How Gertrude Teachers Her Children

It is true there lay deep in my soul’s consciousness a prevision of the highest that might and should be aimed at, through a deeper insight into the very nature of education; and it is indisputable that the idea of elementary education was implied in the view I took in its full significance, and shimmered forth in every word that I spoke. But the impulse within me to seek and find for the people simple methods of instruction, intelligible to every one, did not originate in the prevision that lay in me of the highest that could come from the results of these methods when found; but on the contrary this prevision resulted from the reality of the impulse that led me to seek these methods. This soon led me naturally and simply to see that intelligible methods of instructions must, as a general principle, start from simple beginning points; and that if they are carried on in a continuous graduated series the results must be psychologically certain. But this view of mine was far from being philosophically and clearly defined and scientifically connected. As I was unable by abstract deductions to arrive at a satisfactory result, I wanted to prove my views practically, and tried originally by experiments to make clear to myself what I really wished and was capable of doing, in order by this path to find the means of accomplishing my purpose. All that I strove for then, and strive for now, is closely connected in my mind with that which twenty years before I had tried on my estate.

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The crumb lying on the road arrested me if I thought it would afford the least bit of nourishment to my effort and further it. I must pick it up. I must stop at it and examine it, and before I know it enough in this way I cannot possibly consider it critically and look upon it as instructive for me, in universal connection and combination with all the relations, which as a single thing, it bears to our efforts. My whole manner of life has given me no power, and no inclination, to strive hastily after bright and clear ideas on any subject, before, supported by facts, it has a background in me that has awakened some self confidence. Therefore to my grave I shall remain in a kind of fog about most of my views. But I must say, if this fog has a background of various and sufficiently vivid sense-impressions, it is a holy for me. It is the only light in which I live, or can live. And in this peculiar twilight of mine I go on towards my goal in peace and freedom, and at the point I have reached, in striving after my ideal, I stand firm to my conviction, that while I have done very little in my life to reach ideas that can be defined with philosophical certainty by words, yet in my own way I have found a few means to my end, which I should not have found by such philosophical inquiries after clear ideas of my subject, as I was capable of making. Therefore I do not entirely regret my backwardness. I ought not. I ought to pursue my way of experiments, which is the way of my life, willingly and gladly, without desiring the fruit of a tree of knowledge that for me and for the idiosyncrasy of my nature, is forbidden fruit. If I pursue the road of my experiments, however limited, honestly, faithfully, and energetically, I think by doing so I am what I am, and know what I know, and my life and action, though imperfect, is not merely a blind groping after experiments not really understood - I hope it is more. I hope in my way to make some few points of my subject philosophically clear, that could not so easily be made equally clear in any other way. The idiosyncrasies of individuals are, in my opinion, the greatest blessing of human nature, and the one basis of its highest and most essential blessings; therefore they should be respected in the highest degree.

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Letter 1

All instruction of man is then only the Art of helping nature to develop in her own way; and this Art rests essentially on the relation and harmony between the impressions received by the child and the exact degree of his developed powers. It is also necessary, in the impressions that are brought to the child by instruction, that there should be a sequence, so that beginning and progress should keep pace with the beginning and progress of the powers to be developed in the child. I soon saw that an inquiry into this sequence throughout the whole range of human knowledge, particularly those fundamental points from which the development of the human mind originates, must be the simple and only way ever to attain and to keep satisfactory school and instruction books, of every grade, suitable for our nature and our wants. I saw just as soon, that in making these books, the constituents of instruction must be separated according to the degree of the growing power of the child; and that in all matters of instruction, it is necessary to determine, with the greatest accuracy, which of these constituents is fit for each age of the child, in order, on the one hand, not to hold him back if he is ready, and on the other, not to load him and confuse him with anything which he is not quite ready.

