The History of Education Part 55

2. Workshops for manufacturing clothing and tools.

3. A printing and lithographing establishment.

4. A literary inst.i.tution for the education of the well-to-do.

5. A lower or _real_ school, which trained for handicrafts and middle-cla.s.s occupations.

6. An agricultural school for the education of the poor as farm laborers, and as teachers for the rural schools.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 12: FELLENBERG'S INSt.i.tUTE AT HOFWYL.

The first Agricultural and Mechanical College. This school contained the germ-idea of all our agricultural education.]

By 1810 the Inst.i.tution had begun to attract attention, and soon pupils and visitors came from distant lands to study in and to examine the schools. The agricultural school in particular aroused interest. More than one hundred Reports (R. 272) were published, in Europe and America, on this very successful experiment in a combined intellectual and manual- labor type of education. Fellenberg died in 1844, and his family discontinued the school in 1848.

Fellenberg's work was a continuation of the social-regeneration conception of education held by Pestalozzi, and contained the germ-idea of all our agricultural and industrial education. His plan was widely copied in Switzerland, Germany, England, and the United States. It was well suited to the United States because of the very democratic conditions then prevailing among an agricultural people possessed of but little wealth.

The plan of combining farming and schooling made for a time a strong appeal to Americans, and such schools were founded in many parts of the country. The idea at first was to unite training in agriculture with schooling, but it was soon extended to the rapidly rising mechanical pursuits as well. The plan, however, was rather short-lived in the United States, due to the rise of manufacturing and the opening of rich and cheap farms to the westward, and lasted with us scarcely two decades. A generation later it reappeared in the Central West in the form of a new demand for colleges to teach agricultural and mechanical arts, but with the manual-labor idea omitted. This we shall refer to again, later on (chapter xxix).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 167. FELLENBERG (1771-1844)]

IV. REDIRECTION OF THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS WORK. Though some form of parish school for the elements of religious instruction had existed in many places during the later Middle Ages, and foundations providing for some type of elementary instruction had appeared here and there in almost all lands, the elementary vernacular school, as we have previously pointed out, was nevertheless clearly the outcome of the Protestant movement in the sixteenth century, and in its origin was essentially a child of the Church. A child of the Church, too, for more than two centuries the elementary vernacular school remained. During these two centuries the elementary school made slow but rather unsatisfactory progress, due largely to there being no other motive for its maintenance or expansion than the original religious purpose. Only in the New England Colonies in North America, in some of the provinces of the Netherlands, and in a few of the German States had any real progress been made in evolving any different type of school out of this early religious creation, and even in these places the change was in form of control rather than in subject- matter or purpose. The school remained religious in purpose, even though its control was beginning to pa.s.s from the Church to the State.

Now, within half a century, beginning with the work of Rousseau (1762), and by means of the labors of the political philosophers of France, the Revolutionary leaders in the American Colonies, the legislative a.s.semblies and Conventions in France, and the experimental work of Basedow and his followers in German lands and of Pestalozzi and his disciples in Switzerland, the whole purpose and nature of the elementary vernacular school was changed. The American and French political revolutions and the more peaceful changes in England had ushered in new conceptions as to the nature and purpose and duties of government. As a consequence of these new ideas, education had come to be regarded in a new light, and to a.s.sume a new importance in the eyes of statesmen. In place of schools to serve religious and sectarian ends, and maintained as an adjunct of the parishes or of a State Church, the elementary vernacular school now came to be conceived of as an instrument of the State, the chief purpose of which was to serve state ends. Some time would, of course, be required to develop the state support necessary to effect the complete transformation in control, and the forces of reaction would naturally delay the process as much as possible, but the theory of state purpose had at last been so effectively proclaimed, and the forces of a modern world were pushing the idea so steadily forward, that it was only a question of time until the change would be effected.

A NEW IMPETUS FOR CHANGE IN CONTROL. Basedow and Pestalozzi, too, had given the movement for a transfer of control a new impetus by working out new methods in instruction and in organizing new subject-matter for the school, and methods and subject-matter which harmonized with the spirit and principles of the new democracy that had been proclaimed. Pestalozzi in particular had sought, guided by a clearer insight into the educational problem than Basedow possessed (R. 271), to create a school in which children might, under the wise guidance of the teacher, develop and strengthen their own "faculties" and thus evolve into reasoning, self- directing human beings, fitted for usefulness and service in a modern world. To make intelligent and reasoning individuals of all citizens, to develop moral and civic character, to train for life in organized society, and to serve as an instrument by means of which an ignorant, drunken, immoral, and shiftless working-cla.s.s and peasantry might be elevated into men and women of character, intelligence, and directive power, was in Pestalozzi's conception the underlying meaning of the school. After Pestalozzi, the earlier conception as to the religious purpose of the elementary vernacular schools, by means of which children were to be trained almost exclusively "in the principles of our holy religion" and to become "loyal church members," and to "fit them for that station in life in which it hath pleased their Heavenly Father to place them," was doomed.

