M IOigan' 1,f
4  $ '?
)d  E
l  4  t s


m
















is~~-m




History of the
PESTALOZZIAN MOVEMENT
IN


the United


States


With nine portraits and a bibliography
BY
WILL S. MONROE


SYRACUSE, N. Y.
(. W. BARDEEN, PUBLISHER
Copyright, 1907, by Will S. Monroe


274




BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
1. THE EDUCATIONAL LABORS OF HENRY BARNARD: A Study
in the History of American Pedagogy. Syracuse: C. W.
Bardeen, 1893. pp. 35. With our portraits and a bibliography.
2. COMENIUS' SCHOOL OF INFANCY: An Essay on the Education of Youth during the First Six Years. (Heath's Pedagogical Library.) Edited with notes, introduction, bibliography, and portrait of Comenius. Boston: D. C. Heath
and Company. London: Isbister and Company, 1896. pp.
xiv plus 99.
3. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF EDUCATION. (International Education
Series.) New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1897.
pp. xxiv plus 202.
4. DIE ENTWICKELUNG DES SOZIALEN BEWUSSTSEINS DER
KINDER: Studie zur Psychologie und Paedagogik der Kindheit. (Sammlung von Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete
der paedagogischen Psychologie und Physiologie.) Berlin:
Reuther und Reichard. 1899. pp. 88.
5. The same translated into Swedish by J. Engdhal. Lund: Ph.
Lindstedt, 1900.
6. The same translated into Dutch by M. J. Vies. Amsterdam:
G. P. Tierie, 1904.
7. COMENIUS AND THE BEGINNINGS OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM.
(Great Educator Series.) New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons. London: William Heinemann 1900. pp. xi plus 184.,A, /
1<




To
MY TEACHER AND FRIEND
PROFESSOR EARL BARNES
this volume is dedicated with the warm esteem
and the high regard of
THE AUTHOR








PREFACE


No educator in modern times has more profoundly influenced his contemporaries and immediate successors than Pestalozzi. More marked
in Germany than elsewhere, the United States,
nevertheless, felt the impulse of the new movement; and at an early period American students
of education visited Yverdon and brought to the
new world the message of the Swiss reformer.
The history of education in the United States is
unfortunately yet unwritten; and young as our
country is in years, many of the men and movements connected with its beginnings are already
forgotten, or remembered only by a few special
students. This is true in a marked degree of the
early American disciples of Pestalozzi.
The purpose of the present work is to trace
this movement in the United States, and to
place on record the labors of a score of men who
caught something of Pestalozzi's insight and
1




2


PREFACE


enthusiasm and who sought to bring about a better
order in the educational world by the adaptation
of his reforms to the conditions in the new world.
A brief survey of the European movement
seemed needful since many Americans were directly influenced by German and English disciples.
A chapter is given to Mr. William Maclure, an
American by adoption and a philanthropist by
profession. His contribution to the Pestalozzian
movement was early and large; and yet it is
more than probable that scarcely a score of our
professional educators of to-day know more than
his name.
The name of Joseph Neef and the title of his
excellent book are scarcely better known than
Mr. Maclure's labors; and yet it was Neef who
published the first book on the science of education in the new world. Three chapters are devoted to Neef-one to his life, another to an analysis of his educational writings, and a third to his
first efforts to introduce Pestalozzi's method in
American education.




PREFACE


3


The educational feature of Owen's social experiments at New Harmony, in the sixth chapter,
continues the labors of Maclure and Neef and introduces a half dozen scientists and reformers
vaguely interested in the general Pestalozzian
movement.
While many New England educational reformers became ardent advocates of the doctrines of
Pestalozzi, the seventh chapter points out that
this section of the United States was less profoundly influenced by the new doctrines than
other parts of the country.
The Oswego movement, while of later origin,
for a period of twenty years or more made generally familiar to the American educational public
the system of Pestalozzi, and more particularly
his use of object teaching; and still later the public schools of St. Louis, under the judicious superintendency of William T. Harris, applied the same
feature of Pestalozzi's scheme to the teaching of
natural science in the elementary schools.
A brief chapter traces the publication of the




4


PREFACE


writings of Pestalozzi in this country7and the
exposition of his doctrines by American disciples;
and there has been appended a bibliography, to
which the small numbers in the body of the
book refer.
The author wishes to express his sense of obligation to numerous friends who have aided him in
his work. To Professor Earl Barnes he is indebted
for the use of considerable material relating to
Joseph Neef; and to the late Mrs. Robert Owen,
Mr. Neef's daughter, for the use of many of the
papers and documents belonging to and relating
to her father. Professor Amos W. Farnham has
aided in verifying several of the dates in the
chapter on the Oswego movement and furnished
two portraits. Bibliographic references, in the
closing chapter, indicate the authorities consulted in the preparation of the book. For the
use of many of these books, the author is indebted
to that splendid literary workshop, the City Library at Springfield, Massachusetts.
A portrait of Joseph Neef is published for the




PREFACE                 5
first time; and the portraits of William Maclure
and William C. Woodbridge are published for the
second time from works that have long been out
of print. Mr. Frank B. Sanborn and Little,
Brown & Co. kindly permitted the use of the
portrait of A. Bronson Alcott.
WrILL S. MONROE
Westfield, Mass., December the I6th, I906




I     -.. a
I  I   -   - 




CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE...............................  5
I. SPREAD OF PESTALOZZIANISM IN EUROPE..  5
II. WILLIAM MACLURE: FIRST DISCIPLE OF
PESTALOZZI.........................   9
III. JOSEPH NEEF: COADJUTOR OF PESTALOZZI................................  39
IV. NEEF'S PLAN AND AIETHOD OF EDUCATION................................  61
V. FIRST AMERICAN PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL
AT PHILADELPHIA..................... 77
VI. PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL IN THE NEW HARMONY COMMUNITY.....................  97
VII. PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND.. 109
VIII. PESTALOZZIANISM AT THE OSWEGO
NORMAL SCHOOL.......................e   \
IX. WILLIAM T. HARRIS AND THE SCHOOLS
OF  ST. LOUIS..........................  4 9 S '
X. PESTALOZZIAN LITERATURE IN THE
UNITED STATES........................ 2  D
XI. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE PESTALOZZIAN
MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES....... 215




LIST OF PORTRAITS.


1. WILLIAM MACLURE (1763-1840). Frontispiece.
From a painting by James Northcote in possession of the Philadelphia Academy of Science.
2. JOSEPH NEEF (1770-1854). Facing page 61
From a painting by David Dale Owen; published for the first
time.
3. WILLIAM    CHANNING WOODBRIDGE (1794-1845).         Facing
page 140
From a painting by Bowman.
4. JOHN GRISCOM (1774-1852), Facing page 207
From a steel engraving.
5. AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT (1799-1888). Facing page 146
From a crayon portrait by Mrs. Richard Hildreth, used by
courtesy of Mr. Frank B. Sanborn and Little, Brown & Co.
6. HENRY BARNARD (1811-1900). Facing page 164
From a painting in the Connecticut Historical Society.
7. HERMAN KRUESI, JR. (1817-1903). Facing page 185
Used by courtesy of Professor Amos W. Farnham.
8. EDWARD AUSTIN SHELDON (1823-1897). Facing page 169
Used by courtesy of Professor Amos W. Farnham.
9. WILLIAM TORREY HARRIS (1835-         ). Facing page 195
From a photograph.




CHAPTER ][


SPREAD OF PESTALOZZIANISM         IN EUROPE
Widespread dissemination of the doctrines of Pestalozzi. Influence in Switzerland: Fellenberg and Wehrli.-Kriisi,
Tobler, Nageli and de Guimps. Influence in Germany:
Fichte-Griiner-Froebel- Herbart-Ritter-von TurkHarnisch- Plamann- Denzel-Zeller-Blochmann-Diesterweg. Influence in France: Jullien, Chavannes and
de Biran. Influence in Spain: Voitel and William Maclure.
Influence in Russia and Denmark. Influence in England:
Greaves - Charles and Elizabeth Mayo - Home and Colonial School Society.
It is not the purpose of the present work to
define Pestalozzianism     or to discuss the principles upon which it is based. Such definitions
and discussions will be found in the standard
works    treating   of the   subject by     Barnard,2
de   Guimps,5     Kriisi8   and    Pinloche 13;    and
bibliographic references to these works will be
found at the end of this volume.         The purpose
9




IO


PESTALOZZIANISM IN EUROPE


of the author, on the other hand, is to trace the
diffusion of Pestalozzianism, first, briefly in the
countries of Europe, and, secondly, in much
more detail, in the United States.
The doctrines of no other great educational
reformer have received such wide dissemination
and such general acceptance as those of Pestalozzi; and it is of interest to the student of
education to know the agencies operating in
this dispersion and adoption. Not only Switzerland, but Germany, France, Spain, Russia,
Denmark, England and the United States made
immediate application of the chief reforms advocated by Pestalozzi.
i. Switzerland
Pestalozzi was not without honor in his own
country. Indeed, as Kriisi8 has pointed out,
Switzerland was the first country to adopt his
methods and to profit by the principles which he
established. A less formidable list of Pestalozzian disciples is presented to the historian of ed



SWITZERLAND


II


ucation by Switzerland than by Germany; nevertheless, there are worthy and distinguished names
on the list-including Fellenberg, Wehrli, Kriisi,
Tobler, Nabholz, de Guimps, and Nageli.
Philipp Emmanuel von Fellenberg (177 1-1844),
the founder of a famous school on Pestalozzian
lines at Hofwyl, attained a larger measure of material success than his master. Twice (I804 and
again in 1817) Pestalozzi associated himself with
Fellenberg, but they found it impossible to agree.
The school at Hofwyl was organized in 1799 and
during the first half of the last century it was the
most successful and-to except Yverdon-the
most famous educational institution in Europe.
It consisted of a group of educational institutions,
including a farm of six hundred acres, workshops
for the manufacture and repair of clothing and
agricultural implements, a printing establishment, a literary institution for the education of
the sons of the better classes, a trade school, an
agricultural school. Fellenberg had philanthropic
motives-receiving poor boys and even convicts




I2


PESTALOZZIANISM IN EUROPE


-but he endeavored to make his school selfsupporting. He also provided special courses of
pedagogic instruction for Swiss teachers. He
entirely agreed with Pestalozzi that all forms of
educational work should be in the nature of recreation. Mr. William Maclure, an American
philanthropist, who visited Hofwyl several times
during the early years of the last century, wrote:
"In thus joining mental with corporeal labor, the
Pestalozzian system [at Hofwyl] has a great advantage in all schools of industry; for it not only
produces both knowledge and property at the
same time, but gives a habit of working and thinking conjointly." The fame of Fellenberg's institution was in no small measure due to Johann
Jacob Wehrli(i 790-i855), who had been trained
under Pestalozzi and who directed at Hofwyl for
twenty-three years the educational work of the
orphan and destitute children.
Hermann Kriisi, Sr., (I775-I844), after eighteen years of valuable service as Pestalozzi's associate at Burgdorf and Yverdon, was forced to




SWITZERLAND


I3


leave the institution. "With a bleeding heart,"
writes von Raumer," he sent his resignation to
Pestalozzi, whom even in his error he loved and
respected." In accepting the resignation Pestalozzi wrote him: "With sorrow I see a connection
dissolved, which I would willingly have continued
until my death, had it been possible." After
leaving the institute he conducted for five years
a private school at Yverdon which met with a
large measure of success and was patronized by
many foreign students. In 18:22 he accepted the
principalship of a cantonal school at Trogan. In
I833 he was selected principal of the normal school
at Gais, where, as he says, he was able "to carry
out Pestalozzi's system of elementary education,
freely and without hindrance."9 He continued
at the head of the normal school at Gais until his
death in I844. Gustav Tobler (I769-I843),who
developed the Pestalozzian system of geographic
instruction at Burgdorf and Yverdon, continued
his labors, after leaving Pestalozzi, at Glarus,
Miilhausen, and St. Gallen.




I4


PESTALOZZIANISM IN EUROPE


Hans George Nageli (1773-1836) developed
the Pestalozzian method of instruction in music;
and, as will be later seen, he influenced profoundly
two American music educators, William C. Woodbridge and Lowell Mason. His Theory of instruction in singing based on Pestalozzian principles,
and published in I8Io, was the first successful
attempt to place the study of music on a distinctly pedagogical basis. Roger de Guimps
(I802-I894), who became the well-known biographer of Pestalozzi; Nabholz, who became
principal of a normal school at Aaran, and others
associated with the reformer, continued to carry
on his work in various parts of Switzerland.
2. Germany.
It was in Germany, however, that the doctrines
of Pestalozzi earliest found most general acceptance. Crushed and dismembered by the losses
following in the train of the battle of Jena, Germany was determined to recover her lost power
and to regain her fallen glory by a wise system




GERMANY


15


of public elementary education; and the doctrines of Pestalozzi were accepted as the basis of
the reform movements. Young men flocked to
Yverdon from Prussia, Saxony and Wiirttemberg
in great numbers, and the different German
states vied with one another in the ardor of their
advocacy of the Swiss reformer's cause. Nearly
every really great German educator during the
first half of the last century could rightfully lay
claim to personal relations with Pestalozzi. The
German list is a long one-Fichte, Griiner,
Fr6bel, Herbart, Ritter, von Tfirk, Harnisch,
Zeller, Ramsauer, Plamann, Denzel, Dinter,
Blochmann, Steiner, Hennig, Miuller, and Diesterweg, to mention but a few of the best known German Pestalozzian disciples.
John George Fichte (1762-1842) had married
a friend of Mrs. Pestalozzi and the two philosophers early became intimately identified in their
educational interests; and, while Fichte's doctrines of state education are essentially those of
Pestalozzi, we are told by Roger de Guimps that




6


PESTALOZZIANISM IN EUROPE


Pestalozzi's political essays-and notably his
Researches into the course of nature in the development of the human race-represent the viewpoint of Fichte. As early as I793 Fichte had
visited Pestalozzi, and in his historic addresses
to the German people in 1807 and 1808, after the
terrible desolations of the Napoleonic wars, he
told his countrymen that the only way to raise
the people was by education; and if such education was to be effectual and salutary, he declared,
they must look to Pestalozzi for reforms in all
matters of public instruction.
Dr. Griiner of Frankfort was one of the earliest
German schoolmasters to make practical application of Pestalozzi's views; and his school became
the centre of interest for the new movement. It
was Griiner who first directed Fr6bel's attention
to the work of education. In the summer of i805
Friedrich Frobel (1782-1852), it will be remembered, went to Frankfort for the purpose of engaging in the occupation of architecture. He
had been in the city but a few weeks when he met




GERMANY


I7


the enthusiastic principal of the new Pestalozzian
normal school. Griiner soon convinced the young
man that he could do more for the culture and
ennobling of men by becoming a teacher than he
could possibly do as an architect. Fr6bel was
soon convinced; and in August he repaired to
Yverdon to spend a fortnight with Pestalozzi
prior to taking up his new duties as a teacher in
Griiner's school. Convinced that teaching was
to be his life vocation, he returned to Yverdon
again in i808 and spent two years in study with
Pestalozzi. Fr6bel tells us that during this period
he was both teacher and pupil; and that it was
while there that he first recognized the true educational value of play. It need only be mentioned
in this connection that most of the great movements associated with the name and fame of
Frobel were movements that, in one form or
another, had previously been associated with the
institute at Yverdon.
Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841), after he
left the university at Jena, began his career as a




I8


PESTALOZZIANISM IN EUROPE


private tutor in 1797; and, like so many other
young German teachers, he was at once attracted
to Burgdorf, where Pestalozzi was teaching at the
time. In an able article in the Educational Review on Herbart and Pestalozzi compared, William T. Harris calls attention to the fact that
"the progress of education is a zigzag line, from
extreme to extreme. * * * At one time the
schools have tended almost exclusively to memory
culture, with very little attempt at verification by
original research and observation. This was the
case with what was called the old education. * *
* But Pestalozzi exploded the theory on
which it rests and substituted another. He laid
stress on sense-perception, verification, and original research. The practice of our time may not
correspond to its theory, but certainly all writers
uphold the Pestalozzian doctrines of instruction
by object lessons. But while this reform is progressing toward its extreme, another tendency
has begun within a few years, and it promises to
force a new departure on our zigzag line. This




GERMANY


I9


is the doctrine of Herbart, which holds that it is
not so much sense-perception that is wanted in
education as apperception-not so much seeing
and hearing and handling things, as recognizing
and understanding them."
Karl Ritter (I779-I859), the great German
geographer, tells us that it was from Pestalozzi
that he learned the pedagogic principles of his
science. "Pestalozzi did not know as much
geography as a child in our primary schools,"
wrote Ritter, "but, none the less, I learned the
science of geography from him; for it was in listening to him that there first awakened in me the
idea of a natural method. He showed me the
way." While a private tutor at Frankfort, after
having finished his university studies at Halle,
Ritter came in contact with the group of Pestalozzian disciples whom Griiner had reared up; and
he became so deeply interested in the new educational movement that he repaired to Yverdon in
I807. He tells us that he was filled with admiration and respect in the presence of a man like




20


PESTALOZZIANISM IN EUROPE


Pestalozzi, devoted to one grand, original idea,
yet his was a nature in which simplicity and humility were united with boundless confidence in
the greatness of his task. He says he left Yverdon
full of what he had learned there and feeling that
he had entered a new world, enriched and ennobled
beyond all conception. He visited Yverdon
again in I809 and wrote: "The good old Pestalozzi remains still young in heart and full of the
spirit of fire and restlessness." Hennig, who
later became distinguished in German geography
in the matter of Heimatskunde (home geography),
also passed some years at Yverdon as one of the
pupil-teachers sent there by the German government; and it was while there that he learned the
method which he afterwards developed, of teaching geography to beginners in the open air and
without the use of books.
Karl Christian Wilhelm von Tuirk (I774-I846),
who was of noble family and who resigned a
judgeship to learn the teacher's art with Pestalozzi, devoted his life to the education and care of




GERMANY


21


poor children. Horace Mann (I796-I859), who
visited him in 1843, wrote: "At the head of the
private orphan asylum in Potsdam is the venerable von Tilrk. According to the laws of the
country he is a nobleman. His talents and acquisitions were such, that, at a very early age, he
was elevated to the bench. He officiated as
judge for fourteen years; but in the course o
time, so many criminal cases were brought before
him for adjudication, whose only origin was so
plainly referable to early neglect in the culprit's
education, that the noble heart of the judge could
no longer bear to pronounce sentence of condemnation against the prisoners, for he looked upon them
as men, who, almost without a paradox, might
be called guiltless offenders. While holding the
office of judge, he was appointed school inspector.
The paramount importance of the latter office
grew upon his mind, as he executed his duties,
until at last he came to the full conception of the
grand and sacred truth-how much more intrinsically honorable is the vocation of the teacher,




22


PESTALOZZIANISM IN EUROPE


who saves from crime and wrong, than that of
the magistrate, who waits till they are committed
and then avenges them. He immediately resigned
his office as judge, with its life tenure and salary;
travelled to Switzerland where he placed himself under the care of Pestalozzi; and after availing himself for three years of the instruction of
that celebrated teacher, he returned to take charge
of an orphan asylum. Since that time he has
devoted his whole life to the care of the neglected
and destitute." Aside from his noble example
and the free expenditure of his own private fortune
for the education of needy children, von Tirk published numerous writings on the Pestalozzian
system; and during September 1816 he gave a
course of lectures upon Pestalozzi's method to
sixty clergymen and school teachers at Frankfort
on the Oder.
Wilhelm Harnisch (I787-I864) studied the Pestalozzian system with Plamann in Berlin and
introduced the system into the normal school at
Breslau and later in the normal school at Weissen



GERMANY


23


f els, which, as Americans will recall, is the institution which Horace Mann, Alexander Dallas Bache
and Calvin E. Stowe praised so heartily in their
reports of European schools. Johannes Ramsauer (I790-1848) received his elementary and
secondary education under Pestalozzi and Kriisi
at Burgdorf and Yverdon, and in the latter institution he served as pupil-teacher for some years.
In I816 he became a teacher in a Pestalozzian
school at Wiirzburg and later in a similar school
at Stuttgart. He popularized in Germany Pestalozzi's methods of teaching drawing and form
(elementary geometry).
Johann Ernst Plamann (1771-1834), after
Griiner, was one of the earliest ardent advocates
of Pestalozzianism in Germany. He spent some
time with the master at Burgdorf during the early
days of that institution and he established and
maintained in Berlin for many years one of the
best known educational institutions in Germany.
He published many works on the methods and
doctrines of Pestalozzi and he won many converts




24


PESTALOZZIANISM IN EUROPE


for the new system. Bernard Gottlieb Denzel
(1773-1838) was the most influential promoter of
Pestalozzianism in the kingdom of Wiirtemberg.
He spent some time at both Burgdorf and Yverdon; and, while deeply in earnest himself, he had
a conciliatory manner-and, more important
still, he had the confidence of the clergy, so that
progress in educational reform was both rapid and
permanent. For many years he was principal of
the normal school at Esslingen which was founded
on Pestalozzian principles. Karl August Zeller
(1774-1847) as early as 1804 established a charity
school at Tiibingen for the purpose of trying Pestalozzi's plans for regenerating the poor. Later
he became identified with the movement of establishing a training school for teachers at Zurich.
After nearly two years in Switzerland he returned
to Germany in 1809 and organized an orphan school
at K6nigsberg and a normal and model school
as a feature of the same. By May I8io the lectures on Pestalozzi's methods and doctrines at
this school were attended by one hundred and




GERMANY


25


four teachers, pastors and school superintendents;
and a year later he was asked to organize a second
similar institution at Braunsberg. His last establishment was the well known Pestalozzian institution at Lichtenstein. Raumer says of him: "He
was energetic not only in introducing new discoveries [of Pestalozzi] in pedagogical science, but
also in independently sifting and ingeniously improving its principles already accepted."
Karl Justus Blochmann (1786-1855), who was
some time associated with Pestalozzi at Yverdon,
afterwards opened a Pestalozzian school at Dresden and later became minister of public instruction in Saxony, a kingdom in which elementary
education has always been wisely directed and
whose schools are still essentially Pestalozzian.
Gustav Friedrich Dinter (i 760-] 831), while never
brought into personal relations with Pestalozzi,
in his capacity as school counsellor in K6nigsberg,
he was hearty in his support and advocacy of the
Swiss reformer's doctrines. Steiner, who was one
of the assistant teachers at Yverdon, became pro



26


PESTALOZZIANISM IN EUROPE


fessor of mathematics in the university of Berlin
and he wrote several works which aided in rendering Pestalozzi's labors fruitful in Germany.
One of the most influential of the later German
Pestalozzians was Friedrich Adolph Wilhelm
Diesterweg (I790-I866), who, like so many of his
colleagues, acquired his interest in the new movement during his teaching career at Frankfort (i813
-1818). He was teacher and acting principal
in the normal school at Meurs for twelve years
and in 1832 he was called to the principalship of
the Berlin normal school where he inaugurated
most sweeping reforms. He was instrumental
in inaugurating and carrying out so successfully
the great Pestalozzi centennial in Germany in 1846
and in the foundation of an institution for orphans
as an appropriate monument to the great apostle
of the poor and the unfortunate. Barnard very
appropriately calls him the most eminent educator and the most efficient promoter in Germany
of the principles of Pestalozzi.
Germany was truly fertile soil for the educa



FRANCE AND SPAIN


27


tional ideals which originated at Burgdorf and
Yverdon; and as Mr. Pinloche has well remarked:
"It was in Germany that Pestalozzi's ideas had
the most rapid and wide influence and the best
application."  And Kriisi remarks in this connection: "By these means the schools of Germany
were speedily organized on a new basis, and the
thrill of a new, vigorous life was felt from one
extremity of the land to the other." In a word,
it was in essence the spirit and the method of Pestalozzi which formed the basis of the elementary
school renaissance in Germany during the first
half of the last century; and Germany regained
her losses at Jena through a wise and efficient
system of common education.
3. France and Spain
Napoleon had no time to occupy himself with
A B C's, in consequence of which France profited
much less by Pestalozzi's beneficent educational
reforms than her neighbor on the other side of the
Rhine; and Sedan was the logical outcome, less




28


PESTALOZZIANISM IN EUROPE


than three quarters of a century later. A few
public spirited gentlemen in France, however,
interested themselves in Pestalozzi's doctrines;
and endeavored to interest their country, among
whom were Jullien, Chavannes, and Maine de
Biran. Jullien was a Knight of the Legion of
Honor, a member of several learned societies and
a man of wealth and influence. He placed his
son under Pestalozzi's tuition and induced some
of his distinguished friends to do likewise. He
published several important works on Pestalozzi's institute and doctrines and aroused more
or less interest in the labors of the Swiss reformer.
Chavannes placed his daughter in the girls' department of the institute and published a favorable exposition of the institute at Yverdon in
1805 which was widely translated. Maine de
Biran, the philosopher, opened a Pestalozzian
school at Bergerac, his native town, in i808, and
the school continued in existence for nearly seventy years.
In Spain a Pestalozzian school was opened at




RUSSIA AND DENMARK


29


Madrid by Voitel in I 805 and a military institute
a year later with the aid of two associate teachers
sent from Yverdon; but political events caused
the suppression of these schools in I808. In I8I9
Mr. William Maclure, an American disciple of
Pestalozzi, founded an agricultural school near
the city of Alicante, on a tract of ten thousand
acres which he had purchased for the purpose
from the Spanish government. But the property
was subsequently confiscated and the educational
experiment brought to an end in 1824.
4. Russia and Denmark
Both Russia and Denmark profited by the
reforms of Pestalozzi. The Emperor Alexander
had visited Pestalozzi and was so much impressed
by his system that he asked that one of his disciples be sent to St. Petersburg for the head of a
Pestalozzian institute for the higher classes.
Muralt, who had taught French for several years
at Yverdon, was selected; and he was eminently
successful during his long career at St. Petersburg.