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I am convinced that nature brings the children, even at this age (three years), to a very definite consciousness of innumerable objects. It only needs that we should, with psychological art, unite speech with this knowledge, in order to bring it to a high degree of clearness; and so enable us to connect the foundations of many-sided arts and truths to that which nature herself teaches, and also to use what nature teaches as a means of explaining all the fundamentals of art and truth that can be connected with them. Their power and their experience both are great at this age; but our unpsychological schools are essentially only artificial stifling-machines for destroying all the results of the power and experience that nature herself brings to life in them.

You know it, my friend. But for a moment picture yourself the horror of this murder. We leave children, up to their fifth year, in the full enjoyment of nature; we let every impression of nature work upon them; they feel their power; they already know full well the joy of unrestrained liberty and all its charms. The free natural bent, which the sensuous happy wild thing takes in his development, has in them already taken its most decided direction. And after they have enjoyed this happiness of sensuous life for five whole years, we make all nature round them vanish from before their eyes; tyrannically stop the delightful course of their unrestrained freedom, pen them up like sheep, whole flocks huddled together, in stinking rooms; pitilessly chain them for hours, days, weeks, months, years, to the contemplation of unattractive and monotonous letters (and, contrasted with their former condition), to a maddening course of life.

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Letter 2

Since, however, he heard me talk with Fischer of education and the culture of the people, on the first days of his visit, and heard me distinctly declare against the Socratizing of our candidates, with the expression, that I was wholly against making the judgment of children upon any subject, apparently ripe before their time, but rather would hold it back as long as possible, until they really had seen with their own eyes, the object on which they should express themselves, from all sides, and under several conditions, and had become quite familiar with words, by which they could describe its essential characteristics. Kruesli felt that he decidedly wanted this himself, and that he needed just this training that I intended to give my children.

. . . Kruesli felt daily more and more that his way was not among books, so long as he was wanting in the fundamental knowledge of things and of words, which these books presupposed more or less. Fortunately he became more confirmed in his self-knowledge, by seeing before his eyes, the effect produced on the children by being taken back to the beginning points of human knowledge, and by my patient dwelling on these points. This changed his whole view of instruction, and all the fundamental ideas he had formed thereon. He now saw that in all that I did, I tried more to develop the inner capacity of the child, than to produce isolated results by my actions; and he was convinced, through the effect of this principle in the whole range of my method of development, that in this way the foundations of intelligence and further progress were laid in the children as could never be attained in any other way.

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Letter 4

Friend, this view of things led me naturally to the conviction that it is essential and urgent, not merely to plaster over the school evils, which enervate the great majority of the men of Europe, but to heal them at the root, - that consequently half-measures in this matter will easily turn into second doses of poison, which not only cannot stop the effects of the first, but must surely double them. I certainly did not want that. Meanwhile, the consciousness began daily to develop in me that it must be absolutely impossible to remedy school evils as a whole, if one cannot succeed in reducing the mechanical formulas of instruction to those eternal laws, according to which the human mind rises from mere sense impressions to clear ideas.

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I now sought for laws to which the development of the human mind must, by its very nature, be subject. I knew they must be the same as those of physical nature, and trusted to find them in a safe clue to a universal psychological method of instruction. “Man,” I said to myself, while dreamily seeking this clue, “as you recognize in every physical ripening of the complete fruit the result of perfection in all its parts, so consider no human judgment ripe that does not appear to you to be the result of a complete sense impression of all the parts of the object to be judged; but on the contrary, look upon every judgment that seems ripe before a complete observation has been made, as nothing but a worm-eaten, and therefore apparently ripe fruit, fallen untimely from the tree.”

1. Learn therefore to classify observations and complete the simple before proceeding to the complex. Try to make in every art, graduated steps of knowledge, in which every new idea is only a small, almost imperceptible, addition to that which has been known before, deeply impressed and not to be forgotten.

2. Again, bring all things, essentially related to each other, to that connection in your mind which they have in nature. Subordinate all unessential things to essential in your idea. Especially subordinate the impression given by the art to that given by nature and reality; and give nothing a greater weight in your idea, than it has in relation to your race in nature.

