Life and practice
Inspired by Rousseau's Emile, Pestalozzi tried to educate poor children on his Neuhof farm, cared for war orphans at Stans in 1799, and developed his method at Burgdorf and the Yverdon institute, which educators from across Europe visited.
Anschauung
All knowledge begins with sense impression. Children should learn by observing and handling real things rather than words and books, moving step by step from simple to complex and near to far. He reduced the elements of perception to number (how many), form (what shape) and language (what name).
Head, heart and hand
- Head: intellectual powers
- Heart: moral and religious feeling, love and trust
- Hand: practical and physical skill
These should develop in balance, with the heart, the basis of morality, as the foundation.
Home and social reform
In The Evening Hours of a Hermit he insisted that the man on the throne and the man in the hut share the same human nature and the same right to education. Love and trust between mother and child are the start of moral education, and school should feel like a family living room. Education was his means of making the poor self-reliant.
Influence
His ideas shaped Froebel's kindergarten, Herbart's pedagogy, 19th-century Prussian and American elementary schooling and the object lesson, and are seen as roots of experiential, whole-child education.
References
- Pestalozzi, J. H. (1894). How Gertrude Teaches Her Children (L. E. Holland & F. C. Turner, Trans.). Swan Sonnenschein. (Original work published 1801)
- Silber, K. (1960). Pestalozzi: The Man and His Work. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
- Soëtard, M. (1994). Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Prospects: The Quarterly Review of Comparative Education, 24(1/2), 297-310. UNESCO International Bureau of Education.