30


PESTALOZZIANISM IN EUROPE


The Danish government in 803 sent two teachers,
Str6m and Torlitz, to Burgdorf to study the Pestalozzian system. Upon their return to Copenhagen Pestalozzian institutes were organized
with indifferent success.
5. England
England did not share with Switzerland and
Germany their profound interest in the reforms
of Pestalozzi. The English people, as a class,
have never concerned themselves very seriously
with the study of education as a science; hence,
the innovations of Pestalozzi, or of any other
great reformer, for that matter, would not be calculated to arouse much interest. Two Englishmen, however, became interested in the work of
the Swiss reformer during his closing years; and,
at a later period, much that was called Pestalozzian, but which, as Kriisi has pointed out, lacked
entirely the true spirit, was current in England
during the third and fourth decades of the past
century.




ENGLAND


3I


James Pierrepont Greaves (1777-1842) had
been a wealthy English merchant; but he lost his
property by French spoliations in Napoleon's
time. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in a sketch of
Greaves in the Dial, says: "Quitting business, he
travelled and resided in Germany for some time.
His leisure was given to books of the deepest
character; and in Switzerland he found a brother
in Pestalozzi. With him he remained ten years,
living abstemiously, almost on biscuit and water
and, although they never learned each other's
language, their daily intercourse appears to have
been of the deepest and happiest kind. Mr.
Greaves there [at Yverdon] made himself useful
in a variety of ways. Pestalozzi declared that
Mr. Greaves understood his aim and methods
better than any other observer. And he there
became acquainted with some eminent persons.
Mr. Greaves on his return to England, introduced
as much as he could of the method and life whose
beautiful and successful operations he had witnessed; and although almost all that he did was




32


PESTALOZZIANISM IN EUROPE


misunderstood or dragged downwards, he has
been a chief instrument in the regeneration of
British schools."
It will be recalled that in 1818 Pestalozzi opened
a school for poor children of both sexes at Clendy,
a little hamlet near Yverdon; and, in spite of his
seventy-two years, he devoted himself to this
orphanage with the zeal and enthusiasm of his
younger days at Neuhof and Stanz. He was ably
supported in this undertaking by Greaves, who
taught the poor children without any remuneration. But the school was in existence little more
than a year. Vulliemin, in speaking of the Clendy
enterprise, says: "There was a man there who had
taken part in the short-lived enterprise, a man of
Christian spirit and enlightened understanding.
This man, who was an Englishman, by name
Greaves, carried the ideas he had gathered at
Clendy back to England, where they took root,
and became the origin of infant schools."
After his return to England in 1825 Greaves
became secretary of the Infant School Society in




ENGLAND


33


London. At his request Pestalozzi wrote him a
series of thirty-four letters on the education of the
child, which he permitted Greaves to translate
into English. The English edition appeared in
1827 and three years later the same was republished in Boston. In 1832 he settled in the village
of Randwick, Gloucestershire, and engaged in an
industrial scheme for the benefit of agricultural
laborers; and in 1837 he founded at Ham, near
London, a Pestalozzian school which he named
Alcott House in honor of the American Pestalozzian, A. Bronson Alcott, whose Cheshire and Boston schools had interested him greatly. He
shared Alcott's transcendental views; and a long
correspondence ensued between the two philosophers. From all that one can learn concerning
Greaves, it seems pretty certain that he understood Pestalozzi well. The careful and sympathetic translation of the Letters on the early education of the child* would abundantly sustain this
*Mr. C. W. Bardeen, of Syracuse, New York, who has published most of the best American books on Pestalozzi, has lately
brought out a well-edited edition of these valuable letters.




34


PESTALOZZIANISM IN EUROPE


point, if other evidence should be lacking; but
he seems to have been altogether too serene and
thoughtful and benevolent to have influenced his
country profoundly, and this was unfortunate for
his country.
A very different sort of a man was Charles
Mayo (1792-1846), who seems to have caught
most of the formalism and little of the spirit of
Pestalozzi's benevolent educational doctrines.
After concluding his academic training at Merchant Taylor's School and St. John's College,
Oxford, he was headmaster of a grammar school
at Berdgnorth for two years. While here, one
Mr. Synge of Glanmore Castle, Wicklow, interested
him in Pestalozzi; and in 1819, with several English pupils, he went to Yverdon where he passed
nearly three years. Returning to England in
April 1822, he opened a Pestalozzian school for
boys of the upper classes at Epsom; and, as his
school grew in popularity, he moved it after a few
years to Cheam where he continued to conduct it
until the time of his death. In 1826 he gave a




ENGLAND


35


course of lectures before the Royal Institution on
Pestalozzi and his doctrines. lie took an active
interest in the establishment of the Home and
Colonial Training College at Gray's Inn Road,
London, which aimed to train teachers in the
Pestalozzian methods. He published a memoir
of Pestalozzi and several Pestalozzian text-books.
Reiner, who held a subordinate place at Yverdon
during the declining years of the institute, was
for many years in charge of the department of
mathematics at Mayo's school. Herman Kriisi,
Jr., also taught at Cheam for five years before
coming to America.
Mr. Mayo's sister Miss Elizabeth Mayo (I793
-I865) was for many years an instructor in her
brother's schools at Epsom and Cheam where she
assisted him in applying the doctrines and methods
of Pestalozzi. In 1843, when the Home and Colonial Training College was opened at Gray's Inn
Road, London, Miss Mayo became superintendent
of the institution and served as critic teacher.
"The acquisition of Miss Mayo," notes Gill,4




36      PESTALOZZIANISM IN EUROPE


"gave a decided direction in the system of training
adopted to Pestalozzianism." Miss Mayo prepared several works on object teaching, a work
on religious instruction, and model lessons for
infant schools. "Having adopted Pestalozzianism as its basis," writes a historian of the Home
and School Society, "this society's great service
to the cause of infant education was the reduction
of its principles and methods to a practicable
shape. This it did by the preparation of graduated courses of instruction." It was thus that
Pestalozzianism was "misunderstood and dragged
downward," to borrow Emerson's words. Pestalozzi taught without books, and chiefly in the
open air; and the moment the English attempted
"to reduce his principles and methods to practicable shape," in the preparation of manuals
about objects, which manuals were to be studied
and the lessons on the objects learned and said to
the teachers, that moment a wide gulf separated
the Pestalozzianism of Switzerland and Kriisi,
Maclure, Neef and Greaves from the Pestaloz



ENGLAND


37


zianism of England and Mayo, Stowe, and Duning.
These are some of the men and movements in
Europe directly influenced by Pestalozzi and his
reforms. In subsequent chapters similar influences in America will be traced; for the new world,
no less than the old, was profoundly influenced by
the teachings of the educational seer at Yverdon.
William Maclure and Joseph Neef were so influenced; and in lesser degrees John Griscom and
William C. Woodbridge, who also came in personal
relation with Pestalozzi and who brought the
new doctrines to the United States, at an early
period.








CHAPTER II


WILLIAM     MACLURE: FIRST AMERICAN           DISCIPLE
OF PESTALOZZI
Mr. Maclure's birth and early training. Business career. Visit
to the United States. Member of a commission selected
by President Jefferson. Travels in Europe. Visit to
Pestalozzi at Yverdon. Pestalozzi and Fellenberg contrasted. Secures services of Joseph Neef for the United
States. Organizes the first geological survey in America.
Connection with the Philadelphia Academy of Natural
Sciences. Educational experiments in Spain. Connecttion with the New Harmony community. Industrial
school experiment. Closing years in Mexico. Benefactions. His character and influence.
Philadelphia, through the efforts of one of her
public spirited citizens, was the first city in the
new world to recognize the merit of Pestalozzi's
great educational reforms, and to give these reforms practical application on this side of the
Atlantic. The first disciple of the Swiss re39




40


WILLIAM MACLURE


former in the United States was an adopted son
of the Quaker City, who not only familiarized
his countrymen with the teachings of Pestalozzi,
but who brought to America, at his own expense,
one of Pestalozzi's associates from Burgdorf.
This disciple was William Maclure. Mr. Maclure was born at Ayr, Scotland, March 22, I763,
and received an elementary education in the
English branches, mathematics and the ancient
languages. Maclure's teacher said of him that
while he mastered the several branches of study
it was observed at an early period that he was
disposed to reject the learning of the schools
for the simpler and more attractive truths of
natural history. He engaged in commercial
pursuits; and at the early age of nineteen he made
a business trip to the United States in the interest of the London firm of Miller, Hart & Co. He
subsequently became a member of the firm; and
in 1796 he again visited the United States to
arrange some unsettled business connected with
his establishment. He became deeply interested




FIRST AMERICAN DISCIPLE


4I


in the civic and social problems of the young republic and returned to London with the determination of ultimately making his permanent
home in Philadelphia. By I803 he had devoted
himself to business with such assiduity that his
rewards justified his retirement, and he decided
to remove to the new world and consecrate the
remainder of his life to public service.
His first public service was as a member of the
commission selected by the United States to
settle the claims of American citizens against
the French government for spoliations committed
during the revolution in that country. He displayed marked ability and great diligence on this
commission and accomplished the object of his
appointment to the general satisfaction of the
American government. In connection with his
labors on this commission, he devoted his spare
moments while in Europe to the collection of
objects for a museum of natural history for the
United States and to a study of the systems of
popular education in the old world. To accom



42


WILLIAM MACLURE


plish the first object he traversed the most interesting portions of Europe, from the Mediterranean sea to the Baltic and from the British
Isles to Bohemia. During his travels he became
greatly interested in the study of geology and he
determined upon his return to commence a
geological survey of the United States.
Pestalozzi and Fellenberg were at this time the
commanding figures in European education, and
Mr. Maclure visited the institutions at Yverdon*
*Yverdon is a town of 6000 inhabitants at the foot of lake
Neuchatel in the canton of Vaud. Here in a large stone castle
Pestalozzi for twenty years (1805-1825) conducted his famous
educational institute. It was a rather complex establishment,
including an infant department, composed chiefly of orphans,
a secondary (boarding) school for boys, a normal school for young
men, and a pedagogical seminary for trained and experienced
teachers. During the years of its greatest prosperity (1805 -1817) it was visited by most of the noted educators of Europe
and America and by many European rulers, including the czar
of Russia and the kings of Spain, Holland, Prussia, Denmark,
Wirtemberg, and Saxony. Among distinguished publicists,
besides Mr. Maclure, who visited Pestalozzi at Yverdon, may be
named Thaddeus Kosciusko, the Polish patriot who fought with




FIRST AMERICAN DISCIPLE


43


and Hofwyl. He was keenly interested in the
agricultural phases of Fellenberg's school and
he praised heartily Fellenberg's efforts to make
the school self-supporting and to cause instruction to be regarded by the pupils as a recreation.
He was struck by the cheerfulness and eagerness
to learn which was shown by the pupils, many
of whom came from poor families and some of
them were the offspring of convicts. But Mr.
Maclure did not find the democratic atmosphere
at Hofwyl, which he regarded as so essential in
the up-building of a system of popular education. Fellenberg was descended from a noble
family; he had held important state offices before
the organization of his school, and he ruled the
institution at Hofwyl in a dictatorial manner.
Pestalozzi, on the other hand, was the essence
of democracy, and Mr. Maclure was delighted
with the spirit of co-operation and fraternity
Lafayette in the American Revolution; Count Zinzendorf, the
the Austrian minister of finance; and Prince Esterhazy, the
Hungarian statesman.




44


WILLIAM MACLURE


which characterized the institution at Yverdon.
He visited Pestalozzi in 1804 and again in I805.
During the latter visit he endeavored to secure
the services of Pestalozzi for a new institution
which he proposed to establish in Philadelphia.
But the Swiss reformer was already in his sixtieth year; and, unfamiliar as he was with the
English language, he was not able to accept Mr.
Maclure's proposition.  He heartily commended
to Mr. Maclure's favorable consideration one of
his former associate teachers at Burgdorf, one
Joseph Neef, at the time in charge of a Pestalozzian school in Paris. Maclure repaired to Paris,
visited Neef's school, and engaged his services.
An account of the engagement and labors of
Neef will be given in the next chapter.
The late Henry Barnard is authority for the
statement that the earliest presentation of the
principles of Pestalozzi to the people of the United
States came from Mr. Maclure in an article in the
National Intelligencer printed in Washington on
the sixth of June in the year I806. This was




FIRST AMERICAN DISCIPLE


45


followed on the ninth and thirtieth of the same
month by elaborate expositions of Pestalozzi's
method taken from the French work by D. A.
Chavannes published in Paris the previous year,
and subsequently translated into the Italian and
Spanish languages.
Upon his return to the United States in I806,
Mr. Maclure began, and for three years he studiously pursued, one of the objects of his ambition, which he had long contemplated, viz., a
geological survey of the United States. One of
his biographers says of this labor of scientific
love: "In this extraordinary undertaking we
have a forcible example of what individual effort
can accomplish, unsustained by government
patronage and unassisted by collateral aids. At
a time when scientific pursuits were little known
and still less appreciated in this country, he commenced his herculean task. He went forth with
his hammer in his hand and his wallet on his
shoulder, pursuing his researches in every direction, often amid pathless tracts and dreary soli



46


WILLIAM MACLURE


tudes until he had crossed and re-crossed the
Alleghany mountains no less than fifty times.
He encountered all the privations of hunger,
thirst, fatigue, and exposure, month after month,
year after year, until his indomitable spirit had
conquered every difficulty and crowned his enterprise with success." He visited every state and
territory in the union from the St. Lawrence to
the Gulf of Mexico; and in I809 he presented the
results of his investigations to the American
Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. He continued his geological studies for eight years longer
and in 1817 he presented to the same society the
final revision of his labors, accompanied by a
colored map and sections of the survey. The
report was published in the society's transactions
and as a separate volume. It placed Mr. Maclure
among the first of living geologists and stimulated
an interest in that sort of scientific research which
still continues fruitful in the United States. He
was a liberal benefactor of the American Geological Society (of which he was the first president




FIRST AMERICAN DISCIPLE


47


in 1828) and he has been aptly characterized as
the father of American geology.
Mr. Maclure did much to develop scientific
tastes and talents in Philadelphia and he was the
moving spirit of the Academy of Natural Sciences.
That institution, it will be recalled, was founded
January 1812, by seven men who resolved to meet
once each week for the purpose of conversing on
scientific subjects and thus communicate to each
other the results of their reading, observation and
reflection. He was president of the society from
1817 to the time of his death-a period of nearly
twenty-three years-and he bequeathed to the
society his valuable library and a money gift of
twenty thousand dollars.
In I819 he returned to Europe. He spent
some time at New Lanark, Scotland, in studying
the industrial and educational schemes of Robert
Owen*; he passed some months with distinguished
*Robert Owen (1771-1858), the founder of English socialism, was the manager and part owner of the large cotton mills at
New Lanark. Of the 2000 people employed as workmen, 500




48


WILLIAM MACLURE


scientists in Paris where he was already favorably known through French translations of his
geological studies; and toward the close of that
year he located near the city of Alicante, Spain,
where he continued to reside for nearly five years.
His attention was called to Spain as a fertile
field for philanthropy by the promulgation by
the Spanish Cortes of a liberal constitution which
promised a comparatively free government to a
country long oppressed by every species of bondage. His plan was the establishment of a great
agricultural school, after the manner of Pestalozzi
and Fellenberg, in which manual labor should
were children, most of whom had been brought from alms houses
and orphanages in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Cotton mill operatives represented the lowest of the population of the period,
since the English country people would not submit to the long
hours and the demoralized conditions of factory life. Owen
sought to ameliorate and elevate the social, economic, and intellectual condition of his workmen (1) by the organization of infant schools (the first in England); (2) by strict supervision of
the sale of alcoholic drinks; (3) by improved sanitation, and
(4) by courses of instruction and training in habits of order,
cleanliness, and thrift.




FIRST AMERICAN DISCIPLE


49


be combined with intellectual studies and moral
training. He sought especially to elevate the
lower classes and to educate them for self-maintenance and self-government.  He purchased
from the Cortes a tract of ten thousand acres of
land which the government had confiscated from
the church. Buildings were repaired, new ones
were erected, and the estate was placed in order
to carry out his educational scheme; but almost
before his institution was well under way, the
constitutional government was overthrown; the
priests were re-invested in their estate, and
Mr. Maclure was dispossessed without ceremony
or reimbursement. In a letter to his friend Professor Benjamin Silliman from Alicante under
date of March the 6th, 1824 he says: "I have
been disappointed in being prevented from executing my mineralogical excursions in Spain by
the bands of powerful robbers that have long infested the astonishingly extended surface of uncultivated and inhospitable wilds in this naturally
delightful country."




50


WILLIAM MACLURE


Mr. Maclure returned to the United States in
1824 determined to establish an agricultural
school similar to the one he had contemplated
in Spain. At this juncture, his friend Robert
Owen projected his New Harmony community.
Maclure had previously studied Owen's reforms
in factory life and his system of infant schools
at New Lanark, and he willingly joined the Utopian colony at New Harmony, Indiana. According to Mr. Owen's subsequent statement, Mr.
Maclure invested one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars in the New Harmony experiment, but
his liability in the undertaking was limited to
ten thousand dollars. "The avowed intention
of Mr. Maclure was to make New Harmony the
centre of American education through the introduction of the Pestalozzian system of instruction." To this end he brought to New Harmony
a distinguished coterie of educators and scientists,
including, besides Joseph Neef, a co-adjutor of
Pestalozzi, Thomas Say, the father of American
zoology, Charles Alexander Lesueur, the dis



FIRST AMERICAN DISCIPLE


5I


tinguished French botanist, Constantine Samuel
Rafinesque, whom David Starr Jordan characterizes as "the very first teacher of natural history in the west," Gerard Troost, the Dutch
geologist, and Madame Marie D. Frotegeot and
Phiquepal d' Arusmont, two Pestalozzian teachers whom Maclure had brought; to Philadelphia
from Europe. During the two brief years of
the existence of the community, Mr. Maclure
gave his entire time to the direction of the school
and the promotion of scientific studies.
Mr. Maclure contemplated the establishment
of an industrial school in New Harmony after
the manner of Pestalozzi, concerning which he
wrote: "In thus joining mental with corporeal
labor, the Pestalozzian system has a great advantage in all schools of industry; for it not only
produces both knowledge and property at the
same time, but gives habits of working and thinking conjointly, which last during life, and doubles the powers of production, while it alle



52


WILLIAM MACLURE


viates the fatigue of labor by a more agreeable
occupation of the mind."
Mr. Maclure and his friends purchased a tract
of one thousand acres and provided suitable
buildings for the use of the teachers and workmen connected with the industrial school, as well
as for storing grain, and for stables, workshops,
schoolrooms, and accommodations for meetings,
concerts and recreations. In 1826 he petitioned
the Indiana legislature for the incorporation of
the institution under the title of the New Harmony Educational Society, stating that he "had
bought in and about New Harmony one thoussand acres of land with suitable buildings erected
thereupon, devoted to the establishment of
schools, and furnished a liberal endowment, embracing many thousands of volumes of books,.
with such mathematical, chemical, and physical
apparatus as are necessary to facilitate education.'
Because of the religious bigotry of the Indiana
senate, the bill failed by a vote of fifteen to four.
In the senate and throughout the state of Indiana




FIRST AMERICAN DISCIPLE


53


the impression prevailed that atheism was promulgated in the New Harmony schools. The
religious tolerance of Mr. Maclure and his colleagues, and their opposition to narrow dogmatic
and sectarian instruction, formed about the only
basis for this impression; for no one familiar
with the New Harmony movement could sustain
the charge of irreligion against Maclure, Neef
and the other educational leaders.
After the failure of the New Harmony community, Mr. Maclure purchased a large tract of
land in the vicinity and continued his educational
experiments along industrial and agricultural
lines. In the prospectus4 of his school he announced: "Young men and young women are
received without any expense to them either
for teaching or food, lodging or clothing. Hours
from five in the morning until eight in the evening, divided as follows: The scholars rise at five;
at half past five each goes to his occupation; at
seven the bell rings for breakfast; at eight they
return to work;, at eleven their lessons begin,




54


WILLIAM MACLURE


continuing until half past two, including half ai_
hour for luncheon, then they return to their occupations until five, when a bell calls them to dinner. Afterwards until half past six they exercise
themselves in various ways; then the evening
lessons begin and last until eight." A bioggrapher remarks: "The arrangements for training and instructing this interesting family were
ample; and there would seem to be no obstacle
in the way of a successful experiment, if there
had been no radical defect of the principle." For
a number of years Mr. Maclure continued to reside
at New Harmony, engaged chiefly in scientific
and literary labors.
On account of failing health he passed several
winters in Mexico and ultimately transferred his
residence to San Angel, near the City of Mexico,
where he died March the 23d, I840, in the seventyseventh year of his age. "Thus" said Samuel
G. Morton6 in an address before the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia July i,
1841, "closed a life which had been devoted,




FIRST AMERICAN DISCIPLE


55


with untiring energy and singular disinterestedness, to the attainment and diffusion of practical
knowledge. No views of pecuniary advantage
or personal aggrandizement entered into the
motives by which he was governed. His educational plans, it is true, were repeatedly inoperative, not because he did too little but because
he expected more than could be realized in the
social institutions by which he was surrounded.
He aimed at reforming mankind by diverting
their attention from the mere pursuit of wealth
and ambition to the cultivation of the mind, and,
espousing the hypothesis of the possible 'equality
of education, property, and power among men,'
he labored to counteract that love of superiority which appeared to him to cause half the miseries of our species." Mr. Maclure never married
but he devoted the fortune that had come to
him through more than twenty years of careful
application to business to the establishment of a
better social order and the dissemination of what
he thought to be saner doctrines of life. Of his




56


WILLIAM MACLURE


numerous benefactions to education and science,
Professor Benjamin Silliman said: "This gentleman's liberality to purposes of science and humanity has been too often and too munificently
experienced in this country to demand any eulogium from me. It is rare that affluence, liberality and the possession and love of science
unite so signally in the same individual."
It is well known that Mr. Robert Owen and
Mr. Maclure were not in accord concerning the
administration of the New Harmony community;
but Mr. Owen7 in his Autobiography pays this
tribute to his colleague: "Mr. Maclure was a
remarkable instance of devotion to his chosen
studies. It would be difficult to name any one
to match him in the indefatigable energy with
which he pursued his investigations of the phennomena and laws of natural science or of the liberality with which he contributed to its advancement. He was a gentleman of large means, of
liberal spirit and without a family."
For a period of nearly thirty-five years Mr.