3. Strengthen and make clear the impressions of important objects by bringing them nearer to you by the art, and letting them affect you through different senses. Learn for this purpose the first law of physical mechanism, which makes the relative power of all influences of physical nature depend on the physical nearness or distance of the object in contact with the senses. Never forget this physical nearness or distance has an immense effect in determining your positive opinions, conduct, duties and even virtue.

4. Regard all the effects of natural law as absolutely necessary, and recognize in this necessity the result of her power, by which nature unites together the apparently heterogeneous elements of her materials, for the achievement of her end. Let the art with which you work through instruction, upon your race, and the results you aim at, be founded upon natural law, so that all your actions may be means to this principal end, although apparently heterogeneous.

5. But the richness of its charm, and the variety of its free play cause physical necessity, or natural law, to bear the impress of freedom and independence.

Let the results of your art and your instruction, while you try to found them upon natural law, by the richness of their charm and the variety of their free play, bear the impression of freedom and independence.

All these laws, to which the development of human nature is subject, converge towards one center. They converge towards the center of our whole being, and we ourselves are the center.

Friend, all that I am, all I wish, all I might be, comes out of myself. Should not my knowledge also come out of myself?

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Letter 6

Thus I found, in teaching to read, the necessity of its subordination to the power of talking; and in endeavor to find a means of teaching children to talk, I came on the principle of joining this art to the sequences by which nature rises from sound to word, and from word, gradually to language.

Again, I found in this effort to teach writing, the need of subordinating this art to that of drawing, and in the efforts to teach drawing the combination with, and subordination of, this art to that of measurement. Also teaching spelling developed in me the want of a book for early childhood, through which I trusted to raise the actual knowledge of three and four year old children, above the knowledge of seven and eight year old school-children. These experiences that I learned practically, led me indeed to isolated helps in instruction, but at the same time made me feel that I did not yet know the true scope and inner depth of my subject.

I long sought for a common psychological origin for all these means of instruction, because I was convinced, that only through this, it might be possible to discover the form, in which the cultivation of mankind is determined through the very laws of nature itself. It is evident this form is founded in the general organization of the mind, by means of which our understanding binds together in receptivity, the impressions received by the sensibility of our nature, into a whole, that is into an idea, and gradually unfolds this idea (or conception) clearly.

“Every line, every measure, every word,” said I to myself “is a result of understanding generated from ripened sense impressions and must be regarded as a means toward the progressive clearing up of our ideas.” Also, all instruction is essentially nothing but this. Its principles must therefore be derived from the immutable prototype of human mental development.

Everything depends on the exact knowledge of this prototype. I therefore, once more began to keep my eye on these beginning points, from which it must be derived. “This world,” said I in reverie, “lies before our eyes like a sea of confused sense impressions, flowing one into the other. If our development, through nature only, is not sufficiently rapid and unimpeded, the business of instruction is to remove the confusion of these sense impressions; to separate the objects one from another; to put together in imagination those that resemble or are related to each other, and in this way to make all clear to us, and by perfect clearness in these, to raise in us distinct ideas. It does this when it presents these confused and blurred sense impressions to us one by one; then places these separate sense impressions in different changing positions before our eyes; and lastly, brings them into connection with the whole cycle of our previous knowledge.

So our knowledge grows from confusion to definiteness; from definiteness to plainness; and from plainness to perfect clearness.

Letter 7

The first elementary means of instruction is, then, SOUND.

The second special means of instruction flowing from the power of making sounds, or the elementary method of sound, is WORD OR RATHER NAME TEACHING.

The third special means of instruction, based on the power of making sounds is LANGUAGE TEACHING PROPER. And here I arrive at the point at which the special form begins to disclose itself, according to which the art, by using the special characteristics of our race, language, can keep pace with the course of nature, in our development. But what do I say? The form discloses itself, by which man, according to the will of the Creator, should take the instruction of our race out of the hands of blind and senseless nature, and put it into the guidance of those better powers which he has developed in himself for ages. The form discloses itself, independent, like the human race, by which man can give a precise and comprehensive direction to, and hasten the development of, these faculties, for whose development nature has given him powers and means, but no guidance.