In its stead there was certain to arise a newer conception of the school as an instrument of that form of organized society known as the State, and maintained by the State to train its future citizens for intelligent partic.i.p.ation in the duties and obligations of citizenship, and for social, moral, and economic efficiency.

THE WAY NOW BECOMING CLEAR. After two hundred and fifty years of confusion and political failure, the way was now at last becoming clear for the creation of national instead of church systems of elementary education, and for the firm establishment of the elementary vernacular school as an important obligation to its future citizens of every progressive modern State and the common birthright of all. This became distinctively the work of the nineteenth century. It also became the work of the nineteenth century to gather up the old secondary-school and university foundations, acc.u.mulated through the ages, and remould them to meet modern needs, fuse them into the national school systems created, and connect them in some manner with the people's schools. To see how this was done we next turn to the beginnings of the organization of national school systems in the German States, France, Italy, England, and the United States. These may be taken as types. As Prussia was the first modern State to grasp the significance of national education, and to organize state schools, we shall begin our study by first tracing the steps by which this transformation was effected there.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Compare the statement of the valuable elements in the theories of Rousseau (p. 530) with the main ideas of Basedow (p. 535); Ratke (p. 607); Comenius (p. 409).

2. Do we accept all the fourteen points of Rousseau's theory to-day?

3. Might a Rousseau have done work of similar importance in Russia, early in the twentieth century? Why?

4. Explain the educational significance of "self-activity," "sense impressions," and "harmonious development."

5. What were the strong points in the experimental work of Basedow?

6. Explain the great enthusiasm which his rather visionary statements and plans awakened.

7. Show the importance of such work as that of Basedow in preparing the way for better-organized reform work.

8. How far was Pestalozzi right as to the power of education to give men intellectual and moral freedom?

9. What do you understand Pestalozzi to have meant by "the development of the faculties"?

10. State the importance of the work of Pestalozzi from the point of view of showing the world how to deal with orphans and defectives.

11. Show how the germs of agricultural and technical education lay in the work of Fellenberg.

12. Explain the greater popularity of the _emile_ in German lands.

13. State the change in subject-matter and aims from the vernacular church school to the school as thought out by Pestalozzi.

14. Show that it was a fortunate conjunction that brought the work of Pestalozzi alongside of that of the political reformers of France.

15. What differences might there have been had Comenius lived and done his work in the time of Pestalozzi?

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following selections, ill.u.s.trative of the contents of this chapter, are reproduced:

264. Rousseau: Ill.u.s.trative Selections from the _emile_.

265. Basedow: Instruction in the _Philanthropinum_.

266. Basedow: A Page from the _Elementarwerk_.

267. Pestalozzi: Explanation of his Work.

268. Griscom: A Visit to Pestalozzi at Yverdon.

269. Woodbridge: An Estimate of Pestalozzi's Work.

270. Dr. Mayo: On Pestalozzi.

271. Woodbridge: Work of Pestalozzi and Basedow compared.

272. Griscom: Hofwyl as seen by an American.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Show the fallacy of Rousseau's reasoning (264 d) as to society being a denominator which prevents man from realizing himself.

2. What are the elements of truth and falsity in Rousseau's idling-to-the- twelfth-year (264 d) idea?

3. Would such a training up to twelve (264 e) be possible, or desirable?

4. What type of education is presupposed in 264 f?

5. Show the similarity in the conceptions of the _Orbis Pictus_ (221) and the _Elementarwerk_ (266).

6. What types of schools and conceptions of education were combined in the Philanthropinum (265)?

7. Just what did Pestalozzi attempt (267) to accomplish?

8. Compare the accounts as to purpose and instruction given by Pestalozzi (267) and Griscom (268).

9. What do the tributes of Woodbridge (269) and Mayo (270) reveal as to the character of Pestalozzi and his influence?