FIRST AMERICAN DISCIPLE


57


Maclure championed the doctrines of Pestalozzi
in"the new world. His essays on education were
printed in pamphlet form or in periodicals of a
transient nature, so that I have been unable to
make anything like a complete bibliography of
his writings. I have secured the titles of about
thirty educational essays, but the number must
have been much greater. In all his writings he
alludes in glowing terms to the sanity and efficiency of Pestalozzi's doctrines. In an essay4 on
the Advantages of the Pestalozzian system of education, published at New Harmony in 1831, he
says: "Having travelled seven summers in Switzerland, and some months of each residing at
Pestalozzi's school at Yverdon, I never saw the
pupils in or out of school without one of the teachers presiding at their games, all of which were
calculated to convey instruction. They were
constantly occupied with something useful to
themselves or to others, from five o'clock in the
morning to eight o'clock at night, with the exception of four half hours at meals at which all




58


WILLIAM MACLURE


the teachers ate with the pupils. Their attention was never fatigued with more than one hour
at the same exercise, either moral or physical;
all was bottomed on free-will, by the total exclusion of every species of correction. Their actions
were cheerful, energetic and rapidly tending
towards the end aimed at. I do not recall ever
to have heard a cry or any demonstration of pain
or displeasure, nor even an angry word from either teacher or pupil all the time that I lived
amongst them.   Though I often went out of
my road fifty leagues to examine young men
taught under this system, I do not ever remember
finding one of an ill-natured temper, or bad conduct, of all that I saw either in Europe or in this
country, and I generally found them greatly
superior, in all useful accomplishments, to those
educated by other methods. It is on this practical proof of the great superiority of the system
that my confidence in its immense utility to mankind has been founded, as I do not pretend to




FIRST AMERICAN DISCIPLE


59


be a judge of scholastic exercises without seeing
the result.
"One of the most beneficial consequences is
the pleasure all Pestalozzi's pupils take in mental
labor and study. Agreeable sensations being
connected with intellectual employment from the
earliest dawn of reason, it continues to be an ornament throughout life; and all my experience
forces me firmly to believe that education may,
with great ease and pleasure, be so conducted as
to render, by early habits, all the useful and necessary operations of both males and females, a
pastime and amusement, converting life itself
with a play in spite of the delusion of the imagination."
There is, I think, no doubt but that Mr. Maclure
rendered Pestalozzi important financial aid in carrying on his institution at Yverdon. John Griscom2 in writing of his departure from  Pestalozzi at Yverdon October the Ioth, 1818 says:
"Toward those who have generously contributed
to aid him in his pecuniary difficulties his heart




60          WILLIAM MACLURE
glows with the liveliest gratitude. Of two of
my acquaintances, one in London and the other
in Philadelphia, who have thus befriended him,
he could not speak without emotion." The
Philadelphia acquaintance was undoubtedly the
noble minded and public spirited philanthropist,
William Maclure.




: *.
I. I  I 




e-zorrR


r7#L~&g




CHAPTER III


JOSEPH NEEF: COADJUTOR O         PESTALOZZI
Birth and training of Neef. Connection with Napoleon. Instructor under Pestalozzi at Burgdorf. Organizes a Pestalozzian school in Paris. Character of the Paris school.
Employment of Neef by.William Maclure. The contract.
Teaching at Philadelphia, Village Green, Louisville and
New Harmony. Social and personal characteristics.
As suggested in the previous chapter, Mr. William Maclure engaged Joseph Neef, a former colleague of Pestalozzi, to come to the United States
to introduce the work of reform so well begun in
Europe by the famous Swiss educator. Francis Joseph Nicholas Neef was born at Soultz,
Alsace, on the sixth of December in the year 1770.
His father was a miller by occupation; and the
son was destined for the      priesthood  and was
educated   accordingly.    But when     twenty-one
years of age he experienced profound changes in
his religious views and he gave up the idea of
61




62


JOSEPH NEEF


taking orders and entered the French army under
Napoleon. He was severely wounded in the
famous battle at Arcole in Italy in 1796 and forced
to retire from military service. A bullet had
lodged in his head and it continued to cause him
pain up to the time of his death.
Quitting the army he turned his attention to
education. Pestalozzi's writings had attracted
his notice and he had been much inspired by the
aims and ideals of the Swiss reformer. When
he joined Pestalozzi is nowhere positively stated.
In his Sketch of a plan and method of education3
he says: "About a year after Pestalozzi's school
was established, I became acquainted with him."
The school at Burgdorf was opened in 1799, so
that he must have joined Pestalozzi about i800.
He taught music, gymnastics and         French   at
Burgdorf.
*Burgdorf, a town of 7000 inhabitants, on the Emmen river,
eleven miles northeast of Bern, was the scene of Pestalozzi's
labors from 1799 to 1804. His school included an orphanage
and a training school for male teachers. Associated with Pestalozzi at Burgdorf, besides Neef, were Herman Kriisi, Sr., Johannes Niederer, Gustav Tobler, and Johannes Buss.




A COADJUTOR OF PESTALOZZI


63


The character of his teaching is best given by
Ramsauer6 who was a student at Burgdorf at
the time. He says: "Our joy reached its climax
when our gymnastic master, Neef, with his peculiar
charm, took part in it. This Neef was an old
soldier who had fought in all parts of the world.
He was a giant with a great beard, a crabbed face,
a severe air, a rude exterior, but; he was kindness
itself. When he marched with the air of a trooper
at the head of sixty or eighty children, his great
voice thundering a Swiss air, then he enchanted
the whole school. Singing was always a true
means of recreation at Burgdorf. We sang
everywhere, in the open air, when travelling, when
walking, in the evening in the court of the castle,
and this singing together contributed much to
keep up a spirit of good feeling and harmony
amongst us. I should say that Neef, in spite of
the rudeness of his exterior, was the pupils' favorite, and for this reason he lived always with
them, and felt happiest when amongst them.
He played, exercised, walked, bathed, threw




64


JOSEPH NEEF


stones with the pupils all in a childish spirit; this
is how he had such unlimited authority over them.
Meanwhile he was not a pedagogue, he only had
the heart of one."
Pestalozzi, having been chosen a member of the
Helvetian council, was frequently called to Paris
to settle disputes and look after the interests of
the Swiss people. The educational doctrines of
Pestalozzi had already been made familiar to the
French people by Jullien and other French apostles of the Swiss reformer; and a philanthropic
society, having in charge the care and training
of forty orphans, had requested Pestalozzi to send
one of his associates to take charge of the institution and conduct it on Pestalozzian lines. Because of his familiarity with the French language,
Neef was sent from Burgdorf to undertake this
work. Before his departure for Paris, in July
I803, he married Eloise Buss, the sister of John
Buss, one of Pestalozzi's first assistants. Mr.
Neef's daughter, Mrs. Richard Owen, under date
of January the ist., I893, writes me from New




A COADJUTOR OF PESTALOZZI


Harmony, Indiana, concerning her mother: "My
mother was the only sister of John Buss, who was
a professor in Pestalozzi's school at Burgdorf and
two of his brothers were there as students. Being
greatly pleased with the system of instruction,
he was desirous of having his sister educated
there also. But the school at Burgdorf admitted
only boys. As Madame Pestalozzi had no children
she was persuaded to take Eloise under her personal supervision. She went to Pestalozzi's
school at the age of fifteen and remained until her
marriage at the age of eighteen, receiving all her
instruction in the form of private lessons." Neef,
it should be noted, gave her private lessons in
French. Neef and Eloise Buss were married at
Burgdorf on the 5th of July 80o3, in the presence
of Pestalozzi and his wife and the members of the
institution. The quaint marriage certificate with
the witness signatures of Pestalozzi and his wife
was sent me by Mrs. Richard Owen with numerous other documents used in the preparation of
this work. Concerning his wife Neef says in his




66


JOSEPH NEEF


Sketch:3 "Mistress Neef, according to what she
often tells me, and I of course must believe, is an
excellent contriver in housekeeping; she shall
therefore be entrusted with the management of
our domestic affairs. Like the honest Vicar of
Wakefield, I chose my wife, not for a glossy surface, but for such qualities as I thought would
wear well."
Concerning the Paris school little can be learned.
Neef was there less than three years, and the
French were too busy waging wars to give much
attention to educational reform. Pompee,4 in
his life of Pestalozzi, published in French in I850,
gives the following account of Neef's school and
of a reputed visit to the same made by Napoleon:
"Mons. Neef, a teacher of Burgdorf, was sent to
Paris and commenced teaching in the orphanage,
where the administration of benevolent institutions entrusted a certain number of children to
him. Napoleon wishing to see for himself the
results of the teaching, went to the orphanage
accompanied by Tallyrand, the embassador from




A COADJUTOR OF PESTALOZZI


67


the United States, and a number of distinguished
people; he left well satisfied with what he saw. *
* * Whilst all the governments of Europe
were thinking of introducing a new system of
teaching in the elementary schools, a private individual, Mr. Maclure, conferred upon his country,
the United States, an establishment that could
vie with the most important schools of Europe.
A singular chance led him toward the improvement of his country's instruction. In 1804 he
was in Paris and had a great desire to see Napoleon. He applied to the embassador from the
United States who took him to the meeting where
Napoleon had gone to see the results of Neef's
teaching of the orphans. During the whole
time that the exercises were going on, Maclure,
absorbed in looking at Napoleon, saw nothing
else; but, on going away, he heard Tallyrand
say, 'It is too much for us.' This remark struck
him; he returned to the room and learned from
Neef the object of the meeting; and, as he was
deeply interested in the improvement of the con



68


JOSEPH NEEF


dition of the poorer classes, he saw at once all
that Pestalozzi's system could do to benefit their
condition. He made a very favorable offer to
Neef to go to Philadelphia, and later on to New
Harmony to found a Pestalozzian institute."
The late Roger de Guimps, the most trustworthy biographer of Pestalozzi, gives the above
quotation from Pompee "for what it is worth,"
admitting that it lacks corroboration. The facts
of Mr. Maclure's visit to Neef have been given in
the second chapter of this work. These facts are
from Neef himself and they are probably correct.
Concerning his meeting with Mr. Maclure, Neef
says in the introduction of his Sketch of a plan
and method of education: "In the summer of 805,
Mr. William Maclure of Philadelphia, one of
Pennsylvania's most enlightened sons, happened
to visit Helvetia's interesting mountains and
valleys. He was accompanied by C. Cabell, a
brother of the present governor of Virginia. Pestalozzi's school attracted their notice. They
repaired thither and were soon convinced of the




A COADJUTOR OF PESTALOZZI


69


solidity, importance and usefulness of the Pestalozzian system; indeed, to see Pestalozzi's method
displayed before his eyes and to form an unalterable wish of naturalizing it in his own country,
were operations succeeding each other with such
rapidity, that Mr. Maclure took them for one and
the same operation. As soon as he had returned
to Paris Mr. Maclure sought and sent for me.
'On what terms,' said the magnanimous patriot,
'would you go to my country and introduce there
your method of education? I have seen Pestalozzi; I know his system; my country wants it
and will receive it with enthusiasm. I engage to
pay your passage, to secure your livelihood. Go
and be your master's apostle in the new world.'
My soul was warmed with admiration at such uncommon generosity. Republican by inclination
and principle, and of course not at all pleased
with the new order of things that was established
under my eyes, I was not only glad to quit Europe,
but I burnt with desire to see that country, to
live in it, to be useful to it, which can boast of




70


JOSEPH NEEF


such citizens. But what still heightens Mr.
Maclure's magnanimity is that I did not at that
period understand English at all. Two years
at least were to be allowed for my acquiring a
sufficient knowledge of the language of this land,
during which space I had no other resource left
me but Mr. Maclure's generosity. But neither
this nor any other consideration could stagger his
resolution."
The contract between Maclure and Neef, in the
former's handwriting, was kindly loaned me by
Neef's daughter, Mrs. Richard Owen. It is in a
large round clear hand and reads: "Professor
Neef agrees to go to Pennsylvania in the United
States of America and to teach children"after the
methods of Pestalozzi for three years from the
date of his arrival, in consequence of which Wm.
Maclure agrees to pay Professor Neef's expenses
from Paris to the U. S. of America to the amount
of Three thousand two hundred Livres Tournois
[about six hundred dollars] and to make good
to Professor Neef whatever sum as salary he may




A COADJUTOR OF PESTALOZZI


7I1


receive for teaching said methods that falls short
of Five Hundred Dollars per Annum during the
three years or the time Professor Neef may continue to teach the system of Pestalozzi. Paris,
19th March, i806 [signed] William  Maclure."
On the back of the same is the following: "Paris,
g9th March, i806. Received from WVm. Maclure
Three Thousand two hundred Livres Tournois
in full for my expenses to the U. S. of America
agreeable to the terms of the Within Engagement
[Signed] Neef." Here clearly was profound faith
in the possibilities of Pestalozzianism! Well
might Mr. Maclure's biographer say of him: "He
devoted his talents and his wealth, not to the
acquisition of a greater fortune or to personal
aggrandizement or to sensual indulgence, but to
the advancement of science and the amelioration
of the condition of his fellow men, born and living
in circumstances not as favorable to happiness as
himself."
Mr. Neef devoted three years to the study of
the English language and the educational needs




72


JOSEPH NEEF


of the new world. During this interval he wrote
and published his Sketch of a plan of education.
In I809 he opened his school in Philadelphia
which he continued successfully for more than
three years when he removed the same to Village
Green, in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. While
here one David Glasgow Farragut, subsequently
the famous American admiral, was a pupil. But
the change proved disastrous, and after a little
more than a year, upon the advice of Dr. Gait,
a patron from Louisville, Kentucky, he removed
his school thither. With the establishment of the
social colony at New Harmony by Robert Owen
in 1825, Neef joined the community in the capacity
of schoolmaster. When the colony broke up in
1828 he removed to Cincinnati and later to Steubenville, Ohio, where he conducted schools during
the next six years. He returned to New Harmony
in 1834 where he continued to live up to the time
of his death, April the 8th, I854. His Sketch of a
plan and method of education, as well as his educa



A COADJUTOR OF PESTALOZZI


73


tional labors in Philadelphia and at New Harmony, will be discussed in following chapters.
Those who knew Neef well describe him as being "a man of unusual abilities and eccentric character, a profound scholar, a deep and original
thinker, a thorough philosopher and an honest
man." In personal appearance he was "firm-knit,
sinewy, compact of form with a bright, dark eye
and close-cut coal black hair, the figure and gait
of a well-drilled, graceful soldier, the face of a
Roman Tribune, the mind of a sage, and the
heart of a child." In spite of the fact that he is
reported as having no inclinations for society, I
find among the documents preserved by his
daughter a certificate indicating membership in
the Masonic lodge and election to membership in
the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
One of the Philadelphia students 1 relates that
"on occasions when it became necessary that he
should visit the city, his wife, an excellent and
notable woman, would tie a cravat (which he
habitually went without) round his neck and put




74


JOSEPH NEEF


a hat on his head, much to his disgust and annoyance. 'Alas,' he would exclaim at such times
with a mock resignation, 'must I again have that
rope round my neck.' It usually happened, on
these occasions citywards, that, taking off his hat
in the stage, or at the first halt on his route, he
forgot all about that superfluous article, and
would return to his good lady hatless as usual.
And if the day had been warm the cravat generally shared the fate of the hat. To guard against
these frequently recurring losses, Mrs. Neef had
recourse, finally, to the plan of attaching her
husband's name and address to the inside of his
headgear."
In the prospectus3 of his Philadelphia school
Mr. Neef tells prospective patrons with great
frankness that he is little given to meaningless
social conventionalities. He says: "To prevent
my future visitors from all kinds of astonishment,
I must apprise them before hand that they will
probably find me rather refractory to the common
laws of civility. I know very well that politeness




A COADJUTOR OF PESTALOZZI      75
is an indispensible duty of a sociable and social
man; but I also know that there are duties of
different descriptions. * * * To take care
of my pupils will be my supreme duty, for which
I will not hesitate to postpone even the laws of
civility."








CHAPTER IV


NEEF'S PLAN AND METHOD OF EDUCATION
Earliest American book on education. Connection with Pestalozzi. Aim of education. Function of oral instruction
Method of object teaching. Use of books. Study of number and form. Grammar. Religious instruction. Physics.
Gymnastics and physical training. Study of languages.
Music and poetry. Geography. Salle of the book. Translation of Condillac's Logic. Neef's third book: Methods
of teaching reading and writing.
Mr. Neef reached Philadelphia during the summer of i806 but he devoted three years to a mastery of the English language and the preparation
of his Sketch of a plan and method of education.
Although Christopher Dock's Schul-Ordnung is the
oldest American book on the art of teaching,*
Neef's book may be said to be the first strictly
pedagogical book written and published in the
*For an account of Christopher Dock and his Schul-Ordnung,
see Samuel W. Pennypacker's Historical and biographical sketches
(Philadelphia, 1883, pp. 91-153).
77




78


JOSEPH NEEF


new world in the English language. The full
title reads: Sketch of a plan and method of education founded on the analysis of the human faculties
and natural reason, fitted for the offspring of a free
people and of all rational beings. By Joseph Neef,
formerly a co-adjutor of Pestalozzi at his school
near Berne, Switzerland. Philadelphia; Printed
for the author, i808, pp. i68.
Recalling that the English language was a foreign tongue to Mr. Neef, the style of the book
is singularly clear and forceful.
In the preface the author pays this tribute to
his master: "There lives in Europe, beneath the
foot of the Alps, an old man whose name is Pestalozzi, a man as respectable for the goodness of
his heart as for the soundness of his head. This
man, endowed by nature, or rather nature's god,
with the felicity of an observing mind, was forcibly struck by the vices, follies, and extravagancies
of the superior ranks, and the ignorance, superstition, and debasement of the inferior ranks of society. He perceived that from these impure sources




PLAN AND METHOD


79


flowed all the miseries that afflicted his unhappy
fellow creatures. Being no disciple of Zeno, the
woes of his brethern naturally imparted their
anguish to his sensitive heart. The host of calamities, under which he saw his fellow men groaning,
deeply grieved his feeling soul, and the gulf of
evils, into which he viewed mankind plunged,
called forth the most cordial and sincere compassion. Tears fell from his mourning eyes but
they were manly tears. Far from being disheartened by such a sad spectacle, he had the
courage to enquire into the causes of human misery; he went even a step farther and endeavored
to find out a wholesome remedy, calculated to
destroy at their very source those evils which
inundate the world.
"Considering that man is born neither good
nor bad, but that the disposition to become either
good or bad is intimately interwoven with his
organization, he became soon convinced that
our education is the only cause of our becoming
either good, useful, intelligent, rational, moral




80


JOSEPH NEEF


and virtuous beings, or wicked, noxious, ignorant,
senseless, superstitious, and therefore miserable
creatures. His mind was necessarily directed
toward investigating the established systems of
education; and ofter a mature examination thereof, he conceived that, without a radical reformation of the prevailing methods, it would be perfectly useless to expect any better results. This
reformation became now the subject of his meditations. After having sufficiently digested these
most important ideas, he began to communicate
his thoughts to the world. In a plain but striking
way he unfolded his plan of reformation and displayed the happy consequences to which it would
lead. His book was read; his sagacity was
admired; his benevolent counsels were applauded
-and forgotten!* But he did not despond. The
*Pestalozzi's Leonard and Gertrude was published in 1781.
It was widely praised. Madame de Stael declared it the most
important book of the period, and the kings and queens of a
dozen European countries decorated the author. Pestalozzi,
however, was not seeking literary honors but an improved state
of society.