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And here I find myself on the boundary where my own work ends, and where the powers of my children should have reached a point when they should be able in any kind of knowledge to which their inclination leads them, to use, independently, such helps as already exist; but which are of such a nature, that until now, only a privileged few could use them. So far, and no further do I wish to come. I did not and do not wish to teach the world art and science; I know none. I did and do wish to make the learning of the first beginning points easy for the common people, who are forsaken and left to run wild; to open the doors of art, which are the doors of manliness, to the poor and weak of the land; and if I can, to set fire to the barrier that keeps the humbler citizens of Europe, in respect to that individual power which is the foundation of all true art, far behind the barbarians of the south and north, because, in the midst of our vaunted and valued general enlightenment, it shuts out one man in ten from the social rights of men, from the right to be educated, or at least from the possibility of using that right.

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Letter 9

Friend! When I now look back and ask myself: What have I specially done for the very being of education? I find I have fixed the highest, supreme principle of instruction to recognition of sense impression as the absolute foundation of all knowledge. Apart from all special teaching I have sought to discover the nature of teaching itself; and the prototype, by which nature herself has determined the instruction of our race. I find I have reduced all instruction to three elementary means; and have sought for special methods which should render the results of all instruction in these three branches absolutely certain.

Lastly, I have brought these three elementary means into harmony with each other, and made instruction, in all three branches, not only harmonious with itself in many ways, but also with human nature, and have brought it nearer to the course of nature in the development of the human race.

But while I did this, I found, in necessity, that the instruction of our country, as it is publicly and generally conducted for the people, wholly and entirely ignores sense impression as the supreme principle of instruction, that throughout it does not take sufficient notice of the prototype, within which the instruction of our race is determined by the necessary laws of our nature itself; that it rather sacrifices the essentials of all teaching to the hurly burly of isolated teaching of special things and kills the spirit of truth by dishing up all kinds of broken truths, and extinguishes the power of self-activity which rests upon it, in the human race. I found, and it was clear as the day, that this kind if instruction reduces its particular methods neither to elementary principles nor to elementary forms; that by the neglect of sense impression, as the absolute foundation of all knowledge, it is unable by any of its unconnected methods to attain the end of all instruction, clear ideas, and even to make those limited results, at which it solely aims, absolutely certain.

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And every time I reconsider it I come back to the assertion, that the deficiencies of European instruction, or rather, the artificial inversion of all natural principles of instruction, has brought the world where it is now; and that there is no remedy for our present and future overturn in society, morality and religion except to turn back from the superficiality, incompleteness, and giddy-headedness of our popular instruction, and to recognize that sense impression is absolutely the foundation of all knowledge; in other words, all knowledge grows out of sense impression and may be traced back to it.

Letter 10

Friend! Sense impression, considered as the point at which all instruction begins, must be differentiated from the art of sense impression or Anschauung which teaches us the relations of all forms. Sense impression, as the common foundation of all three elementary means of instruction, must come as long before the art of sense impression as it comes before the arts of reckoning and speaking. If we consider sense impression as opposed to the art of sense impression or Anshauung, separately and by itself, it is nothing but the presence of the external object before the senses which rouses consciousness of the impression made by it. With it nature begins all instruction.

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Friend! The annihilation of all real power in our country, by this unnatural monkish instruction and all the misery of its unconnected teaching, is incredible. Incredible, also, is the degree in which all natural means of rising through sense impression to true knowledge, and all enticement to strengthen ourselves for this purpose, has vanished from our midst; because this unconnected teaching has dazzled us with the charm of a language which we speak without having knowledge founded on sense-impression, of the ideas which we let fall from our mouths. I repeat: The mass of our public schools not only give us nothing, but, on the contrary, they quench all that in us, which humanity has without schools, that which every savage possesses, to a degree of which we can form no conception. This is a truth which is applicable to no part of the world and no age but ours.

