, and do basic arithmetic but also agricultural work, household crafts, and cotton spinning (1774). The school closed due to financial difficulties (1779), and Pestalozzi entered a period of retreat during which he wrote *Abendstunde eines Einsiedlers* (1780), a series of 180 aphorisms in which the fundamental theme of his entire life recurs: extending education and instruction to all, even the poorest and most abandoned; deriving the ideal from family education; aiming to make each person happy within the family circle and in all aspects of life. Indeed, from the family he derived his conception of religion itself: “God, father of humanity; man, son of divinity; this is the pure substance of faith... Feeling of fatherhood, feeling of sonship; this blessing of the home, O man, is the consequence of your faith.” These fundamental ideas found clearer expression in the domestic novel *Lienhart und Gerd* (4 vols., 1781–87; new reworking [2 vols., 1790–92]), which made him famous and respected, procured him patrons, and brought him wide and high connections, even among princes and sovereigns. In it, Pestalozzi seeks to show how a corrupt village can be regenerated by the concerted and united efforts of a good “pastor,” a skilled magistrate, a zealous teacher, and above all by the work of Gertrude, a devoted wife, perfect mother, and soul of every enterprise. Especially in Book III, Pestalozzi sets forth a kind of manual of social pedagogy on the theme: the child must be educated more than instructed, prepared for economic life more than burdened with words and grammatical constructions.To give greater emphasis to his pedagogical aims, Pestalozzi added the popular work *Das Volksbuch Christoph und Else* (1781), in which a married couple, reading *Lienhart und Gertrud*, comment on the various relevant chapters, highlighting their high educational value. Spurred by the outbreak of the French Revolution, he also produced the speculative work *Nachforschungen über den Gang der Natur in der Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechtes* (1797), a rather obscure, dry, and at times contradictory book due to the author’s limited speculative and philosophical mindset. In it, he outlines humanity’s transition from an innocent state of nature to a legalistic state of society and emphasizes the need for human nature to perfect itself so as not to be hindered or corrupted by external influences, developing within itself natural religion, relying on moral sentiment, which naturally flows from II. The book *Figuren zu meinem ABC-Buch* (1797) aims to present these theories in a series of concise fables.
In 1798, Pestalozzi returned, but more determined, to his mission as a teacher and accepted the task of opening an orphanage school in Stanz, where he sought “through his experiment to prove that public education must imitate domestic education.” And domestically he lived among his eighty pupils, like a watchful and loving father among his children. But after eight months, the new Austro-Russian invasion turned the orphanage into a military hospital, and the school was closed. He opened another in the castle of Burgdorf, which was no longer to be merely a boarding school but also a teachers’ college, where the best students would teach under his guidance and in the light of his principles. There he was able to crystallize his first intuitions about his didactics and fully elaborate his methodological doctrine, which he wished to express in *Die Methode* (1800), *Wie Gertrud ihre Kinder lehrt* (1801), *ABC der Anschauung* (1803), and *Buch der Mutter* (1803). Though the school won applause and aroused wonder, it had to close after three years due to discord among the teachers. He then agreed to cooperate with E. Fellenberg at the school Fellenberg had opened at Münchenbuchsee, taking many of his Burgdorf pupils with him; but the characters of the two institutions were not suited to mutual understanding, so Pestalozzi withdrew and accepted the offer to open a new school in the castle at Yverdon (Iverdon), provided by the Regency (1805). For twenty years, Yverdon became the finest and most renowned educational institution in Europe; Pestalozzian methods and new principles were fully applied there, with wonderful developments and fruits that spread his fame: talented teachers, various types of schools from elementary to university-level, a family spirit, and bonds of love. Notable visitors came (F. Fichte, J. F. Herbart, Fr. Fröbel, G. Capponi), the Prussian government sent a group of young men to study there, and other governments dispatched special commissions to learn the new teaching method.