PLAN AND METHOID


8I


same object was exposed to view over and over
again, in all the forms and shapes of which it was
susceptible; and yet was the desired reformation
still to be begun and executed. Determined not
to depart this life without at least seeing his
theory tried, he resolved, in his old age, of making a full experiment of it himself. He therefore
established a school. Other men, animated by
his philanthropical enthusiasum, joined him;
and thus began a work which will render Pestalozzi's name as dear and venerable to posterity
as the deeds of many of his contemporaries will
render them execrable to future generations."
Besides the introduction and conclusion, there
are sixteen chapters in the Sketch, as follows: (I)
Speech and speaking; (2) Number, arithmetic
and calculation; (3) Geometry; (4) Drawing;
(5) Writing and reading; (6) Grammar; (7) Ethics and morals; (8) Natural history; (9) Natural
philosophy; (io) Chemistry; ( i) Exercise and
gymnastics; (12) The study of languages; (13)




82


JOSEPH NEEF


Music; (I4) Poetry; (I5) Geography, and (i6)
Lexicology.
In his introduction Neef defines education as
^the gradual unfolding of the faculties and power
-'    which Providence bestows on the noblest wor
of creation-man. Nature gives every human
being physical, intellectual and moral capacity.
The new born child contains the germs of these
faculties just as the acorn contains the germs of
the majestic oak; and the work of the teacher 
is the unfolding of these powers-to trahi
child to make just use of its faculties
He denies that Pestalozzi's scheme is new and
affirms that there is nothing new under the sun.
Pupils will learn the same old arts and sciences
but they will learn them in a new way. "This
new way is Pestalozzi's method, which, as you
will perceive by and by, essentially and fundamentally differs from all other systems of education. Pestalozzi does not attempt to introduce
anything into his pupil, but to develop what he
finds in him  The first and fundamental point




PLAN AND METHOD,


83


being found out, he proceeds from thence neither
by jumps, nor starts, nor giant strides. Festina
lente is a principle, a rule, which guides all his
steps. His puil always sets out from the kn
nd plain_ and procieed h s liness tot
the yet unknown and complicatedj He leaves no
oint behind him without. being perfectly master
of it. Every point of knowledge which he acquires I
s but a step to acquire a new one; all his faculties 
re displayed but none is overtrained; all his
proceedings are subject to the minutest grada
Neef's method of approach throughout is essentially the same as that of his master. Violence
is not done to the child by thrusting him into the
intricacies of the printed page. Oral language
is in consequence the starting point with the young
learner. In order to cualtivafo  ld eunt 
power of speaking, it is necessary to ol 
owers of the mind   Neef regards the acquisition of language and the communication of ideas
and thoughts by means of articulate sounds as




84


JOSEPH NEEF


the basis of all elementary school training. This
means he would attain through the study of the
natural objects in the child's environment. The
eleven steps in such object instruction (oral language) are (i) study of the object as a whole;
(2) determine the coherency, subordination,
connection or relation between two objects, or
between the part and whole of an object; (3)
examine the number of things; (4) point out the
position or situation of the object; (5) point
out the qualities of the object; (6) form or shape
of the object; (7) organic functions of the object;
(8) uses we may make of the object; (9) resemblance of this object with other somewhat similar
objects; (io) difference of this object with other
objects studied; (i ) summary-an exact and
precise description of all that has been observed
investigated, analyzed and determined in the
preceding steps.
By means of a system of object teaching, children will not only acquire vocabularies, but will
acquire skill in the expression of thought and




PLAN AND METHOD


85


capacity to form judgments. "All possible knowledge which in any way we shall be able to derive
from our own senses and immediate sensations,
shall be exclusively derived from them. The
second source to which we shall next resort, but
only in those cases where the first will be absolutely inaccessible shall be our memory; our third
resource   shall be   analogy.    Human     evidence
shall not be neglected, but we shall only have
recourse to it when all the foregoing means prove
insufficient and   unsuccessful.   Books, therefore,
shall be the last fountain from which we shall en
deavor to draw our knowledge."      eefsharedwit
Pestalozi   prnfolnd distrt for bookish know
ledge.*/
*In rejecting superficial book-learning as an empty mockery,
Pestalozzi said: "A man who has only word wisdom is less
susceptible to truth than a savage. This use of mere words
produces men who believe they have reached the goal, because
their whole life has been spent in talking about it, but who never
ran toward it, because no motive impelled them to make the
effort; hence, I come to the conviction that the fundamental
error-the blind use of words in matters of instruction-must
be extirpated before it is possible to resuscitate life and truth."




86


JOSEPH NEEF


In the study of numbers, combinations must be
made by means of objects and the child must acquire abstract notions of unity and plurality by
means of objects that are studied. Every mathematical statement should be understood and a
child should be encouraged to contradict any
principle or rule which does not tally with his
own understanding and experience. "My pupils
shall never believe what I tell them, because I
tell it to them; but because their own senses and
understanding tell them that it is true. If your
pupils ventured to tell you that you were wrong
and mistaken, when you were really so, you
would believe your magesterial dignity, authority and infallibility to be wounded and outraged;
and, in order to avenge them, you would punish
and chastise the little daring culprit and thus
prevent his repeating the heinous crime. But I,
on the contrary, shall require and exact of my
pupils to tell me as loud as they can and as they
please, that I am wrong, whenever their understanding tells them that I am really so."




PLAN AND METHOD8


87


Form study, it will be remembered, occupied an
important place in Pestalozzi's scheme of elementary school instruction, and form study was an
inductive approach to geometry. Here, as in
arithmetic, the child must understand all that is
taught him; and if he is to understand geometry,
the study must be concretely and inductively
developed. Neef did not think it wise to teach
geometry from a book but rather to develop with
the class, by means of models and drawings, the
elements of geometry. He says: "Instead of
teaching my pupils, instead of demonstrating to
them the successively occurring theorems and
problems, instead of crowding into their heads
an infinity of half-understood, misunderstood,
and very frequently not-at-all understood rules
and precepts, I shall on the contrary, act the mere
part of a disciple. The teacher's part will entirely
devolve on them. My only task will be to present,
in their successive order, the theorems to be demonstrated and the problems to be solved."
With reference to the study of grammar Neef




88


JOSEPH NEEF


is explicit to state that he regards the foundations
of all languages as grounded upon grammatical
knowledge; but he does not regard the study of
a text-book as essential to such grammatical
knowledge. Rather, he thinks, the grammar of
a language should be deduced from the use of the
language. In a word: "My pupils shall compose
their own grammar."'
Mr. Neef was not a believer in dogmatic religious
instruction in the schools. If children were to be
instructed in religious dogmas at all, he thought
such instruction should be given in the home. He
believed thoroughly in moral and ethical instruction which "will acquaint children with their inalienable rights and immutable duties in a moral
world;" and he thought the Golden Rule the
safest basis for such instruction.
All school studies are to be regarded merely as
the means by which the natural faculties of the
mind shall be brought to their maturity; and of
all school studies, natural history presents unquestionably the best and most convenient means




PLAN AND METHOD


89


to effect that purpose. The interest of the child
is a cardinal principle in Neef's scheme of instruction* and he regards natural history as best calculated to awaken the interests of young children.
But the child is not to learn natural history from
books but from     nature.   He shall "observe, examine, analyze and describe all the various earths,
stones, salts, bitumens, metals, vegetables, trees,
plants, quadrupeds, birds, worms, insects and
fishes which we shall successively discover in our
constant excursions."' The school garden is recommended as a most useful agent in the study of
*One hundred years ago Neef must have stood quite alone
in America in his advocacy of the doctrine of interest. Today
the doctrine is generally accepted by thoughtful school men.
Nicholas Murray Butler well says of the doctrine: "The proper
and scientific course is to search for the pupil's empirical and
natural interests, and to build upon them. This is not always
easy; it requires knowledge, patience and skill. It is far easier
to treat the entire class alike and to drive them over the hurdles
set by a single required course of study, in the vain hope that the
weak and the timid will not be injured as much as the strong
and confident will be benefited; and that somehow or other the
algebraic sum of the results of the process will bear a positive
sign."




90


JOSEPH NEEF


natural history in familiarizing children with the
manipulation and cultivation of plants. All
such study should develop the humane instincts
of the children, since "the citizens of the animal
world are very near relations of ours."
Many of the laws of physics are simple and may
be acquired by the child without premeditated
design. The rising and setting of the sun, the
different phases of the moon, the havoc of the
thunder-storm, the changes from summer to winter, the pressure and equilibrium of bodies, the
nature of liquids-these, and many other natural
forces, may be taught and understood by observation. Similarly with the study of chemistry.
The kitchen may serve as the laboratory and the
food substances the subjects for an elementary
study of chemistry.
One of the most valuable chapters of the book
is that devoted to gymnastics and physical training. It will be recalled that he taught the gymnastics during his connection with Pestalozzi's
school at Burgdorf and in succeeding chapters




PLAN AND METHOD


9I


it will be noted that gymnastics received important consideration in the schools which he conducted at Philadelphia and New Harmony.
"The most superficial observer of children,"
he points out, "must be forcibly struck with their
untamable activity, with their great predilection
for bodily exercises, with their untired fondness
for running, jumping, climbing, bathing, and
swimming, and that they always prefer the fresh
open air, however cold or hot, to the inclosed air
of a house."
He considers it just as wise to remove young
and growing plants from all communication with
air, light, and water as to prevent children from
conforming to their unquestionable instincts and
imperious wants. "My pupils shall run, jump,
climb, slide, skate, bathe, swim and exert their
adroitness, display their dexterity and exercise
their bodily force, just as much as they please,
or at least as it is rational to allow them."
If a child's bodily faculties are to be unfolded
and improved, surely the school must provide the




92


JOSEPH NEEF


means of such unfoldment and improvement.
He outlines a scheme of gymnastics and advocates definite military training; not that he believes in the principle of war-for he does notbut he thinks that every boy should have the
training and hardihood to defend successfully
his personal rights and liberties as well as the
rights and liberties of his country.
In his discussion of the study of languages Neef
is pronounced in his opposition to the ancient
languages and he refutes with extraordinary vigor
the arguments usually offered in defense of such
study. First, as to utility, he maintains that in
the countries of Europe very few scholars are able
to speak the Latin and Greek. He denies that
the classical authors furnish helpful models in
composition. Correct thinking he maintains is
never acquired from a foreign language-ancient
or modern. One's thinking must always be done
in one's mother tongue. Neither is it an argument for the study of the ancient languages
to say that English contains so many Latin and




PLAN AND METHOD


93


Greek words. The same argument might be
made for the study of German, Keltic, French,
Swedish, and a dozen other languages. When
taught as an oral language, when the spoken language precedes the study of written language and
when grammatical forms are not made the basis
of the study, Neef believes that the study of a
modern language-and preferably the Frenchmay have distinct educational value.
Music is regarded as an essential study in the
elementary school course and Neef offers an
argument that I do not recall to have heard before
-viz., that the study of vocal music improves
materially the quality of the speaking voice.
Literature in the form of poetry is considered of
special value because of the element of rhythm.
In the study of geography, the school world is
naturally the starting point, the pupils making
their own maps. Home geography (Heimatskunde), it will be remembered, was one of the
striking innovations of Pestalozzi; and all such
instruction was given in the open air and in the




94


JOSEPH NEEF


presence of the geographic forms and forces being
studied. Many of Neef's views strike one as singularly new to-day and many of the reforms which
he advocated are still advocated by leaders of
advanced educational thought.
By 1826 Maclure tells us the edition of the
Sketch was completely exhausted and the book has
never since been re-published; but that it warrants re-publication, thoughtful readers of this
brief summary, I think, will grant. In addition
to the Sketch, Neef published two other books.
His second book was a translation of Condillac's
Logic. The full title reads: The logic of Condillac.
Translated by Joseph Neef as an illustration of the
plan of education established at his school near
Philadelphia. Philadelphia, I809. pp. I38. It
is a literal translation without notes or comments.
His third book was: The method of instructing
children rationally in the arts of writing and reading.
By Joseph Neef. Philadelphia, I813. pp. 388.
This book is in reality an elaboration of his views
of reading and writing outlined in his first book.




PLAN AND METHOD


95


In the preface he writes: "Whether my plan be
good or bad, better or worse than others, is to
be decided by those who make proper trial of it;
and to them I dedicate the following instructions
for teachers." Ninety-five pages are devoted to
a discussion of methods of teaching reading (and
writing) and the balance of the book to exercises
calculated to illustrate the method. Neef combined the phonetic and sentence methods in teaching reading, and writing was taught in connection
with reading. It will be recalled that Neef postponed considerably the process of word-learning.
Only after children had acquired large vocabularies of common objects and expressed themselves
with freedom and clearness about these objects,
would he introduce the mechanical phase of reading.*  The Method is about the only reading
*Modern psychological scholarship is quite in accord with
Mr. Neef in thus postponing the formal part of reading until a
later period. Professor George Thomas White Patrick, in an
able article, "Should children under ten be taught to read and
write?" in the Popular Science Monthly for January 1899 (Vol.
54, pp. 382-392), argues that they should not. Says Professor




96


JOSEPH NEEF


book to be used by children. When they mastered
that he would give them good literature. Mr.
Neef's daughter wrote me that her father also
prepared a fourth book giving his methods of
teaching the French language, but that the
manuscript never was printed.
Patrick in this connection: "If the child at this age [between
five and ten] must be put into the harness of an educational
system, his course of study will not be impoverished by the
omission of reading and writing. To teach him to speak and
to listen, to observe and to remember, to know something of
the world around him, and instinctively to do the right thing,
will furnish more than enough material for the most ambitious
elementary school curriculum."




CHAPTER V


FIRST AMERICAN PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL AT
PHILADELPHIA
School at the Falls of the Schuylkill. Buildings. Method of
teaching arithmetic. Out-door life. Physical training
and sports. Reminiscences of a pupil. Discipline. Military exercises. Removal of the school. School at Village
Green: David Glasgow Farragut a pupil. Removal of the
school to Louisville.
The employment of Joseph Neef by William
Maclure for the organization of a Pestalozzian
school in Philadelphia, and Neef's views on educational methods and principles, have been told in
preceding chapters. Late in the summer of I809
the first Pestalozzian school in America was
opened in the suburbs of Philadelphia, at the
Falls of the Schuylkill, near where the Fairmount
Water Works are now located. "There were
actual falls in those days," relates one of the original pupils 2 of the school, "the sounds of the rapids
97




98   FIRST AMERICAN PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL


could be heard for a mile or more, and it was no
uncommon sight to behold the Indian steering
his canoe skillfully and calmly down through the
whirling waters. But the Fairmount Water
Works were subsequently built, a dam was constructed across the stream, and the water so far
backed as to cover the rocks and obliterate the
falls altogether."
The school house was situated on a hill and
near it were two other buildings, used as the
dwelling house and dormitories. They were
plainly built, of rough, substantial material, but
they were well ventilated and comfortable. On
this spot, as Mr. Gardette2 tells us, Mr. Neef succeeded in collecting over one hundred boys, most
of them sons of the best families residing in and
about Philadelphia and nearly all of them boarders. A kinsman of Mr. Gardette has thus described the institution: "I lived at the school for
four years-from my seventh to my eleventh
year. During this period I saw no book, neither
was I taught my alphabet. The chief subjects



PHILADELPHIA


99


languages, mathematics and the natural sciences
-were taught us orally; and the idea was to
make us understand the object and application
of all we learned."
Neef's method of teaching mathematics is thus
sketched: "Great blackboards hung in the schoolrooms and the method of indoor instruction was as
follows: Arithmetic, for instance being the matter
in hand, and the rule of three (the highest point
I ever reached there) the special problem, a pupil
was chosen from the class who chalked upon the
blackboard such a statement as 4:i6::7:28, and
having given the proof in the peculiar manner
adopted by Neef and explained in his book,4 he
called the statement and demonstrated aloud,
and the entire class repeated after him, over and
over, till they were fully impressed on their minds.
The power of memory-especially for numbers
obtained by the pupils in this way, was remarkable. Little boys of ten or twelve would multiply
by tens of thousands promptly, without slate or
pencil, or give correct answers in the rule of three,




100 FIRST AMERICAN PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL


no matter how great the figures, as quickly as you
would have it worked out on paper."2
As all knowledge of common objects was obtained at first hand-no books being used-Neef
spent much of the school time in the open air with
his pupils studying home geography and natural
history. The student already quoted relates
in this connection: "Our outdoor life was equally
curious. We never wore hats, winter or summer,
and many of us went barefooted also during the
warm weather. Our master, hatless as ourselves,
would lead us on long tramps through the adjacent
country, talking as we went, upon agriculture,
botany, mineralogy and the like, in a pleasant
descriptive way, and pointing out their practical
illustration in the grain fields, the gardens, the
rocks and streams along our route. And whereever we came we were always recognized by our
bare heads and hardy habits as 'the Neef boys
from the Falls.' "
Physical exercises of a natural but vigorous
sort occupied a commanding place in Neef's
~ 3.~,..** z W




PHILADELPHIA


IOI


scheme of education. Says Mr. Gardette's kinsman: "We were encouraged in all athletic sports,
were great swimmers and skaters, walkers and
gymnasts. In the pleasant weather we went
to bathe twice every day in the Schuylkill, with
Neef, who was an accomplished swimmer, at our
head. It was probably owing to these amusements and exercises being taken in common with
our master that there existed between Neef and
his pupils so great a freedom as to be sometimes,
I fear, slightly inconsistent with good breeding or
the deference due from pupil to teacher. But
this seemed to be a part of the system, and Mr.
Neef was a thoroughly good natured, simplemannered, and amiable man, without an atom of
false pride or pedagogism." 2 How like the characterization, quoted in a previous chapter, by
Ramsauer, who was a pupil in Pestalozzi's school
at Burgdorf while Neef still taught there.
Until the children had reached the age of ten or
eleven, Neef did not consider books suitable tools
for the education of youth, and he put his theory




102 FIRST AMERICAN PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL


into practice in the Philadelphia school. He
wrote on this subject: "It is irrevocably decided
and determined that my pupils shall pry into no
book, turn over no book, read no book, till they
are able not only to comprehend what they read,
but also to distinguish perfectly well good from
bad, truth from falsehood, reality from chimera,
and probabilities from absurdities. God's beautious and prolific creation-all nature-shall be
their book, and facts their instructors. But as
soon as they shall have reached the necessary
maturity, then, and only then, shall they read;
then their reading will be really useful, and both
instructive and pleasing to them." It was Neef's
conviction the mechanical phases of reading and
writing were begun altogether too early in the
school-life, and it is a fact worth recording that
the best modern psychological thought is in entire
accord with Mr. Neef.
Neef was at all times on a footing with his
pupils; he regarded himself as a fellow learner;
the problem of discipline was in consequence




PHILADELPHIA


I03


solved, since his school was self-governing. On
this point he writes:4 "The grave, doctorial,
magisterial, and dictatorial tone shall never insult
their ears; they shall probably never hear of cato'nine-tails. I shall be nothing else but their
friend and guide, their school-fellow, play-fellow,
and messmate."
In all essential particulars, the Pestalozzian
school at Philadelphia differed from contemporaneous American institutions. Gardette tells us
that instead of ringing a bell, Neef always called
the boys together by whistling three times in a
peculiar way. HIe did this by placing his crooked
forefinger between his teeth and uttering a prolonged note, loud and shrill enough to be heard
a long way off.
A military man himself, Mr. Neef believed implicitly in the educational value of military training, and it is to be feared that he not only permitted but encouraged certain vigorous and
questionable forms of physical exercise, such as




104 FIRST AMERICAN PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL


wrestling and fighting.* This met with no small
amount of condemnation on the part of those
patrons of the school who were members of the
Society of Friends.    In reply to such criticism he
said that he had no hand in the making of society
what it is and he doubted if it was likely to be
much better in the days of his grandchildren; but
he maintained that in such a state of society as the
present, it was necessary for every lad to acquire
the courage and the physical skill to defend his
"life and liberty against any invader, human, inhuman or super-human in shape."          He argued
that military drills appealed to the interests of
boys and related an experience during his connection with Pestalozzi's school at Burgdorf
*G. Stanley Hall in his new work on Adolescence remarks
in this connection: "Better even an occasional nose dented by
a fist, a broken bone, a rapier-scarred face, or even the sacrifice
of an occasional life of our best academic youth than stagnation,
general cynicism and censoriousness, bodily and psychic cowardice, and moral corruption, if this indeed be, as it sometimes is,
its real alternative."




PHILADELPHIA


Io5


where much good was accomplished for the boys
by such drills. 4
The Philadelphia school was altogether prosperous and the only reason for its removal that
I have ever been able to learn was the desire of
Mr. Neef to locate in the country and thus give
his pupils the full advantages of out-door life and
the study of nature. Before the fourth year had
ended he removed his school to Village Green in
Delaware County, near the city of Chester. A
large number of the pupils in the Philadelphia
school accompanied him; and Phiquepal d'
Arusmont, an eccentric Frenchman, who was
later connected with Neef in the educational
work of the New Harmony community, accompanied him to Village Green as assistant teacher.
The only noteworthy fact to be recorded in the
history of the Village Green experience was the
membership in the school of a lad who subsequently became a distinguished admiral in the
navy of the United States-David Glasgow Farragut.   Young Farragut's father had died and




xo6 FIRST AMERICAN PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL


Captain (afterwards Admiral) Porter had taken
charge of the lad. He went with Porter on the
ill-fated cruise of the Essex which was captured
by the British in the war of 1812. In common
with the other survivors of the Essex, Farragut
landed in New York as a paroled prisoner of war.
Porter took him at once to Chester and placed
him in Neef's school. Writing in his later life
Admiral Farragut gives this account of his experiences at Neef's school: "I accompanied my
friend Captain Porter to Chester, where I was put
in a school to a queer old individual named Neef.
His method of instruction was simple in the extreme; he had no books but taught orally such
subjects as he desired us to understand. The
scholars took notes and were afterwards examined on these lectures. In the afternoon it was
customary for us to take long walks, accompanied
by our instructor. On these occasions Mr. Neef
would make collections of minerals and plants,
and talk to us about mineralogy and botany.
The course of study was not very regular but we




PHILADELPHIA


I07


certainly had an opportunity of gaining a great
deal of useful information and worldly knowledge.
We were taught to swim and climb, and were
drilled like soldiers-branches of instruction to be
accounted for, probably, by the fact that the old
gentleman had been one of Napoleon's celebrated
guards. I do not regret the time passed at this
school, for it has been of service to me all my life." 1
The removal to Village Green turned out to
have been unwise and the number of students
rapidly declined. Neef himself held rather broad
views on religious matters and he was accused
by his rural neighbors of inculcating atheistic
ideas in the minds of his boys. This charge was
absolutely groundless, but the school suffered
nevertheless from the criticisms. Neef grew discouraged; and when, in 1816, Dr. Galt of Louisville, Kentucky, two of whose sons were in the
school, visited Village Green, and urged him to
remove his school to Louisville, Neef unwisely
acted upon the suggestion. Few of his old
students cared to accompany him at so great a




io8 FIRST AMERICAN PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL
distance, and Louisville at that time was a town
of little more than five thousand inhabitants.
The school did not prosper as Dr. Gait had hoped
it would; and after a couple years of effort, Neef
grew discouraged, abandoned teaching, and purchased a farm in the country, about twenty-five
miles from Louisville. Here he continued to
reside until his call to New Harmony in i825.




