Pestalozzianism

Pestalozzianism, pedagogical doctrines of Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) stressing that instruction should proceed from the familiar to the new, incorporate the performance of concrete arts and the experience of actual emotional responses, and be paced to follow the gradual unfolding of the child’s development. His ideas flow from the same stream of thought that includes Johann Friedrich Herbart, Maria Montessori, John Dewey, and more recently Jean Piaget and advocates of constructivist theories of curriculum development.

Strongly influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s regard for the common people, Pestalozzi devoted himself to bettering the lot of the poor. Personally inspiring, he was a terrible administrator and seemed unable to formulate his own ideas or put them into practice successfully. Had it not been for a stream of influential visitors—including Herbart, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Friedrich Froebel—to his schools, Pestalozzi’s ideas might never have achieved currency among the great educational doctrines.

Pestalozzi’s curriculum, which was modeled after Rousseau’s plan in Émile, emphasized group rather than individual recitation, and it focused on such participatory activities as drawing, writing, singing, physical exercise, model making, collecting, mapmaking, and field trips. Among his ideas, considered radically innovative at the time, were making allowances for individual differences, grouping students by ability rather than age, and encouraging formal teacher training as part of a scientific approach to education.