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It is evident that clear ideas must be worked out, or cultivated in the child by teaching, before we can take for granted that he is able to understand the result of such training – the clear idea, or rather its statement in words.

The way to clear ideas depends on making all objects clear to the reason in their proper order. This order again rests on the harmony of all the arts, by which a child is enabled to express himself clearly about the properties of all things, particularly about the measure, number, and form of any object. In this way, and no other, can the child be led to a comprehensive knowledge of the whole nature of any object, and become capable of defining it, that is, of stating its whole nature, with the utmost precision and brevity, in words. All definitions, that is, all such clear statements in words, of the nature of any object contain essential truth for the child, only so far as he has a clear, vivid background of sense-impression of the object to be defined, is wanting, he only learns to play with words, to deceive himself and blindly believe in words, whose sounds convey no idea to him, or give him no other thought than that he has just given out a sound.

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Letter 12

I cannot leave these gaps untouched. Perhaps the most fearful gift that a fiendish spirit has made to this age is knowledge without power of doing and insight without that power of exertion or of overcoming that makes it possible and easy for our life to be in harmony with our inmost nature.

Man, needing much and desiring all, thou must, to satisfy thy wants and wishes, know and think, but for this thou must also do. And knowing and doing are so closely connected, that if one cease the other ceases with it. But this harmony between thy life and thy inmost nature can only be, if the powers of doing (without which it is impossible to satisfy thy wishes and wants) are cultivated in thee with just the same art, and raised to the same degree of perfection, as thy insight into the objects of thy wants and wishes. The cultivation of these activities rests then on the same organic laws as the cultivation of knowledge.

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Letter 13

It is incomprehensible that mankind does not recognize this universal source of ruin. It is incomprehensible that it is not the one universal aim of their art to stop it, and to subordinate the education of our race to principles which do not destroy the work of God, the feelings of love, gratitude and trust already developed in infancy, but which must at this dangerous time tend specially to care for those means of uniting our moral and spiritual improvement implanted in our nature by God Himself, and to bring education and instruction into harmony, on the one side, with those laws of the physical mechanism according to which our God raises us from vague sense impressions to clear ideas, and on the other, with those feelings of my inner nature, through the gradual development of which my mind rises to recognize and venerate the moral law. It is incomprehensible that mankind does not begin to bring out a perfect gradation of methods for developing the mind and feelings, the essential purpose of which should be, to use the advantages of instruction and its mechanism for the preservation of moral perfection, to prevent the selfishness of the reason by preserving the purity of the heart from error and one-sidedness; and above all, to subordinate my sense impressions to my convictions, my eagerness to my benevolence, and my benevolence to my righteous will.

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Letter 14

Friend! I go further now and ask myself: What have I done to work against the evils that affected me throughout my life, from a religious point of view? Friend! If by my efforts I have in any way succeeded in preparing the road to the goal at which I have been aiming, that is to take human education out of the hands of blind nature, to free it from the destructive influence of her sensual side, and the power of the routine of her miserable teaching, and to put it into the hands of the noblest powers of our nature, the soul of which is faith and love; if I can only in some slight degree succeed in making the art of education begin in the sanctuary of home, more than it now does, and to put new life into the religious instinct of our race, from this tender side; if I should only have partly succeeded in bringing nearer to my contemporaries the withered rootstock of mental and spiritual education, and an art of education in harmony with the noblest powers of heart and mind; if I have done this, my life will be blessed, and I shall see my greatest hopes fulfilled.

Pestalozzi, Johann H. How Gertrude Teaches Her Children an Attempt to Help Mothers to Teach Their Children and an Account of the Method. Translated by L.E. Holland and F.C. Turner. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1915.