CHAPTER VI
PESTALOZZIAN     SCHOOL AT THE NEW          HARMONY
COMMUNITY*
Educational purposes of the founders of New Harmony. The
teachers. Equal education for the sexes. Mr. Woodbridge's characterization of the schools at New Harmony.
Library movement. Visit of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar.
Robert Dale Owen's account of Neef. Out-of-door-life.
Different opinions held by Robert Owen and William Maclure. Why Neef failed to permanently influence America.
In the chapter on William        Maclure and the
earliest introduction of Pestalozzian ideas in the
United States, some of the facts concerning the
educational activities of the New Harmony
community      have   already    been   pointed    out.
While the community was in the main an ex*The New Harmony Community was an experiment in cooperative socialism. The purpose is stated by Robert Owen, its
founder, was: (1) the introduction of changes in the social and
industrial structure of society necessitated by the increased productive power of the age; (2) the establishment of co-operative
industry which should replace competitive labor; and (3) the
organization of society into communities of 1500 or 2000 people
109




IIO


PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL


pression of the social ideals of Robert Owen, the
educational interests were entrusted to William
Maclure; and Mr. Maclure called Joseph Neef and
other Americanized Pestalozzians to his assistance
in working out his educational experiment.
In his Epitome of the improved Pestalozzian
system Mr. Maclure says: "The great and fundamental principle is never to attempt to teach
children what they cannot comprehend, and to
teach them in the exact ratio of their understanding it, without omitting one link in the chain of
ratiocination, proceeding always from the known
to the unknown, from the most easy to the most
difficult, practicing the most extensive and accurate use of all the senses, exercising, improving
and perfecting all the mental and corporeal facwho should own land and houses in common and labor for the
benefit of the community. Mr. Owen wished to avoid the evils
of large cities and the disadvantages of solitary homes and to
enable labor saving power to aid and not to oppress the workmen. For an account of the experiment at New Harmony see
the works by Hill, Lockwood, Maclure, Robert Owen, Robert
Dale Owen, and Packard given in section VI of the bibliography
at the end of this volume.




NEW HARMONY COMMUNITY


I II


ulties by quickening combination, accelerating
and carefully arranging comparison, judiciously
and impartially making deduction, summing
up the results free from prejudices and cautiously
avoiding the delusions of imagination, the constant source of ignorance and error." This was
Mr. Maclure's conception of the function of the
school.
The New Harmony community was organized
in 1825, when Mr. Neef was called from Louisville to take immediate charge of the school. The
official organ of the society, the New Harmony
Gazette, had declared: "The society regards education as public property and holds that the educating and training of youth should be among
the first objects of its solicitude and care." The
work of teaching during the two brief years of the
community's existence seems to have been shared
by a number of persons —William Maclure, Joseph
Neef, Thomas Say, Phiquepal d'Arusmont, Madame Neef, Madame Frotegeot, and others,-but




112


PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL


Neef, the co-adjutor of Pestalozzi, seems to have
served as head master, and Mr. Maclure as superintendent of education.
Boys and girls were given the same kind of education in separate school-rooms, since the New
Harmony community held to the theory of sex
equality. In addition to the boarding schools
for boys and girls, there was an infant school,
modelled after the one Robert Owen had established at New Lanark, Scotland, for the training
of children below the accepted school age. It
was provided that children should become the
property of the community at the age of two
years, when they were first received into the
infant school. This was essentially a play school;
games were taught the children; playthings were
provided, and "they were taught nothing they
could not understand." The infant school was
in charge of Madame Neef and Madame Frotegeot,
who had conducted a Pestalozzian school in
Philadelphia before coming to New Harmony.
William C. Woodbridge8 visited the New




NEW HARMONY COMMUNITY


II3


Harmony community shortly after its organization in 1825 and wrote: "There are four hundred
children belonging to the society, besides those
of strangers from various parts of the Union.
The number, when all are organized, will be sufficient to occupy three large buildings. Of these,
one will be that known among the Harmonians
by the name of the Steeple House. Its dimensions are sixty feet by forty, height two stories.
The upper part will serve for upwards of a hundred boys to sleep, the lower part is divided into
workshops for shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, tinmen, stocking weavers, etc., at which the boys
all learn to work part of their time as a recreation
from more studious pursuits, besides being occasionally employed in the fields and gardens,
all of which are cultivated on the most improved
principles of agriculture adopted in any part of the
world. All these exercises are substituted for the
gymnastics of the old schools, and are equally
strengthening for the body and may be made the
means of training them to activity and energy so




II4


PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL


useful in the common occupations of life. The
boys already can make their own shoes, clothes,
etc., and in a short time may be able to furnish
those articles to the whole community.
"At the same time they learn intellectual
arithmetic, geography, mathematics, etc., for
trades are used instead of play, and as an amusement when the boys are tired of mental work.
One hundred and fifty girls of all ages, under the
direction of Madame F., are taught the same as
the boys, that is, drawing, music, arithmetic,
mathematics, natural philosophy, a little chemistry, etc., The older girls are divided into
classes. One class takes by turns the cooking,
another the washing, a third keeping the house
in order, a fourth the manufacture of cotton
wool, for there are no servants in the society: all
work, never working long at the same time, no
class occupied above half of a day and at the same
work, which makes it easy, and not fatiguing.
Children have hitherto been unjustly treated;
their time made a burthen to them, for want of




NEW HARMONY COMIAJRUNITY


I I5


occupation agreeable to their inclinations and
faculties; for when properly managed, instead
of being a burthen, they might be made a help
to all connected with them. Experimental farming schools is one of the plans long had in view,
where children would not only be well educated,
but turn the help-part of their education into the
means of feeding and clothing them. From the
talents of the instructors, and the superiority of
the machinery, this place will probably be the
first in the union for a useful education."
William Russell published in the American
Journal of Education for June 1826 extracts from
a letter written to him from New Harmony under
date of March the 3Ist, 1826, which states that
"upwards of a hundred packages of books, etc.,
have just arrived via New Orleans. The works are
the most useful and the most splendid that could
be procured on natural history, antiquities, architecture, agriculture, etc. There is besides an
extensive collection of paintings and prints. Our
teachers are Messrs. Neef, Phiquepal, T. Say,




ii6


PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL


and several other eminent foreigners. We do
not hesitate to say that this place offers advantages for education which are not surpassed, if
equalled, by any part of this country. The expenses
attending the education, board, etc., of one pupil
are not over one hundred dollars per annum; and,
when we get everything properly organized, will
not exceed half that sum." In commenting on
the letter Mr. Russell remarks: "The munificent
provisions for education in New Harmony, are
derived, we are told, from the liberality of an individual [William Maclure] who is extensively
known for his generous patronage of education
in various parts of the United States, and to whom
the monitorial school of this city [Boston] is indebted for a valuable cabinet of minerals."
The library movement, since become such a
prominent feature of educational work, was
prominent at New Harmony. When Owen
reached New Harmony from England in the middle of January 1826, he brought with him, besides
his son Robert Dale Owen, Thomas Say, Charles




NEW HARMONY COMMUNITY


II7


Lesueur, and Gerard Troost, "a ship load of
books."  Lecture halls, reading rooms, and museums of natural history and mineralogy were also
features of the work; for both Owen and Maclure
were ardent advocates of what we call to-day university extension; and they were solicitous for
the intellectual improvement of the adult members
of the community as well as of the children.
The Duke of Saxe-Weimar visited the community schools in April 1826 and writes: "I found
Professor Neef in the act of leading the boys of
his school out to labor. Military exercise formed
a part of the exercise of the children. I saw the
boys divided into two ranks arnd parted into detachments, marching to labor. On the way they
performed various wheelings and evolutions.
All the boys and girls have a healthy look, are
cheerful and lively, and by no means bashful.
The boys labor in the fields and gardens; the
girls learn house-hold employments; these happy
and interesting little children are employed in
making their youth pass as happily as possible."




Ii8


PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL


The Duke also visited the dormitories where they
were exercised in various forms of manual labor.
The forms of manual training taught in the schools
were carpentery, shoemaking, lithography and
engraving.
Robert Dale Owen,5 in his autobiographical
sketches, gives this picture of the headmaster of
the New Harmony schools: "Simple, straightforward and cordial, a proficient in modern languages, a good musician, he had brought with him
from Pestalozzi's institution an excellent mode of
teaching. To his earlier life, as an officer under
Napoleon, was due a blunt, off-hand manner and
an abrupt style of speech, enforced now and then
with an oath-an awkward habit for a teacher,
which I think he tried ineffectually to get rid of.
One day when I was within hearing, a boy in his
class used profane language. 'Youngster,' said
Neef to him, 'You mustn't swear. It's silly and
it's vulgar and it means nothing. Don't let me
hear you do so again.'




NEW HARMONY COMMUNITY


II9


"'But, Mr. Neef,' said the boy, 'if, if it's vulgar
and wrong to swear, why —'
"'Well, out with it. Never stop when you
want to say anything; that's another bad habit.
You wished to know why - '
" 'Why do you swear yourself, Mr. Neef?'
" 'Because I am a damned fool. Don't you be
one too.' "
"With all his roughness," adds Mr. Owen, "the
good old man was a general favorite, alike with
children and adults. Those whose recollections
of Harmony extend back to the forties preserve a
genial remembrance of him, walking about in the
sun of July or August, in linen trousers and shirt,
always bareheaded, with a grandchild in his arms,
and humming to his infant charge some martial
air in a wonderful bass voice, which, it is said,
enabled him in his younger days, when giving
command to a body of troops, to be distinctly
heard by ten thousand men."
Differing on many questions concerning the
administration of the community, on one question




I20


PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL


both Maclure and Owen were agreed-viz., that
no dogmatic sectarian religious instruction should
be given in the schools. Mr. William C. Woodbridge, writing again in the American Journal of
Education (Boston) for March I827, says: "The
system [at New Harmony] is the improved Pestalozzian; and of course they never attempt to
teach children what they cannot comprehend.
In consequence, all kinds of dogmas of every sect
and persuasion are banished from the schools, but
the purest and unsophisticated morals are taught
by example and precept. In the infant school a
friendly feeling and equanimity of temper, kindness, and mild disposition toward one another is
taught more by example than by precept."
Much time was spent out of doors in the study
of natural history and the collection of objects for
study in the school-rooms. Sir Rowland Hill, an
Englishman, who visited New Harmony commends this system of natural education and remarks that the children "swarm over the woods
and bring in such an abundance of specimens that




NEW HARMONY. COMMUNITY


121


they are forming several immense collections,
some of which they will present to new communities, and others will be exchanged for collections
in other parts of the world."
Mrs. Sarah Cox Thrall, who was a pupil in the
girls' department of the community schools at
New Harmony, has left some reminiscences of her
own experiences. The girls, she says, wore
dresses of coarse linen in summer for ordinary
wear, with coarse plaids for Sunday and special
occasions. In winter they wore dresses of wool.
At rising the girls did the morning milking of the
cows. The morning meal consisted of mush and
milk. After breakfast they marched to school
to military orders. "I remember," she writes,
"that there were blackboards covering one side
of the schoolroom, and that we had wires with
balls on them by which we learned to count. We
also had singing exercises by which we familiarized
ourselves with lessons in various branches. At
dinner we generally had soup, at supper mush and
milk again. We went to bed at sun-down in lit



122


PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL


tie bunks suspended in rows by cords from the
ceiling." She mentions that the children were
permitted to see their parents only at rare intervals. 2
Maclure and Owen differed rather widely in
their opinions of educational practice. Mr. Owen
desired great uniformity in subjects and methods,
whereas Mr. Maclure advocated unbounded freedom. Mr. Owen desired more of the mechanism
of the Lancastrian system but Maclure opposed
the laying down of precise rules. In his autobiography Mr. Owen was inclined to blame the
schools in part for the failure of the New Harmony
experiment4; but this blame was clearly misplaced. The community was in existence less
than two years and during this brief period the
wholesale regeneration of society by the schools
was not possible. New Harmony was visited by
many eminent American and European educators
and all spoke of the schools in terms of praise, one
authority declaring that "the New Harmony system of education is the best in the world."




NEW HARMONY COMMUNITY


123


It must be admitted, however, that neither
the Philadelphia school nor the New Harmony
experiment influenced widely and permanently
American education. The late Norman A. Calkins thought the cause of Neef's failure to markedly influence the educational practices of the
new world, was due to the fact that he "failed to
comprehend the necessity of Americanizing the
Pestalozzian systen instead of merely transplanting it." A somewhat careful study of Neef's published writings on education and of the character
of his teaching in America does not sustain Mr.
Calkins's point. Three other and different reasons
explain Neef's failure to introduce permanently
the educational doctrines of his master in the
United States. First, the educational labors of
Neef lacked permanency. He was in Philadelphia, it is true, more than seven years, but his
school there was in actual operation less than
four years. He was at Chester only two years.
Had he remained in and about Philadelphia
where his labors met with a measure of success




I24


PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL


and where his ideas were appreciated and endorsed, his name to-day might be one of the best
known in the annals of the history of American
education. But removal to the wilds of Kentucky
crippled permanently the extension of Pestalozzian doctrines in the United States. Secondly,
he devoted his time to the education of boys who
later engaged in professional and industrial callings. Had his efforts been more directly concerned with the training of teachers, he might
have trained disciples who would have spread the
new educational gospel. This was contemplated
as is apparent from the prospectus of his Philadelphia school published in 1808. "If any young
men, who feel a disposition and inclination to
to become teachers themselves and to become my
associates and collaborators, they shall be welcome, and received as friends. All that I require
of them is that they shall not be system-mongers;
for this quality will render them unfit to learn
the difficult art of forgetting their learning, and
of descending from their lofty standing of mental




NEW HARMONY COMMUNITY


I25


acquirements to the low intellectual sphere of
childhood." Thirdly, Neef came to America a
quarter of a century too early. At the time of
his arrival there were few generous souls like
William Maclure profoundly interested in educational improvement. The renaissance of American education had not yet begun. Twenty-five
years later the intellectual revival which developed
educational leaders like William C. Woodbridge,
Henry Barnard, Horace Mann, Walter Johnson,
Thomas Gallaudet, Lowell Mason, Emma Willard,
and a score of others, would have given Joseph
Neef foremost rank in the great movement which
organized our common school systems. In consequence of these facts, Mr. Neef's influence as an
educator was less profoundly felt than was merited
by the splendid experience and the towering intellectual strength of the man; and his labors in our
country are forgotten or remembered only by a
few special students of the history of education.
The closing paragraph of the Sketch of a plan and
method of education was, indeed, sadly prophetic




126         PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL
of his subsequent career: "Should my project of
forming my own school miscarry, then the director
of some already established seminary will perhaps
please to accept my service; and if this should
not be the case, I shall in all likelihood find out
some remote, obscure village whose hardy youth
want a schoolmaster. Hear it, ye men of the
world! To become an obscure, useful country
schoolmaster is the highest pitch of my worldly
ambition."




CHAPTER VII


PESTALOZZIANISM      IN NEW     ENGLAND
Earliest New England advocates. The private normal schools.
William Russell: His educational labors. Normal school
at Lancaster. James G. Carter: Efforts to improve public schools. Aids the establishment of normal schools.
Charles Brooks: Missionary labors in behalf of normal
schools. State normal schools in Massachusetts: Mr.
Boutwell's claim of priority. The Westfield normal school
and objective methods. William C. Woodbridge. His
visit to Pestalozzi. Articles on Pestalozzian methods. Interest in vocal music. Bronson Alcott: Pestalozzian
school at Cheshire. Mr. Alcott's methods. Labors in Boston and Philadelphia. The Temple school. Correspondence with Greaves. Lowell Mason: Pestalozzian methods
in music.    Experiments with children. Introduction
of vocal music into the schools of Boston. State institutes
and normal schools. Henry Barnard: Basis of early Pestalozzian interest. Visit to Fellenberg. Numerous Pestalozzian translations.
Pestalozzianism entered New England less
early, and it influenced this section less markedly,
than other parts of the United States. There
127




128   PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


were, nevertheless, from a relatively early period
enthusiastic disciples of the Swiss reformer, particularly in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Among such New England disciples may be named
William C. Woodbridge, A. Bronson Alcott,
Lowell Mason, and Henry Barnard. Horace
Mann was an ardent admirer of Pestalozzian institutions, as he saw them in Europe; and both
Louis Agassiz and Arnold Guyot brought to New
England from Switzerland the Pestalozzian spirit,
and they employed the Pestalozzian method in
their study and teaching of natural history and
geography.
i William Russell
The normal schools, both private and public,
and the state teachers' institutes were early
influenced by the doctrines of Pestalozzi. Among
those who represented Pestalozzianism in the
early private normal schools, mention should be
made of the labors of William Russell, James G.
Carter and Charles Brooks. William Russell




WILLIAM RUSSELL


I29


(I798-I873), who was born and educated in Scotland, came to the United States in 1817 to accept
a position in an academy at Savannah, Georgia.
After a few years in the south, he came north,
teaching first in the Hopkins Grammar School in
New Haven and later at the Theological Seminary
at Andover and at Harvard College. He taught
at Andover and Cambridge simultaneously the
subjects of elocution and oratory. Deeply interested himself in the science of education, he
began in 1826 the publication of a high grade review, the American Journal of Education (I826 -1830). To except the Academician (I818-I819),
which had an existence of a few months only,
Russell's review was the first noteworthy attempt
at educational journalism in the United States.
It was published monthly in numbers of sixtyfour octavo pages and five volumes were issued.
William B. Fowle, Samuel R. Hall, Thomas H.
Gallaudet, William C. Woodbridge, Wilbur Fisk,
James G. Carter, A. Bronson Alcott, and Josiah
Holbrook were among the American contributors;




130   PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


and foreign educators were represented by translations and reprints from Pestalozzi, Jacotot,
Maria Edgworth, Jean Paul Richter, J. P. Greaves,
George Combe, and Elizabeth Harrison. Nine of
Pestalozzi's letters to Greaves were published
and a series of letters from Hofwyl, giving accounts
of Fellenberg's institution, written by William C.
Woodbridge. Mr. Russell was keenly interested
in the higher education of women, and in I829 he
was called to Philadelphia to organize such an
institution. Upon his return to Boston he resumed his former line of teaching at Andover and
at the same time engaged extensively in the work
of teachers' institutes in Massachusetts, under
Horace Mann, and in Rhode Island, under Henry
Barnard.
In 1849 he opened a private normal school in
New Hampshire. This was later removed to
Lancaster, Massachusetts. Its basis was distinctly Pestalozzian. William J. Whittaker and
Herman Krfisi, Jr., were brought from a Pestalozzian school in England; and Dana P. Colburn and




WILLIAM RUSSELL


I3P


Sanborn Tenney, both of whom had adopted the
Pestalozzian method of instruction-the former
in arithmetic and the latter in natural historyformed the remainder of the teaching staff. But the
establishment and success of state normal schools
in Massachusetts superseded the necessity of private establishments for the training of teachers;
and Mr. Russell closed his institution at Lancaster
in 1857 and devoted his closing years to lecture
and literary work.
2 James G. Carter
"To James G. Carter (I795-I849), more than to
any other person," says Henry Barnard, "belongs
the credit of having first arrested the attention of
the leading minds of Massachusetts to the necessity of immediate and thorough improvement in
the system of free or public schools and of having
clearly pointed out the most direct and thorough
mode of procuring this improvement by providing
for the competent training of teachers for these
schools. " Following his graduation from Harvard




132   PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


College, Mr. Carter taught for several terms in the
common schools, after which he established a
private school at Lancaster. While here he began
the agitation of common school reform, which culminated fifteen years later in the appointment of
Horace Mann as secretary of the state board of
education in Massachusetts.
In 1827 Mr. Carter presented to the legislature
of Massachusetts a bill providing for the establishment of a normal school for the training of
teachers, with a model or practice school attached.
The memorial was favorably reported on by a
committee in the house, of which the Hon. William B. Calhoun of Springfield was chairman,
making an appropriation for the establishment of
the same; but the bill was lost by one vote in the
senate. He next endeavored to interest the
town of Lancaster in the establishment of a private normal school; but his townsmen did not
share his philanthropic sentiments and the movement failed. He continued to.receive a number
of young men in his own private school whom he




JAMES G. CARTER


I33


trained for the work of teaching. He had become familiar with the plans and methods followed by Pestalozzi at Yverdon and he endeavored to apply the same in a small way at Lancaster. He was the moving spirit in the organization of the American Institute of Instruction
in I830, the oldest existing educational society in
America, and he was a prominent speaker at
many of its early meetings.
He was elected a member of the legislature in
1835, serving three years in the house of representatives and two years in the senate. He drafted
the bill which established the Massachusetts
state board of education and his vigor and intelligence were chief factors in its successful passage.
Many of the best friends of education in Massachusetts were greatly disappointed that Mr. Carter
was not selected as secretary of the board; but
the subsequent splendid career of Horace Mann
entirely justified the wisdom of the appointment
of the board.




134   PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


3 Charles Brooks
Charles Brooks (1795-1872) had visited Europe
in the early thirties and had been deeply impressed
with the efficient method of training teachers in
the Pestalozzian normal schools in Germany.
Accordingly, upon his return to Massachusetts,
he instituted a series of public meetingtfor the
agitation of the subject of a normal school in the
old commonwealth. He organized and conducted
such meetings in most of the towns of the state;
and his powerful address before the legislature,
making the first appropriation in behalf of normal
schools, is one of the notable utterances in the
history of the normal school movement. Mr.
Barnard says in this connection, "Although not
directly connected with the history of normal
schools in Massachusetts, it may be mentioned
in this place that no individual in the whole country has done more to arouse the public mind of
New England to the importance of normal schools,
and to some extent the leading minds of some
other states, than the Rev. Charles Brooks." He




CHARLES BROOKS


I35


was repeatedly called upon by the friends of education to plead their cause before the legislatures
of New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, and
Connecticut, as well as Massachusetts. In his
ardent advocacy of the cause of normal schools in
Massachusetts, one of the Boston newspapers
represented him as "Captain Brooks, with ferrule
in hand, at the head of a troop of schoolmasters
and school mistresses, marching for a normal
school in the clouds."
4  Massachusetts Normal Schools
The state normal schools of Massachusetts
played also a part in promulgating the Pestalozzian doctrines, although they never became
leaders in this movement to the extent of the normal school at Oswego, at a later date. The oldest normal schools in the United States, it will be
recalled, are in Massachusetts. The Framingham
and Westfield normal schools-the former at Lexington and the latter at Barre —were opened in
1839, the Bridgewater normal school in I840 and
the Salem normal school in 853.




136   PESTLAOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


Mr George Sewell Boutwell (1818-1905), who
was secretary of the state board of education of
Massachusetts from 1853 to I858, and who during
that time advocated heartily the methods and
doctrines of Pestalozzi, in a recent issue of the
Popular Science Monthly takes issue with Mr.
Aber that Oswego is entitled to the credit of introducing and promulgating over the country the
system of teaching known as the Pestalozzian
system. He says that, prior to i 860 [when the Oswego movement started], in at least four Massachusetts normal schools [Framingham, Westfield,
Bridgewater and Salem], "the art of teaching
was taught according to the system of Pestalozzi
and by well informed teachers and professors, and
with the knowledge that it was the system of
Pestalozzi;" and that "previous to 1859 the art of
teaching according to the system of Pestalozzi had
been taught and the practice of the art had been
illustrated to thousands of students in the normal schools and to teachers in the teachers' institutes in the state of Massachusetts."