Nevertheless, the seeds of discord gradually undermined the institution, and even Yverdon was closed (1815). Pestalozzi then retired to a solitary life at Neuhof and resumed writing, both to clarify his thought further and to defend himself against the accusations and calumnies of his adversaries. Thus we have two other works that form a kind of autobiography: *Schwanengesang* (1826) and *Meine Lebensschicksale* (1826).
II. FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS
Pestalozzi’s work and doctrine are quite complex in their development, unsystematic, and not always clear; yet they are rich in valuable insights. Pestalozzi sought to discover the constant directives of human psychic nature in order to “psychologize” instruction and education, replacing traditional artificial pedantry with rules grounded in the psychology of the learner. The foundation of all pedagogical art is therefore human nature, endowed with three kinds of forces: moral, intellectual, and physical, or, as Pestalozzi expresses it, heart, mind, and skill. These three forces are present in man from the beginning, in the form of germs or dispositions, which the educator must help develop and advance in perfect harmony. Moral education is achieved through various means: a) the formation of moral sentiment through love, trust, gratitude, and obedience toward the mother, the teacher, and God; b) moral exercises or practices, since example is the best stimulus for understanding what is good; c) the formation of moral ideas by deepening awareness of the various environmental circumstances and events unfolding before the pupil’s eyes.Intellectual education must be based on these principles: a) intuition, by placing the child before things, starting from what is most familiar and training him to observe and grasp immediate impressions; b) the trilogy: name, form, and number, because to know an object the intelligence asks: how many objects do I have before me? (number) and how do they appear? (form); what are they called? (word or name); from this come the practical, intuitive rules for learning arithmetic, geometry, drawing, handwriting, and the formation and combination of words.
Physical education or skill (and Pestalozzi includes the industrial element here) aims to make the child and the man capable of outwardly expressing
They cultivated their own intelligence and carried out the impulses of the heart; capable, in short, of knowing how to act: hence recreations, gymnastics, swimming and manual work, which also gave the children of the people the opportunity to choose a useful, profitable trade suited to their own inclinations. As for religious education (and this is the weakest point of the Pestalozzian system), the founder proclaimed, it is true, religion and faith as the foundations of education; but it was a vague deism: God, in fact, was for him the universal love that manifests itself in the rising sun, in the murmur of the stream, etc. He spoke of Jesus Christ as redeemer and mediator, but considered Him merely a man, the best of men, and remained outside the Christian Revelation and dogmas; indeed, at Yverdon he even suppressed prayers. Hence his disciples divided into two schools: one rationalist (led by F. A. W. Diesterweg), the other Christian, which adopted the master’s methods without adopting his religious ideas (e.g., B. Overberg).
The principal and undeniable merit of Pestalozzi was, first of all, his complete and absolute dedication to childhood and the enthusiastic zeal, beyond all opposition and failure, with which he devoted himself to the school. He aspired only to be a schoolmaster and lived only for the school, sowing in the field of pedagogy seeds and ideas that, later developed and systematized, e.g., by Herbart and Fröbel, formed the modern stream of the school. He also championed the popularization of schooling, emphasizing its human and national value, especially for the poorer classes, and drew up schemes for organizing elementary popular instruction and vocational education. Indeed, Pestalozzian institutes served as models for all the states of Europe and trained cadres of exceptionally efficient teachers. Moreover, he insisted on demonstrating that the school can be an effective means of social and spiritual renewal only when it continues the work of the family, which is the first educator, cultivating the fruits of maternal presence: love, understanding, trust and benevolence. Some of his writings also effectively contributed to transforming pedagogy into a science.
It remains only to observe that Pestalozzi had an exaggerated esteem for the method (which gave rise to a veritable horde of method-hunters), believing he had found the one method suited to the psychological mechanism of man and therefore effective in itself, whatever the particular personality of the educator or the pupil. Hence a mechanism that in Yverdon itself marked the beginning of decline.