WESTFIELD NORMAL SCHOOL


137


5 Westfield Normal School
In his history of the Oswego movement, Mr.
Hollis calls attention to the fact that the Westfield normal school was the pioneer in introducing
object teaching into the schools; but he adds,
"Unfortunately this valuable phase of the work
at Westfield attracted little general attention; and
it remained for another normal school in another
state at a considerably later date, to demonstrate
on an important scale the great value of object
teaching in common school branches"
The Westfield normal school, as has been observed, was opened at Barre, September the third,
1839 with Samuel Phillips Newman (I797-I842)
as principal. It was removed to Westfield in 1844
and Emerson Davis (I798-1866) served two years
as principal. He was succeeded by David S.
Rowe (1814-1888) who was principal of the school
for eight years. William Henry Wells (1812-1885)
succeeded Rowe in 1854; and upon Mr. Wells's
election to the superintendency of the schools of
Chicago two years later, John Woodbridge Dick



138   PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


inson  (I825-I901) was chosen his successor.
While object teaching had been a feature of the
Westfield normal school from the time of its establishment, Mr. Dickinson is authority for the
statement that after 1852 all the subjects in the
school were taught by the analytic objective
method. "These changes in the methods of
teaching," he writes, "required a preparation of
the means, so that there might be no violation
of the principles upon which the method was
founded. This turned the attention of the school
to collecting such objects, illustrative apparatus,
and reference books, as were necessary for a thorough system of objective teaching and study.
The branches of learning required to be taught in
the public schools were taken up, with special
reference to teaching them to others in accordance
with the laws of the human mind that control it
in the acquisition of knowledge and devleopment
of its faculties. That the pupils of the normal
school might have an opportunity of observing
the application of their methods to real children,




WESTFIELD NORMAL SCHOOL


I39


the town generously provided the school of observation, where they could add experience to
their theories. The results of these things soon
appeared in the professional spirit excited in the
different departments of the normal school, in the
improved work of its graduates, and in the new
interest which their good example produced
throughout the country in the study of the philosophy of education. The Westfield normal
school was the first to show that all branches of
learning may be taught by the same objective
method, and that elementary knowledge should
be taught with special and constant reference to
the scientific knowledge which is to be occasioned
by it." But the work at Westfield, as Mr. Hollis
remarks, did not attract widespread attention;
and, while it is true, as Mr. Boutwell contends,
that Massachusetts at an early date recognized
and practiced the methods of Pestalozzi, it is also
true that Massachusetts did not become a center
from which Pestalozzian influences radiated, as at
Oswego some years later.




I40   PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


6 William C. Woodbridge
As before suggested, however, the New England
Pestalozzian movement found its chief supporters
in William C. Woodbridge, A. Bronson Alcott,
Henry Barnard and Lowell Mason. William
Channing Woodbridge (I794-I845), following his
graduation at Yale College in 181, taught first
in an academy at Burlington, New Jersey, and
later in the deaf school at Hartford; but, feeling
that he needed more light on educational problems,
he went to Europe in I820 and spent a year in
study and travel. He was deeply impressed
with the work and doctrines of Pestalozzi at Yverdon, and was much pleased with the agricultural
phases of Fellenberg's institution at Hofwyl. He
returned to America with marked enthusiasm
for the introduction of the study of music in the
common schools and with a quantity of material
on the subject of geography. During the next
three years he prepared and published his Rudiments of geography and his Universal geography.
Dr. William A. Alcott writes in this connection:




. '. 0 
0 ~
& I 6
0~
*`~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
~~~~62~~~~~
9 ~~~~~~~~1,r~~~~~~I 
C/ii~~~~~~-~~c~~~~~cz=-U'   J~~~~I 




I.L
I. 
I:.." 




WILLIAM C. WOODBRIDGE


I4I


"Up to this period, geography as a science had
received but little attention in the public schools
of New England; with the exception of a few
more favored of the larger schools, spelling, reading and writing were nearly all the branches that
received special attention. A little arithmetic
was taught here and there, but even this was for
the most part crowded into the evening. * * *
As for geography, some few schools studied
Morse, a few others used a sort of reading book,
Nathaniel Dwight's System of geography, which
was arranged in the form of questions and answers. The vast majority, however, paid no attention to the subject. But Mr. Woodbridge,
while instructing the deaf mutes at Hartford, and
perhaps yet earlier, had hit upon an improved
plan of teaching, which is now too well known,
as incorporated into most of our school geographies, to need description. A similar method had
been pursued by Mrs. Emma Willard (1787-1870)
of the Troy Female Seminary. Both these teachers were preparing their plans of teaching for




142    PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


publication, unknown to each other; but Mrs.
Willard was at length induced to merge her own
work in that of Mr. Woodbridge. The Woodbridge and Willard geographies produced a revolution in the method of teaching this useful
science. "
Mr. Woodbridge returned to Europe again in
1825, spending three months with Pestalozzi
and Fellenberg and visiting many Pestalozzian
schools in Germany. He remained in Europe
four years, visiting numerous institutions and
collecting data on the general state of European
education. Upon his return in 1829 he participated in the movement of the Society for the Improvement of the Common Schools which had
been organized in Connecticut, whose purposes
were the improvement of the common school,
organization of institutions for the training of
teachers, and improved facilities for the education of women. In 1831 he purchased from William Russell (1798-1873) the American Journal
of Education which had been started in 1826.




WILLIAM C. WOODERIDGE


143


The name was changed to the American Annals
of Education and Mr. Woodbridge continued to
edit the same until 1837, and at great pecuniary
loss. It was high grade educational review, octavo
in form, and each monthly number contained
about forty-eight pages. Dr. William A. Alcott
(1798-1859) was the associate editor and the seven
volumes contain numerous articles on the Pestalozzian system of education. He returned to
Europe again in 1836 but failing health prevented
him from making the educational researches he
had designed. He returned to America in 1841
but not improved in health and passed the next
three winters at Santa Cruz. He died at Boston
in November I845. His biographer says of him:
'He was as influential as any man in awakening,
and maintaining that interest in the cause of education generally which arose in Massachusetts between the years 1830 and I840. He was anefficient agent in drawing public attention to the
necessity of normal schools. He was, if not the
very first, one of the earliest writers in favor of




144   PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


the introduction of the studies of physiology and
vocal music into our schools. He drew from behind the counter of a country store, and introduced
into the higher sphere, in which he has done so
great and useful a work, the celebrated Lowell
Mason, a service which alone would have made
him a public benefactor." Mr. Woodbridge's
letters in his own journal on Fellenberg's institution were among the first to appear in America;
and he may be justly regarded as the pioneer in
the movement which ultimately led to the introduction of vocal music into the schools of the
United States.
At the first meeting of the American Institute
of Instruction held at Boston in August I830 Mr.
Woodbridge gave an able and exhaustive paper
on the Pestalozzian method in music. He noted
that "the inductive system of instruction was introduced in Switzerland and Germany at the end
of the last century by Pestalozzi, and had been
adopted in this country in reference to some subjects. Early in the present century it was ap



WILLIAM C. WOODBRIDGE


I45


plied to music in the institution and under the
direction of Pestalozzi by Pfeiffer and Nageli, who
published a manual of instruction on these principles in 8 o1. The system has since been diffused
throughout the central portion of Europe, under
various forms, and is now acknowledged, in its
fundamental principles, to be the only true one."
The principles of the Pestalozzian system of music,
as there outlined by Mr. Woodbridge, are (I) To
teach sounds before signs and to make the child
learn to sing before he learns the written notes
or their names; (2) to lead him to observe by
hearing and imitating sounds, their resemblances
and differences, their agreeable and disagreeable
effect, instead of explaining these things to himin a word, to make him active, instead of passive,
in learning; (3) to teach but one thing at a timerhythm, melody and expression to be taught and
practiced separately, before the child is called to
the difficult task of attending to all at once; (4)
in making him practice each step of each of these
divisions, until he is master of it, before pass



146   PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND
ing to the next; (5) in giving the principles and
theory after the practice, and as an induction
from it; (6) in analyzing and practicing the elements of articulate sound in order to apply them
to music; and (7) in having the names of the
notes correspond to those used in instrumental
music. According to Mr. Woodbridge, the Pestalozzian system of music instruction was first
given practical trial by Mr. Ives in the schools of
Hartford in I830. Somewhat later, as will be
seen in succeeding paragraphs, Lowell Mason became the American apostle of Pestalozzianism in
music.
7 A. Bronson Alcott
Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) was a Pestalozzian without knowing the basis of his pedagogic creed. To except Greaves's translation of
Pestalozzi's Letters on the early education of the
child, which fell into his hands shortly after the
appearance of this work in Boston in I830, and
various stray articles on Pestalozzianism which




*'  1., 
-..   6 r   i, X
J


Ve -/-.1




I. -
5     _ '     I




A. BRONSON ALCOTT


I47


appeared in the American Journal of Education
(1826-1831) and the American Annals of Education (1831-1837), to both of which journals Mr.
Alcott contributed occasional articles, evidence
is wanting to show that Mr. Alcott possessed intimate knowledge of the exact nature of Pestalozzi's doctrines and methods. For ten years
Mr. Alcott pursued the itinerant occupation of
peddler of small wares and subscription books.
He began his career as a teacher in Connecticut
in 1823, an occupation which he continued to
follow for more than fifteen years. He taught
first a district school at Bristol and in 1825 he took
charge of the school at Cheshire. Before this
date, remarked Mr. Frank B. Sanborn, in an address at the centennial celebration of the town of
Wolcott, Connecticut in 1873: "The district
schools of Connecticut, and of all New England,
were at a low grade of discipline, instruction and
comfort; and in all these matters, Mr. Alcott set
the example of improvement. HIe first gave his
pupils single desks, now so common, instead of




148 PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


the long benches and double or three-seated desks,
still in use in some sections. He gave his youthful pupils slates and pencils and blackboards. He
established a school library, and taught them to
enjoy the benefits of careful reading; he broke
away from the old rule of severe and indiscriminate punishments and substituted therefore appeals to the affections and moral sentiments of
children, so that he was able almost wholly to dispense with corporal punishment. He introduced
also light gymnastic exercises, evening amusements at the school room, the keeping of diaries by
young children; and, in general, an affectionate
and reverant mode of drawing out the child's
mind toward knowledge, rather than the pouring
in of instruction by mechanical or compulsory
processes. Familiar as this natural system has
since become, it was an innovation five and forty
years ago,-as much so as Pestalozzi's method
had been in Europe when he began the instruction of poor children in Switzerland a hundred
years ago."




A. BRONSON ALCOTT


149


In the American Journal of Education for January and February 1827, Mr. Alcott, at the request of the editor, gives an account of the organization and methods of his Cheshire school. Mr.
Alcott's purpose, as there stated, is distinctly
Pestalozzian. Of his course of study he says,
"It is adapted professedly to the wants and genius
of the young mind; it refers to children; and it is
insisted that children are the best judges of what
meets their views and feelings."  His scheme
of moral education is the most rational and the
most elaborate in the annals of early American
education. He quotes Pestalozzi as saying that
"the only solid and true foundation of all morality is laid in the first relations of instructor and
pupil," and this relation he regards as fundamental in all moral education. Equally important
is the Cheshire scheme of physical education.
It aims to train the physical powers in relation to the practical uses of life, and in proportion to their respective utility. It provides special exercises for the training of the eye, the ear, the




150   PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


hand, and the voice; and emphasis is placed on
play-games such as balancing, jumping, hopping,
swinging, and running. He grounds intellectual
education upon the following principles: Follow
nature; employ the known to induce the unknown;
teach by visible and tangible objects, by oral and
illustrative and familiar methods; bring all the
powers of the mind into harmonious development
and exercise; prepare the mind to investigate for
itself, forming good mental habits, strengthening
its powers by exercise, and preserving it from implicit belief; develop reason as rapidly as possible;
never lose sight of the relation of cause and effect;
make experiment the test of theory and the basis
of fact; consult the minds, genius, and habits of
the pupils; furnish constant employment. After
more than three quarters of a century, how distinctly modern these principles of intellectual
education sound!
Amusements constituted an important educational factor in the Cheshire school. These,
argued Mr. Alcott, exercise a good influence on




A. BRONSON ALCOTT


I5I


the affections and passions of the pupils, and
improve and elevate their minds. Evening recreations at the instructor's room are provided
"in which he engages himself," story telling, plays
and games. The school was placed on a basis of
self government, and the governing officers-a
"superintendent, recorder, librarian and conservator"-co-operated with the instructor. One
of the eighteen laws of the self-governing basis
was: "that they behave to their companions as
they desired their companions to behave to them."
Samuel J. May (I797-I87I), afterwards principal
of the Framingham normal school, says that he
learned of the Cheshire school through Bronson
Alcott's cousin Dr. William A. Alcott; "his account," continues Mr. May's autobiography,
"excited so much my curiosity to know more of
the American Pestalozzi, as he has since been
called, that I wrote immediately to Mr. Alcott,
begging him to send me a more detailed statement of his principles and methods of training
children. In due time came to mne a full account




152   PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


of the school at Cheshire, which revealed such a
depth of insight into the nature of man, such a
true sympathy with children, such profound appreciation of the work of education, and was,
withal, so philosophically arranged and exquisitely
written, that I at once felt assured the man must
be a genius, and I must know him more intimately. So I wrote, inviting him urgently to
visit me. He came and passed a week with me
before the end of the summer. I have never, but
in one instance, been so immediately taken possession of by any man I ever met in my life. He
seemed to me like a born sage and saint. He
was a radical in all matters of reform; went to
the root of all theories, especially the subject of
education, mental and moral culture."
Reforms so pronounced as those introduced by
Mr. Alcott were not to pass unchallenged. He
met with no end of opposition, not only from the
patrons of his district but from his colleagues;
and in May 1827 he wrote: "The continuance of
the school is precarious, depending in a consider



A. BRONSON ALCOTT


I53


able degree upon the unsettled humor of the district. It may not long be continued under present superintendence. The opposing few are
still awake to carry on their designs; they may
succeed, having recently erected another school
under the instruction of an instructress, whose
pupils amount to about fifteen., leaving nearly
thirty in attendance at the usual place. Time
must determine the result of this proceeding.
Should opposition put on an angry aspect, the
original school will be relinquished. The common sentiment in the village is sufficiently improved to make something valuable to grow out
of what has been attempted-come of the school
what may."
In 1828 Mr. Alcott removed to Boston where
he opened first an infant school and later a private
school, during which time he wrote and published
his Observations on the principles and methods of
infant instruction. He was called to Philadelphia
in 1830 to accept a position in a school directed by
his friend William Russell. In September I834




154 PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


he returned to Boston and opened his famous
Temple school, where for a period of five years he
worked out even greater educational reforms than
he had been able to accomplish at Cheshire, the
school being of private rather than public nature.
Two women, who afterwards became distinguished
in American education and letters, were assistant
teachers in the Temple school under Mr. Alcott's
direction-Elizabeth Palmer Peabody ( 804-1894)
and Sarah Margaret Fuller, afterwards the
Marchioness d'Ossoli (1810-I850). Mr. Alcott's
labors and methods at the Temple school have
been admirably presented in Miss Peabody's book
Record of Mr. Alcott's school exemplifying the principles and methods of moral culture published at
Boston in I835. Mr. Alcott's daughter Louisa
May Alcott in her Little men utilized many of the
incidents in the Temple school in her imaginary
Plumfield school. Miss Peabody's Record is
still obtainable and should be read by every student of the history of American education.
Every department of the Temple school was per



A. BRONSON ALCOTT


I55


meated by the Pestalozzian spirit. In 1836 Mr.
Alcott published the first volume of his Conversations with children on the Gospels and a year later
the second volume. This work, Mr. Sanborn says,
"caused such a commotion in Boston that it led
eventually to the downfall of the Temple school."
Harriet Martineau after her return to England
from America in 1837 published an account of the
school which was not intended to be complimentary to Mr. Alcott. She had interpreted his Pestalozzianism by stiff and mechanical English
standards. James Pierrepont Greaves, an English philanthropist and disciple, saw in Miss
Martineau's "intemperate tirade," the genuine
Pestalozzian spirit and method and he recognized
Alcott's right of succession to the Swiss reformer.
He opened correspondence at once with Alcott;
cordially invited him to England, and in founding
his English Pestalozzian school at Ham he named
it Alcott House, in honor of the American teacher.
Alcott and Greaves unfortunately never met, for
the latter had died a few months before the ar



156   PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


rival of Alcott in England in the early summer of
I842.
Mr. Alcott's Boston experiment, while it received the hearty approval of such well known
educators as William Russell, Henry Barnard,
Thomas Gallaudet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walter R. Johnson, and William Ellery Channing,
met with no end of opposition from conservative
and traditional schoolmen. The newspapers also
attacked severely his Conversations with children
on the gospels. "The effect of such denunciation,"
says Mr. Sanborn, "was crushing." The school at
the Temple, which began in 1834 with thirty
pupils, and had received as many as forty pupils,
fell to ten in the spring of 1837, and after lingering
along for a year or two, with one or two changes
of place, was finally given up in I839. The immediate occasion of closing it was the unwillingness of Mr. Alcott's patrons to have their children educated in the same room with a colored
child whom he had admitted; and when the protesting parents found Mr. Alcott determined not




A. BRONSON ALCOTT


157


to dismiss the colored child, they withdrew their
own children, leaving him with only five pupils,
-his own three daughters, a child of Mr. William
Russell, and young Robinson, the cause of offence.
Having devoted ten years to the occupation of
clerk in a book store and itinerant peddler, and
nearly sixteen years to school-keeping, Mr. Alcott
consecrated the last fifty years of his long life to
the study and teaching of philosophy. Concerning his educational career, Mr. Sanborn says,
"As will be seen in the records of his schools at
Cheshire, Philadelphia, and Boston, Alcott, like
Pestalozzi, was constantly at a disadvantage in
dealing with affairs; nor was he so fortunate as
to find a co-adjutor who could supply the practical ability to match and complete his own idealism. Hence the brief term of his success in every
place where he taught, and his frequent removals
from town to town and state to state. But the
best men and women everywhere aided his plans,
rejoiced in his success, and knew how to pardon
his failures."




158   PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


8 Lowell Mason
The labors of Mr. Woodbridge in behalf of Pestalozzian methods of teaching vocal music were
finally taken up by Lowell Mason (I792-I872),
through whose vigorous efforts not only the Pestalozzian system but the cause of music in general
received a most notable up-lift. Indeed, Mr.
Mason is the most distinguished public school
music educator yet produced by the United
States. After an experience of more than eighteen years as a teacher of vocal and instrumental
music, an event occurred which changed his
whole manner of teaching, as well as his theory of
the educational value of music. This was his
meeting with Mr. Woodbridge and his introduction to the system and methods of Pestalozzi.
"For this clearer light on the subject of music
education," says Henry Barnard, "Mason was
indebted to the enlightened zeal, energy and perseverance in all educational improvement to
the late William C. Woodbridge, so extensively
known, not only as a geographer but as an edu



LOWELL MASON


I59


cator, whose labors in both capacities mark one
of the prominent eras in the history of education
in the United States. Mr. Woodbridge while
in Germany and Switzerland, where he had resided several years, with a view of obtaining the
best methods of instruction, although like Pestalozzi, he had given little personal attention to the
subject of music, became, from his own observation of its excellent influence on the pupils of the
Pestalozzian schools in general, and especially
in the institution of Fellenberg at Hofwyl, thoroughly convinced of its importance as a school
exercise and an educational influence. He accordingly procured all the information in his
power respecting it, and obtained the most approved text-books of school or class voice-exercises and songs, as well as of elementary treatises
on musical instruction. * * * These books
by Nageli and others, which had been prepared
with particular reference to the legitimate influence of song in moral culture and the training of
the affections, Mr. Woodbridge not only placed




I6o   PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


in the hands of Lowell Mason, but he was at trouble to translate them himself, in part, and to furnish such explanations and directions as he had
received personally from Pfeiffer, Nageli, Kriisi,
Fellenberg, Kubler, Gresbach, and others."
A wider and more important field now opened
before Mr. Mason. For a number of years he had
taught gratuitously two afternoons each week
children from the public schools of Boston. With
the adoption of the Pestalozzian system, the size
of his juvenile classes increased enormously; and
with these large classes he was able to give a series
of public demonstrations of the new method in
music. He had been president of the Handel and
Haydn Society since 1827, but in 1832 he declined
further service that he might give his entire time
to his efforts to teach vocal music to young children. He relinquished a lucrative situation to
devote his entire time to the instruction of these
juvenile classes. George James Webb    (I803 -1887) co-operated with Mr. Mason in the direction
of these classes and in the instruction given in the




LOWELL MASON


i6i


Boston Academy of Music which Mr. Mason had
organized.
Through Mr. Mason's efforts vocal music was
introduced into the Mount Vernon School, then
conducted by Jacob Abbott (1803-1879), in the
Chauncy Hall School, conducted by Gideon F.
Thayer (1793-1863) and in the Boston Monotorial
School conducted by William B. Fowle (1795 -1863). In an article in the American Annals of
Education for May 1835, Mr. Fowle tells of the
extraordinary progress made by the pupils i i his
school with two lessons a work of one hour each
under Mr. Mason's direction; and he argues that
the pupils make corresponding progress in other
studies as well as in music. The success of such
instruction in these schools, as well as the demonstrated results at the numerous public concerts
given by Mason's juvenile classes at the Academy
of Music in Boston, not only removed all prejudices against the study of vocal music in the public
schools, but led the Boston school committee, in
September 1836, on petition from many citizens,




162 PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEw ENGLAND


to authorize such study in the public schools of
the city. The city council, however, failed to
make the necessary appropriation; but as Mr.
Mason was more interested in the educational
value of the study of vocal music than in any
pecuniary remuneration that might come to him
for his labors, he proposed to the city to teach one
school for a year free of charge and to furnish the
necessary music books and materials at his own
expense. The offer was accepted and for two
years he contributed his service to a cause in
which he was so keenly interested.
In 1838 the study was formally introduced and
Lowell Mason was elected music director; for it
was clearly demonstrated that the pupils in the
schools where vocal music had been taught were
further advanced at the end of the year in their
other studies than were the pupils in the schools
where music had not been taught. "Thus,"
remarks Mr. Mathews in his Hundred years of
music in America, "in Lowell Mason's labors were
founded the germinating principles of a national




LOWELL MASON


I63


musical intelligence and knowledge, and afforded
a soil upon which all higher musical culture has
been founded. The desire for musical advancement thus established, and the capacity created
for appreciation of the higher mission of the art,
has been the fallow field in which all subsequent
endeavor has been rooted."
The labors of Lowell Mason in Boston did not
escape the notice of Horace Mann; and from 1845
(and until Mr. Mason's removal to New York ten
years later), he was regularly engaged to give instruction in vocal music at the state teachers'
institutes and normal schools. Mr. Mann oncei  oe
said, "It is well worth walking ten miles to hear a
lesson by Lowell Mason." He visited Europe
twice-in 1837 and again in 1853-that he might
observe the methods of music instruction in Pestalozzian schools in Switzerland and Germany.
He published many text-books on music for the
use of school children, as well as many collections
of secular and sacred music. His most important
contribution to the pedagogy of music was the




164 PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


Pestalozzian music teacher, which he published
jointly with Theodore F. Seward, with illustrative
lessons by John W. Dickinson of the Westfield
normal school.
9 Henry Barnard
During a long and varied educational career,,
the late Henry Barnard (181 -I g900) was an active
Pestalozzian propagandist in the United States.
He first learned, as he has since told me, of the
labors of the Swiss reformer from Dr. Eli Todd,
then an eminent alienist in charge of the Retreat
for the Insane at Hartford. Barnard was at the
time a young collegian at Yale; but he said the
vivid descriptions of the self sacrificing labors of
Pestalozzi, as narrated by Dr. Todd, made an
abiding impression on his young mind. This
must have been about 1828 or I829. In 1835
Mr. Barnard having completed both his college
course and his law studies, and having one year's
experience as a teacher in an academy in Pennsylvania, he went to Europe for a year for travel




0     I




;,.  e     e      I
t, I




HENRY BARNARD


I65


and study. At Hofwyl, from Fellenberg and
Wehrli, he became familiar with the methods of
carrying out the reforms in which he had become
so deeply interested from the accounts of his
venerable medical friend, Dr. Todd.
When he took charge of the Connecticut school
system in 1838, he endeavored to give practical
shape to some of the ideas which Pestalozzi had
advocated; and in October and November of the
following year he organized and conducted for
six weeks a teachers' institute-the first ever held
in America-and here he presented to the twentyfive or thirty young men in attendance several
lectures on the life and character of Pestalozzi and
several lessons on his methods of teaching. In the
Connecticut Common School Journal which he
edited from 1838 to I842 he published several
articles on Pestalozzi. In 183( he printed for
distribution among the teachers of his state a
twenty-four page monograph on "Pestalozzi,
Franklin and Oberlin" and in 1847 he printed a
pamphlet on "Pestalozzi's educational labors for




i66   PBSTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND


the poor," and two years later a forty-eight page
monograph on "Pestalozzi and his method of instruction."
In 1856 he began the publication of his monumental American Journal of Education (I856 -I881); and in the thirty-two massive volumes
of this most comprehensive encyclopaedia of education, Mr. Barnard published more than a score
of notable essays on Pestalozzi, including, among
the translations of the Swiss reformer's own writings, one hundred chapters from Leonard and
Gertrude, portions of Christopher and Alice, all of
Evening hours of a hermit, the Christmas eve discourse of I8IO, the New Year's address, I808, the
Seventy-second birthday address, a fragment
of How Gertrude teaches her children, Pestalozzi's
own account of his educational experience, and a
fragment from Paternal instructions. In addition, he published exhaustive sketches of the life
of Pestalozzi taken from the writings of von
Raumer, Blochmann, Diesterweg, Woodbridge
and Biber; and sketches of fifteen of Pestalozzi's




HENRY BARNARD


I67


associates and distinguished students, including
Niederer, Kriisi, Buss, Schmid, Tobler, Ramsauer,
Plamann, Nageli, Harnisch, Zeller, von Tiirk,
Denzel, Diesterweg, and Dinter. In 1858 Mr.
Barnard collected these numerous essays and
published the same in a comprehensive volume of
nearly five hundred pages entitled Pestalozzi and
Pestalozzianism. This volume, which is still to
be had in the ordinary course of trade (Bardeen,
Syracuse, N. Y.), continues to be the most valuable Pestalozzian handbook in the English language. But it was not only in Pestalozzian literature, but in every other department of educational
thought that the self-sacrificing Henry Barnard
was a pioneer; for he was the first in America to
recognize that if teaching was to become a profesion, there must be a rich and scientific professional literature. No one before or since has
labored more earnestly to give American education such a literature than the late Henry Barnard.
He always sought the best; and the twenty-five
thousand pages of his great journal stand un



168  PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND
rivalled as the best encyclopadia of education in
any language. In this he rendered the Pestalozzian
movement splendid service, as he did the great
educational movements connected with the
names of Comenius, Rousseau, Frobel and every
other really great name in the history of education.








a              A?  


*...    -.  EI)DWARD AUSTIN SHELDON




CHAPTER VIII


PESTALOZZIANISM      AT THE; OSWEGO
NORMAL SCHOOL
Introduction from England. Educational museum at Toronto.
Edward A. Sheldon. Life and training. Ragged school
at Oswego. Superintendent of schools at Syracuse and
Oswego. Beginnings of the Oswego training school. Labors
of Miss Jones. Central ideas of the Oswego movement.
Oswego a state normal school. Report of the committee
of the National Teachers' Association. Influence of Oswego.
Herman Krisi, Jr. Training under his father. Teaching
in England. Call to New England. Institute lectures.
Connection with the New Jersey normal school. Call to
Oswego. Closing years and labors. Professor Mary Sheldon Barnes: Training and career as a teacher. Contributions to methods of teaching history.
In 1828 Mr. William      Maclure wrote: "For upwards of twenty years some considerable exertions have been made to introduce the [Pestalozzian] reforms in the education of children in
the United States, with little or no success, until
169




I70


OSWEGO NORMAL SCHOOL


the system has been practiced for the last two or
three years by old mother Britain; since which,
it has spread considerably, under various names,
overt he Union."  Mr. Maclure was, however, too
familiar with the Pestalozzian system at its fountain head not to recognize the mixture of British
Pestalozzianism with a deal of mechanism and
routine from the practices of Lancaster and Wilderspin, and this he lamented.
The phase of Pestalozzianism with which the
Oswego movement has been so intimately identified is object-teaching-the Anschauungsunterricht of Pestalozzi. This movement was introduced from England-chiefly from the Home and
Colonial School Society-and rather indirectly
through Canada. Adolphus Egerton Ryerson
(I803-I882), who was the moving spirit in the
establishment of an efficient system of public
instruction in the Province of Ontario, made
several trips to Europe for the collection of materials for the establishment of an educational
museum; and he brought to Toronto many of




EDWARD A. SHELDON


I7I


the pictures, models, objects and appliances used
by the Home and Colonial School Society in their
Pestalozzian schools in England. These materials
furnished the point of departure for Mr. Sheldon.
i Edward A. Sheldon
Edward Austin Sheldon, who was born at
Perry Center, Wyoming county, New York, on the
4th of October, 1823, received his elementary
training in the common schools and his college
preparation in a near-by academy. He entered
Hamilton College intending to fit himself for the
profession of law. His health broke and he was
forced to leave college at the close of his junior
year. Shortly after leaving college he was
brought face to face with the ignorance and misery
of the poor living at Oswego where he had located
for the purpose of engaging in business. "Day
after day," writes his daughter, the late Professor
Mary Sheldon Barnes, "he went through tenement houses and shanties, learning to know the
miseries and wants of their inmates; armed with




172


OSWEGO NORMAL SCHOOL


a little book full of statistics he himself had gathered, with his fresh young heart urging on to
action, he persuaded some of his most influential
friends to join him in forming an Orphan and
Free School Association, which should find some
way of giving a home to the orphans and a free
school to the poorer children of Oswego. * * *
Active results soon appeared, and a room was
rented and fitted for a school. But who should
be the teacher? To his own utter surprise everyone turned to my father as a matter of course.
He had just completed arrangements for entering
the theological seminary at Auburn; but since no
teacher appeared, and his associates declared
that unless he would teach the school they would
abandon the enterprise, he answered, trusting
still to the lead of Providence, 'Very well, then
teach the school I must.' When asked what
salary he wanted, he said, 'It will cost me about
$275 a year to live and this is all I want.' They
gave him $300 and my father entered what afterwards proved his own chosen career."




EDWARD A. SHELDON


I73


This was in the late autumn of 1848. The
"Ragged School," for such it was called, was composed in the main of one hundred and twenty
rude and untrained Irish boys and girls between
the ages of five and twenty-one years. Yet, adds
his daughter, they gave him no trouble. If they
engaged in a free fight, it was from ignorance of
the proprieties of the time and place, not from
any desire to be ugly; if some of the boys became
restless, they were sent out to race around the
block and see who could be back first; they were
called to order by rapping on the stovepipe; they
were held in order and kept to their work by the
genuine love they bore their young schoolmaster
and by the genuine love he bore them. "As my
father went to work of a morning," she writes,
"his warm-hearted Irish children trooped about
him, seizing him by the fingers or the coat-tails,
wherever they could best catch hold, to the
great amusement of the storekeepers and the
passers-by. Saturday morning he spent in pastoral work, that is, in visiting his pupils at home,




I74


OSWEGO NORMAL SCHOOL


and in seeing that they were not suffering from
the necessities of life.  This was the hardest day
of his week; and the young schoolmaster generally found himself exhausted by noon, so great
was the draft made on his sympathies by ignorance, sickness, incompetence, and misfortune."
Truly, here was manifested the spirit of Pestalozzi; and how well this account tallies with the
latter's labors among the poor and the neglected
at Neuhof and Stanz!*
Out of this philanthropic movement grew the
free and graded schools of Oswego. Mr. Sheldon
was superintendent of the schools of Syracuse
from   851 to 1853 when he returned again to
Oswego-this time to organize a free public school
system in which poor and rich alike were received
on equal footing. "His sincere and thoughtful
*Neuhof, the scenes of Pestalozzi's first educational efforts
(1775-1780), is a small rural village near Zurich. Stanz is a
town on the southern shores of Lake Lucerne in the secluded
valley of Nidwalden where he conducted an orphanage for two
years (1798-1799).




EDWARD A. SHELDON


I75


nature," writes Mrs. Barnes, "had become dissatisfied, not only with the current ways of teaching in our public schools, but even with their
range of subjects. His early life on the farm, his
taste for practical work, his sympathetic contact
with the poor, had convinced him that something
better and more useful could be done in the way
of education. He felt that children should learn
to know forms, colors, weights, the commoner
facts and relations of their own bodies and the
material world-not as mere names, but as objective realities. While working the problem
over, he visited Toronto, where he saw in the
National [Educational] Museum, though not used
in their own schools, collections of appliances
employed abroad-notably in the Home and
Colonial Training School in London."
This was during the early part of the year I86o.
With such teaching appliances as he was able to
import from London, Mr. Sheldon began the reorganization of the schools of Oswego with special
reference to object teaching as the core of the




176


OSWEGO NORMAL SCHOOL


system. He met with his teachers on Saturdays
and instructed them in the new methods to the
best of his ability; and in his report for that year
he wrote: "The system which we have adopted
is justly termed Pestalozzian, for to Pestalozzi,
that greatest of all modern reformers in education, may be credited the development and in
many important points the origin of those ideas
which lie at the basis of this system. It is true
that these ideas, and the modes of applying them
in the development of the human faculties, have
been somewhat modified and improved during
the experience of half a century, but they are
none the less the real thoughts and discoveries
of this great philosopher. Its principles have
become more or less widely diffused, but have
been more generally and thoroughly incorporated
with the methods of teaching in some of the countries of Europe, than in our own. Especially is
this true of Germany, Switzerland, Prussia and
France. But in no country, perhaps, have these
principles been more thoroughly systematized




EDWARD A. SHELDON


I77


and developed than in a few training colleges in
Great Britain."
After the system had been on trial for a year,
it was decided to send to London and engage a
Pestalozzian teacher to come to Oswego and organize a training class. "It is to be a kind of
practicing school," said the Oswego school report
for that year, "where beginners serve their apprenticeship. In many mechanical trades, years
of toilsome apprenticeship have to be served out
before the artisan is trusted alone with his tools.
If, then, such great care is taken. to prepare him
for his work who has to form the senseless block
of wood or marble into lines and forms of beauty,
how much more-infinitely more, important is it,
that he who has to mould and give form and symmetry to the immortal soul, should make some
preparation for his work; should at least receive
some hints and suggestions from a master's hand.
He ought also to have some understanding of his
subject, as well as the tools he is to use, and the,
best method of using them. Pupils are expected




I78


OSWEGO NORMAL SCHOOL


to spend one year in observation and practice in
this school before receiving an appointment to
teach in our city schools. At least one half of each
day is to be spent in this way, and the other portion in study and recitation in those branches of
natural history and mental science of immediate
importance in connection with this system of instruction. Two hours each day will also be
devoted to instruction in methods of teaching.
Primary School No. 4 has been selected for this
Model School. There are accommodations here
for three pupil teachers to be engaged in practice
at the same time."
Margaret E. M. Jones (1824-  ), for fifteen
years connected with the Home and Colonial
Training School at Gray's Inn Road, London,
came to Oswego, May the ist, 86, and began her
labors as a training teacher. "Her teaching,"
wrote the late Herman Kriisi, Jr., "was essentially
based on principles which owe their chief advocacy
and practical application to the work of the
Swiss school reformer, Pestalozzi. The more ex



EDWARD A. SHELDON


179


elusive attention to object lessons, as a separate
branch of study, was of English origin, and has
since been greatly modified. Yet it was this
new feature in particular which struck casual
observers as worthy of attention and imitation."
The central ideas of the new system, as stated
by the Oswego authorities in 186i, were (I) That
all education should be according to the natural
order of development of the human faculties; (2)
that all knowledge is derived in the first instance
from the.perceptions of the senses, and therefore
that all instruction should be based upon real
objects and occurrences; (3) that the object of
primary education is to give a harmonious cultivation to the faculties of the mind, and not to communicate technical knowledge. These were the
principles upon which Mr. Sheldon based his innovations. It is needless to say that the Oswego
reforms soon met the ill-concealed hostility of the
advocates of the old order, many of whom knew
little of the workings of the new system and practically nothing of its basic principles. Accord



I8o


OSWEGO NORMAL SCHOOL


ingly, in December i86i, Mr. Sheldon, through
the Oswego board of education, issued an invitation to certain leading educators of the country
to come to Oswego and look into the nature of
the new work. William F. Phelps, D. H. Cochran,
David N. Camp, Thomas F. Harrison, H. P.
Wilbur, George L. Farnham and W. Nicoll constituted the special committee of the invited
educators. They spent the IIth, 2th and I3th
of February, 1862, at Oswego, in a careful examination of the new system and in listening to two
papers on the Pestalozzian system, the first, "The
laws of childhood" by Miss M. E. M. Jones, ana
the second, "The history of object teaching" by
Norman A. Calkins. Barnard's American Journal
of Education for 1863 (vol. 12, pp. 605-646) published a full report of the findings of the committee
and the papers by Miss Jones and Mr. Calkins.
The committee after due deliberation concluded
that the principles of the Pestalozzian system
were philosophical and sound and in harmony
with the nature of man; that the particular meth



EDWARD A. SHELDON


I8I


ods of instruction presented before them at Oswego as illustrative of those principles merit and
receive hearty approbation, subject to such modifications as experience and the characteristics
of our people may determine to be wise and expedient; and recommended the adoption of the
system in whole or in part wherever such introduction was practicable. The committee recognized that the system to a great measure eliminated books from the primary schools-or, as they
stated it, "the system substitutes in great measure
teachers for the book"-and they recognized in
consequence that attempts to introduce it by
those not clearly comprehending its principles,
and not trained in its methods, would result only
in failure.
In 1863, Victor Moreau Rice (1818-I869), then
state superintendent of public instruction in New
York, became interested in the Pestalozzian
movement at Oswego, and he secured an annual
grant from the state of three thousand dollars
toward the support of the school for a period of




I82


OSWEGO NORMAL SCHOOL


two years; and in 1866 Oswego became one of
the regular state normal schools of New York.
At the fourth annual meeting of the National
Teachers' Association held at Chicago in August
1863 Mr. Sheldon read a paper on object teaching
which elicited such wide-spread comment that at
the meeting held at Ogdensburg a year later a
committee was appointed to investigate the principles of object teaching in general and the Oswego
system in particular. The committee included
Barnas Sears (i802-i880), then president of
Brown university and formerly secretary of the
state board of education in Massachusetts;
Samuel Stillman Greene (I8I0-I883), professor
in Brown University; Josiah Little Pickard (1824
- ), superintendent of schools at Chicago;
John Dudley Philbrick (1818-1886), superintendent of schools at Boston; David N. Camp (I820 -), superintendent of the schools of Connecticut; Richard Edwards (1822-   ), principal of
the Illinois state normal school, and C. L. Pennell
of St. Louis. The report was drawn up by Mr.




EDWARD A. SHELDON


I83


Greene and presented at the fifth annual meeting
of the National Teachers' Association held at
Harrisburg in August 1865.
The committee sought to investigate three
questions touching the problem of object teaching: i. What place do external objects hold in
the acquisition of knowledge? Are they the exclusive source of our knowledge? 2. So far as our
knowledge is obtained from external objects as a
source, how far can any educational processes
facilitate the process? 3. Are the measures
adopted at Oswego in accordance with the general
principles resulting from these inquiries? The
report covers twenty-five pages; and, while Mr.
Pennell is reported as somewhat adverse to anything like systematic object teaching, the other
six members of the committee heartily commend
the system. "Whenever this system has been
confined to elementary instruction," reports the
committee, "and has been employed by skillful,
thorough teachers, in unfolding and disciplining
the faculties, in fixing the attention and awaken



I84


OSWEGO NORMAL SCHOOL


ing thought, it has been successful. Pupils
trained under this system have evinced more
quickness and accuracy of perception, careful
observation, and a correctness of judgment which
results from accurate discrimination, and proper
comparison. They have seemed much better
acquainted with the works of nature, and better
able to understand allusions to nature, art, and
social life." The committee took occasion, however, to warn against object lessons supplanting
the use of books in higher instruction.
From the Oswego normal school the phase of
Pestalozzianism, with which this institution was
directly interested, spread throughout the country
through the students trained under Mr. Sheldon,
Mr. Krfisi and a long list of worthy associates.
Hence the school and its earnest disciples of the
great Pestalozzi warrant large recognition at the
hands of the historian of the Pestalozzian movement in the United States. Mr. Sheldon, it should
be noted in this connection, continued at the head








/
i
\.
'^S


i:.Fgr  ~ ":'I
I,     K;,,       *
aN
*f






HERMAN KRUSI, JR.


I85


of the Oswego normal school until the time of his
death, August the 28th, I897.
2 Herman Kriisi, Jr.
Miss Jones' labors at Oswego ended in the summer of 1862, but the work of the training school
was continued by Herman Kriisi, Jr., and teachers
who had been her pupils. From this time, Mr.
Kriisi, after Mr. Sheldon, became the most notable
figure in the Oswego movement.. Mr. Krfisi was
born at Yverdon, Switzerland, June 24th I8I7.
His father had been for many years, both at
Burgdorf and Yverdon, Pestalozzi's chief assistant. He received his elementary education in the
Canton of Appenzel and he subsequently entered
the normal school at Gais, where his father was
principal. After completing the course of instruction he continued for three years his studies
in the German normal schools at Dresden and
Berlin. Returning to Gais in I838 he accepted a
position in the normal school under his father




I86


OSWEGO NORMAL SCHOOL


which he continued to fill until the latter's death
in 1846.
In 1846 he received an appointment in the
Pestalozzian school at Cheam, England, conducted
by Charles Mayo. The school was patronized
chiefly by the wealthy classes and the nobility,
and the method of teaching employed there,
notes Kriisi, was the old routine system which
was very distasteful to him. On leaving Cheam he
received an appointment in the training school
conducted by the Home and Colonial School
Society. This school he found more distinctly
Pestalozzian than the one at Cheam. He had
charge of the classes in drawing and mathematics;
and here he worked out his system of inventive
drawing. He returned to Switzerland in I852
intending to engage in educational work in his
native country; but he chanced to meet Lowell
Mason on one of his trips to Europe to study the
Pestalozzian system and Mr. Mason had cordially
recommended Kriisi to William Russell, then requiring the service of an additional teacher in his




HERMAN KRUSI, JR.


I87


private normal school at Lancaster, Massachusetts. "This gave him an opportunity to realize
one of his cherished dreams-to visit Americaand in I852 he again left his mountain home to
begin work in a new land."  Mr. Kriisi has himself told me that he had formed a strong desire to
come to America after reading the reports of the
state board of education of Massachusetts by
Horace Mann. These reports he had found in the
library of the Home and Colonial School Society
in London.
Mr. Kriisi continued in Mr. Russell's school as
teacher of drawing and modern languages for five
years; and in the meantime he was employed by
the state board of education of Massachusetts to
give instruction to the teachers of the commonwealth at state institutes on methods of teaching
arithmetic and drawing. He had as associates in
the Massachusetts institutes two of his countrymen Louis Afgassiz (I807-I873) and Arnold
Guyot (1807-I884); also William Russell (I798 -1873), Lowell Mason (I792-I872), George Barrell




I88


OSWEGO NORMAL SCHOOL


Emerson (I797-1881) and other well known New
England school men. In 1853 Mr. Kriisi presented to the American Institute of Instruction
at New Haven an important essay on the educational labors of Pestalozzi, which led Yale college
to confer upon him the honorary degree of Master
of Arts. Mr. Kriisi's associates in the normal
school at Lancaster, besides Mr. Russell, were:
William J. Whitaker, who had been his colleague
in the Home and Colonial Training College at
London, Sanborn Tenny, the naturalist, who was
afterwards for many years a professor at Amherst
College, and Dana Pond Colburn, who was subsequently principal of the state normal school at
Providence, Rhode Island.
The organization of state normal schools in
Massachusetts, and the liberal course adopted
by the commonwealth in establishing scholarships
at her colleges for the benefit of young men intending to prepare themselves for the work of
teaching, made unnecessary a private teachers'
seminary of the nature of Mr. Russell's, and it




HERMAN KRUSI, JR.


I89


was accordingly abolished in I857. Two years
before, William Franklin Phelps ( 822-  ) had
organized the state normal school at Trenton,
New Jersey; and learning that Mr. Kriisi was
free, he engaged him as an instructor in his school.
After two years at Trenton Mr. Kriisi returned to
Massachusetts and for three years he gave his
whole time to the work of instructing teachers at
institutes in Massachusetts and the other New
England states. In 1862, as before pointed out,
Mr. Kriisi was engaged by Mr. Sheldon for the
Oswego normal school, and for a period of twentyfive years he taught with great earnestness and intelligence the Pestalozzian system of education to
thousands of prospective teachers who graduated
from the Oswego normal school during this important period of the school's history. He first
taught methods of number, form and drawing
and superintended the practice teaching in the
training school, as well as in the public schools of
the city. Later he taught the philosophy and
history of education, as well as mental and moral




I90o


OSWEGO NORMAL SCHOOL


philosophy; and while here he prepared and published his valuable work on the life, principles,
and character of Pestalozzi. After a quarter of a
century at Oswego he resigned his position in the
school and passed his closing years with his son
at Alameda, California, where he died January
28th I902. Like the great Pestalozzi, Mr. Kriisi
had the simplicity of a child. One of his students
says of his teaching: "His manner of presentation
was clear and logical, but withal charmingly
frank, and a genial humor constantly played about
the topic of the hour."
3 Mary Sheldon Barnes
A large and permanent contribution of the
Oswego movement to the science of education
was the application of Pestalozzian principles to
the teaching of history. Mr. Sheldon's daughter,
Professor Mary Sheldon Barnes (i 850-1898), did
for the teaching of history what Karl Ritter and
Hennig had done for the teaching of geographyshe applied the inductive method to the develop



MARY SHELDON BARNES


I9I


ment of local historic concepts and the gradual
up-building of the historic sense by means of objective materials having a visible connection with
the past. After her graduation from the Oswego
normal school, Miss Sheldon entered the University of Michigan where she graduated in I874.
She taught for two years in the Oswego normal
school and in i876 she accepted an appointment
as professor of history in Wellesley College, which
position she filled for four years. During i880
to 1882 she travelled and studied in Europe; and
upon her return she accepted an appointment of
instructor of history in the Oswego normal school.
She married Professor Earl Barnes in 1884; and
during the next seven years she was engaged
chiefly in study, travel, and literary work. In
I891 both she and her husband were appointed
professors in Stanford University-she in the
department of modern history and he in the department of education. Mrs. Barnes was the
first woman to receive appointment in the faculty
of Stanford University. In an institution where




I92


OSWEGO NORMAL SCHOOL


all the courses of instruction were elective, and
where more than two thirds of the students were
of the male sex, Mrs. Barnes enrolled in her first
course of lectures at Stanford University one hundred students, eighty percent. of whom were men.
She was so thoroughly in possession of her subject
matter and such a master of the method which
she employed that few, if any, surpassed her in
the department of history.
In the province of history-teaching from sources,
Professor Mary Sheldon Barnes was a pioneer;
and although this method is now very generally
employed in most higher institutions of learning
in America, and in many secondary schools, it
should not be forgotten that the method was not
only not in use, but that it was entirely unknown
in the United States when Mary Sheldon began
the use of the method in the Oswego normal
school thirty-two years ago. Her Studies in general
history, with the teachers' manuals accompanying
the same, and her Studies in the historical method,
give the pedagogic basis of her method. It was




MARY SHELDON BARNES         193
Mrs. Barnes who first brought American students
into a living, thoughtful relation with historical
realities; and her development of the laboratory
method in the study of history has been as important for the furtherance of Pestalozzianism
as similar developments in geography by Ritter
and Hennig.












110




CHAPTER IX


WILLIAM    T. HARRIS AND PESTALOZZIANISM         IN
THE SCHOOLS OF ST. LOUIS
Training and early educational labors of William T. Harris.
Election to the superintendency of the schools of St. Louis.
His professional equipment as characterized by Henry
Barnard. Study of natural science in the schools. Criticism and discussion of Pestalozzian doctrines and methods.
Much of the Pestalozzian method (and more
of the Pestalozzian spirit) characterized the administration of the schools of St. Louis from 1868
to 1880. It was during this period that St. Louis
became generally known as possessing the best
supervised and the most wisely directed common school system of the world; and the twelve
annual reports prepared by its superintendent
have taken classic rank in the literature of city
school administration.
William  Torrey Harris (1835-        ), who was
superintendent of the public schools of St. Louis
195




I96


PESTALOZZIANISM IN ST. LOUIS


1868 to 1880, has always stood for all that was best
in the Pestalozzian system. He was educated in
the district schools of Windham County, Connecticut, the grammar schools of Providence, the
academies at Woodstock, Worcester, and Andover, and at Yale College. After a varied experience as a teacher in the elementary schools of
New England, Mr. Harris located in St. Louis
in 1858. He was first an assistant teacher in the
Franklin school and was shortly made principal
of the Clay school. In i866 he was selected as
assistant superintendent of the schools of the
city; and two years later he was promoted to
the superintendency. This post he held until
I88o, when, to the great regret of all interested
in the educational welfare of St. Louis, he signified his purpose to withdraw from the work.
Concerning the eminent educational fitness of
Mr. Harris for the supervision of the schools of a
great city, the late Henry Barnard wrote: "It
is seldom that a school officer enters on the administration of a system with such practical




WILLIAM T. HARRIS


I97


knowledge of all the details which enter into the
studies, the first admission, the successive promotions from grade to grade, and the instruction from the primary class to the high and normal school. To this practical experience of his
own, he was constantly adding a diligent study
of the best treatises in the English, French, and
German languages on the general principles of
education and the organization and administration of systems of public instruction; and at the
same time, Mr. Harris was subjecting his own experience and views, and the experience of others
gathered from books, to the experience and discussions of living teachers and school officers
assembled in city, state, and national conventions." When Mr. Harris resigned from the
superintendency of the St. Louis schools in I880,
to'seek rest for a time in foreign travel, diversified
observation, and literary work, Mr. Barnard said
in his American Journal of Education, "Seldom
has any school officer received such unequivocal
evidence that his labors were properly appre



I98


PESTALOZZIANISM IN ST. LOUIS


ciated in quarters where the best judgment could
be formed from a full knowledge of his methods
and their results."
It is not the purpose of the present chapter to
trace the diversified character and the vital nature
of the reforms worked out by Mr. Harris in St.
Louis from i868 to i880, such as the incorporation of the kindergarten into the public school
system, the addition of German instruction in
the elementary grades without the diminution of
instruction in English, and closer supervision
and more frequent promotion of pupils; but to
discuss briefly the introduction of natural science
into the schools of St. Louis and to summarize the discussion of Pestalozzianism in his
annual reports.
The Anschauungsunterricht of Pestalozzi and
the object teaching of Mr. Sheldon took the form
of natural science at St. Louis. As indicated in
one of his annual reports, "In order to adapt the
course of study to the wants of a manufacturing
community (an office which the kindergarten also




WILLIAM T. HARRIS


I99


assists in performing), and to the general demands
of the age, the study of natural science has been
introduced into all grades of the district schools.
Oral lessons are given one day in the week, one
hour, in. length, and as the course is a spiral
one, it is traversed anew once in three years
each pupil has the opportunity of coming to the
same topics three times in his course through
the district schools."
In the first school year instruction was given
in botany; the first quarter, in flowers, their
structure, color, perfume, habits, and shapes;
the second quarter, leaves, fruits, and seeds, their
shape, uses, sap, and decay; the third quarter,
buds and roots, stalks and trunks, bark of plants
and wood; fourth quarter, circulation of sap,
what is made from sap, sleep of plants and re-view
of the topics of the year. Animal study, with
special reference to physiology, was taken up the
second school year;, the elements of physical
nature-air, wind, water and gravitation,-were
studied the third school year; and during the




200


PESTALOZZIANISM IN ST. LOUIS


fourth and fifth years botany, zoology, physiology and hygiene were more fully and more systematically studied; physical geography was introduced the sixth year and elementary physics
the seventh year.
The general introduction of natural science in
the elementary schools of St. Louis attracted
wide-spread attention throughout the country
and led shortly to the incorporation of nature
study, in one form or another, into most of the
common schools of the United States. The first
discussion of the educational value of natural
science appeared in the report of the schools of
St. Louis for 1871; and a fuller discussion followed
in the report for I877. The syllabus of lessons
on natural science, which he prepared for the use
of the teachers of his city, was widely reprinted
by the school superintendents of the country;
and it has now become one of the classics in the
movement of science teaching in the elementary
schools of the United States.*


*Dr. Harris's report on this subject is published as a separ



WILLIAM T. HARRIS


201


In his first annual report of the schools of St.
Louis (1867-8) Mr. Harris discusses with characteristic force the pedagogic basis of Pestalozzianism, and gives his own viewpoint on the problem of object teaching. He notes that "Pestalozzi lived at a time when all Europe was done
to death with formalism, and the time was preparing slowly and surely to burn up in one vast
conflagration all these worn out costumes in
which empty pretension still strutted about and
seemed to direct. The French revolution (and
the Napoleonic thirty years' war) was at hand.
Rousseau had lifted up his voice and proclaimed
Nature. Let us all go back to a state of nature
and free ourselves from these irksome constraints
that society has imposed upon us. *  *  *  Pestalozzi began with the intention to elevate the
natural over the spiritual; to dissolve the subject
into the object rather than the contrary. He
virtually inverted his theory and builded ' better
ate volume: How to teach natural science in public schools, C. W.
Bardeen, Syracuse, 1895.




202


PESTALOZZIANISM IN ST. LOUIS


than he knew'. " It was a virtue of the St. Louis
application of nature study that it was not given
the one-sided emphasis on sense-perception so
often urged by advocates of object-teaching and
the Pestalozzian doctrine. While recognizing
all that was of distinct educational value in the
system, Mr. Harris was not blind to the faults
in Pestalozzi's theory.
He has also called attention to the question
whether a premature and exclusive training of
sense-perception will not produce an animal plane
of intelligence of the human mind, something
like what is called arrested development; for, as
he has pointed out, "the psychologist soon discovers that the power of thinking (both analytical and synthetical) is not a continued and elevated sort of sense-perception, but rather a reaction against it, which is negative toward the impressions and images of sense. The element of
thought is generalization, and this deals with
definitions rather than with images or pictures
of sense. Instead of reproducing the things of




WILLIAM T. HARRIS


203


experience, the thinking activity has to do with
the forces, energies or causes which produce
things and likewise annul and remove things by
the continual process of change. In other words,
thought deals with the dynamic elements of experience rather than with mere things, which
are only static results. Pursuing this line of
inquiry, the reader will everywhere find Pestalozzi's experiments and writings of a stimulating character, suggesting far more than they
reveal, and pointing significantly toward the
great educational process which is active in our
time." The schools of St. Louis, under the supervision of William T. Harris, gave practical form
to a phase of Pestalozzi's doctrine that has since
been fruitful in making more concrete and objective the study of the world of nature.








CHAPTER X


PESTALOZZIAN LITERATURE IN THE
UNITED STATES
Mr. Maclure's earliest publications. Books by Neef. Articles in the Academician. Griscom's book. Articles by Woodbridge. Letters to Greaves published. Biber's life. Barnard's numerous publications. Abridged Leonard and
Gertrude. Most recent Pestalozzian publications.
So far as is known, the first account of Pestalozzi's labors and doctrines, to be published
in the United States, appeared in the National
Intelligencer of Washington in the issue for June
the 6th, I806. It was based upon material furnished by William Maclure.     In the issues of the
9th and 3oth of the same month there appeared
in the same journal translations from a work by
Chavannes on the life of Pestalozzi and his methods of teaching. These translations were also
made presumably by Mr. Maclure. Two years
later Neef published in Philadelphia his Sketch of
205




206


PESTALOZZIAN LITERATURE


a plan and method in education which gave Americans a very clear view of the labors and methods
of Pestalozzi; and in 1813 the same author published his Method of instructing children rationally
in the arts of writing and reading.
The Academician, the earliest distinctly educadtional journal in America (I818-1819), published,
in the number for January I8I9, an article on
Pestalozzi's method of teaching religious and
moral principles to children. And in succeeding numbers-February, March, April, May and
June, a reader of the Academician. who signed
himself "A native of Clinton County [New York]"
wrote a series of rather elaborate and valuable
articles on Pestalozzi's life and doctrines. This
contributor had not visited Yverdon, but he
possessed the complete Cotta edition of Pestalozzi's writings, besides other works on the
Pestalozzian method that had appeared in German and French. He speaks of the French work
by Jullien and a Spanish translation of Chavannes' work. In his closing article he says: "I




IN THE UNITED STATES


207


possess more than thirty volumes in the German
language containing the details of the instruction which I would cheerfully give to any institution or publisher, upon the condition that they
would be translated, printed and published. And
the gift would be a free offering, nor do I wish
to be known in so doing, my only interest in obtaining those works from Europe being to promote knowledge, without any view to pecuniary
advantage." I regret that I have been unable
to learn the name of this early American disciple
of Pestalozzi.
John Griscom (1774-1852), who early became
interested in the doctrines of Pestalozzi, taught
first in a district school; was principal of the academy at Burlington, New Jersey (I794-I807);
conducted a private school of science in New
York City (i808-1818); and during the years 1818
and I819, travelled in Europe for the purpose
of making a study of educational institutions.
He published in 1823 a two volume work which
embodied the results of his travels and observa



208


PESTALOZZIAN LITERATURE


tions. Henry Barnard says of Griscom's Year in
Europe: "No one volume in the first half of the
nineteenth century had so wide an influence on
the development of our educational, reformatory,
and preventive measures, directly and indirectly,
as this." Griscom gives an elaborate account
of his visit to Yverdon and of his impressions of
Pestalozzi's method. There were ninety boys
in the school at the time-Swiss, German, French,
Italian, Spanish, Russian and English-and twelve
instructors. Greaves was with Pestalozzi at the
time and accompanied them on a visit to the orphanage at Clendy. He also visited Fellenberg's
institution at Hofwyl, and here he found the Pestalozzian method followed. Griscom's thoughtful and graphic account of Pestalozzi and the
institution at Yverdon was widely read in the
United States and it must have been productive
of good results.
William C. Woodbridge visited Pestalozzi in
I820 and again in 1825 and published several
articles in the American Journal of Education




IN THE UNITED STATES


209


which embodied the results of his impressions.
With the establishment of the New Harmony
community in 1825, many articles on Pestalozzianism appeared in the United States; but these
publications have already been mentioned in the
chapters treating of William Maclure and the
New Harmony school.
In the American Journal of Education for September, I829, William Russell began the publication of Pestalozzi's letters to Greaves on the early
education of the child. These letters, strange
to say, were not republished from the English
edition of 1827 but were translated from a French
educational journal; but the French translation
was based on the English edition. These letters
appeared in book form at Boston in I830. This,
so far as I know, is the earliest publication in
America of any of Pestalozzi's own writings. In
1833 Greenback's Periodical Library of Philadelphia began the serial publication of Biber's Life
of Pestalozzi2, which had been published in England two years before.




210


PESTALOZZIAN LITERATURE


Beginning with 1834, and for ten years thereafter, many American students of educationHenry Barnard, Charles Brooks, Alex. Dallas
Bache, Calvin E. Stowe, Lowell Mason and Horace
Mann-visited Europe and published elaborate
accounts, upon their return, of the Pestalozzian
movement in the old world; but the contributions
of these students have already been given in the
chapter treating of Pestalozzianism in New England.
After the Letters on the early education of the
child to Greaves,9 the next one of Pestalozzi's
works to be printed in the United States was
Leonard and Gertrude.     Fragments of the same
appeared in Barnard's American Journal of Education during 1858 and I859; and in his comprehensive volume on Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism,*
*Mr. C. W. Bardeen of Syracuse, N. Y., has just
brought out new and improved edition of this valuable work,
giving in one volume (758 pages) all the articles on Pestalozzi
and his educational system published by Dr. Barnard in his
American Journal of Education. Besides the two portraits
of Dr. Barnard, the publisher has added eighteen rare portraits




IN THE UNITED STATES


211


published in I859, Mr. Barnard gave, in English
translations, one hundred chapters of the pedagogical romance, together with the Evening
hours of a hermit and several of the birthday and
New Year addresses. In 1885 Miss Eva Channing published an abridged translation of Leonard
and Gertrude7 from the cheap Reclam edition,
comprising the first two volumes only of the original. For this translation G. Stanley Hall
wrote an altogether noteworthy introduction
which epitomizes is less than four pages the pedagogic significance of the romance. In I894 Mr.
Bardeen brought out an American edition of the
English translation of How Gertrude teaches her
children. The translation was made by Lucy
E. Holland and Frances E. Turner and the volume was excellently edited by Ebenezer Cooke.
The editor's introduction and notes add great
value to the worth of the translation. In I898
Mr. Bardeen republished the first English edition
of Pestalozzi and his institution. This important work is a
veritable Pestalozzian vade mecum.




212


PESTALOZZIAN LITERATURE


(1827) of Pestalozzi's Letters on early education
addressed to J. P. Greaves.
Of the lives of Pestalozzi printed in the United
States, besides the republication of the not altogether trustworthy English work by Biber, to
which reference has already been made, Barnard
included in his Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism
(1859) a translation of the comprehensive sketch
by Karl von Raumer. In 1875 Herman Kriisi, Jr.,
published his Life, work, and influence of Pestalozzi; and quite recently (1901) A. Pinloche
has published in the Great Educator Series his
Pestalozzi and the foundation of the modern elementary school. There are two American editions
of the valuable life by Roger de Guimps; the first
made by Margaret Cuthbertson Crombie, and
published at Syracuse in 1889, and the second
a republication of John Russell's English translation (New York, I897).
Many so-called Pestalozzian text books have
been published in this country.for the use of
school children-books on science, music, arith



IN THE UNITED STATES         213
metic, etc., but as few of these bear the earmarks of familiarity with the spirit of the great
Swiss reformer's work.  I have not thought
it worth while to mention them in this brief survey of the history of the Pestalozzian movement
in the United States.








CHAPTER XI.


BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE PESTALOZZIAN
MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES.
I SPREAD OF PESTALOZZIANISM IN EUROPE.
I. Barnard, Henry.
Pestalozzi, Fellenberg and Wehrli. Barnard's American Journal of Education, 1869.
Vol. 21. pp. 565-576.
2. Barnard, Henry, editor.
Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism: life, educational principles and methods of John
Henry P e s t a lo z z i, with biographical
sketches of several of his assistants and
associates. New York, I859. Two parts,
pp. 238 and 230. Now published by C.
W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y.*
3. Compayre, Gabriel.
History of pedagogy. Translated by W.
*See foot note on page 210.
215




216


PESTALOZZIAN MOVEMENT


H. Payne. Boston, i886. pp. 413-445.
4. Gill, John.
Systems of education. London, 1887. pp.
48-1 54.
5. de Guimps, Roger.
Pestalozzi: his aim and work. Translated
by Margaret Cuthbertson Crombie. Syracuse, I889. pp. 320.
6. Harris, William Torrey.
Herbart and Pestalozzi compared. Educational Review, May 1893, Vol. 5. pp. 417 -423.
7. Hughes, James Laughlin.
Fr6bel's educational laws for all teachers.
New York, 1897. pp. 3I-47.
8. Krusi, Herman, Jr.
Pestalozzi: his life, work, and influence.
New York, [I875]. pp. 248.
9. Krisi, Herman, Sr.
My educational recollections. Translated
by Herman Kriisi, Jr. Barnes' Studies in




BIBLIOGRAPHY


217


education, Vol. i. Stanford University
1897. pp. 230-249 and 273-280.
Io. Mayo, Charles.
Lectures on the life of Pestalozzi. London,
I856.
II.: Monroe, Paul.
Text-book in the history of education
New York, 1905. pp. 597-624.
12. Munroe, James Phinney.
Educational ideal: an outline of its growth
in modern times. Boston, 1895. pp. 179 -206.
I3. Pinloche, A.
Pestalozzi and the foundation of the modern
elementary school. New York, I9o0. pp.
306.
I4. von Raumer, Karl.
Life and system of Pestalozzi. Translated
by J. Tilleard, London, 1855.
I5. Quick, Robert Hebert.
Essays on educational reformers. Syra



218


PESTALOZZIAN MOVEMENT


cuse, I900. pp. 204-252. New York, I893.
pp. 290-383.
i6. Williams, Samuel Gardner.
History of modern education. Syracuse,
I896. pp. 330-349.
II WILLIAM MACLURE: FIRST AMERICAN DISCIPLE OF PESTALOZZI.
I. Barnard, Henry.
Pestalozzianism in the United States.
Barnard's American Journal of Education,
1880. Vol. 30. pp. 561-572.
2. Griscom, John.
A year in Europe. New     York, 1823.
Two volumes. pp. 520 and 562.
3. Maclure, William.
An epitome of the improved Pestalozzian
system of education. American Journal
of Science and Arts, February, 1826. Vol.
10. pp. I45-I56.
[4. Maclure, William.
Opinions on various subjects. New Har



BIBLIOGRAPHY


219


mony, 1831. pp. 642. [Contains twenty
essays on education, most of which refer to
Pestalozzi].
5. Monroe, Will Seymour.
Joseph Neef and Pestalozzianism in America. Education, April, 1894. Vol. 14.
PP. 479-46i.
6. Morton, Samuel George.
A memoir of William Maclure, Esq. American Journal of Science and Arts, October
I844, Vol.47. pp. I-17.
7. Owen, Robert.
Life of Robert Owen. Written by himself.
London, I857. Two volumes, pp. 390 and
358.
III JOSEPH NEEF: A COADJUTOR OF PESTALOZZI.
I. Gardette, C. D.
Pestalozzi in America. Galaxy, August
1867. Vol. 4. pp. 432-439.
2. Monroe, Will Seymour.
Joseph Neef and Pestalozzianism in Amer



220


PESTALOZZIAN MOVEMENT


ica. Education, April 1894. Vol. I4.p. p
449-461.
3. Neef, Joseph.
Sketch of a plan and method of education.
Philadelphia, i808. pp. i68.
4. Pompee, Ph.
Etudes sur la vie et les travaux de J. H.
Pestalozzi. Paris, 1850.
5. Ramsauer, Johann.
Kurze Skizze meines padagogischen Lebens
mit besonderer Beriicksichtigung auf Pestalozzi und seine Anstalten. Neuburg,
1838.
6. Wood, C. H.
First disciple of Pestalozzi in America.
Indiana School Journal, November 1892.
Vol. 37 pp. 659-665.
IV  NEEF's PLAN AND METHOD OF EDUCATION.
i.  Monroe, Will Seymour.
Pestalozzian literature in America. Kinder



BIBLIOGRAPHY


221


garten Magazine, May I894. Vol. 6. pp.
673-676.
2. Monroe, Will Seymour.
Some early American books on education.
Journal of Education (Boston) May 25th
and June 8th, I893.
3. Neef, Joseph.
Method of instructing children rationally
in the arts of reading and writing Philadelphia, I813. pp. 388.
4. Neef, Joseph.
Sketch of a plan and method of education,
founded on an analysis of the human
faculties and natural reason, suitable for
the offspring of a free people, and for all
rational beings. Philadelphia, i808. pp.
i68.
5. Neef, Joseph, translator.
Logic of Condillac. Philadelphia, I809.
pp. I38.




222


PESTALOZZIAN MOVEMENT


V  FIRST A M ER I CA N PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL
AT PHILADELPHIA.
I. Farragut, Loyall.
Life of David Glasgow Farragut, embodying his journals and letters. New York,
I879. pp. 586.
2. Gardette, C. D.
Pestalozzi in America. Galaxy, August
1867. Vol. 4. pp. 432-439.
3. Monroe, Will Seymour.
Joseph Neef and Pestalozzianism in America. Education, April I894. Vol I4. pp.
449-461.
4. Neef, Joseph.
Sketch of a plan and method of education.
Philadelphia, 1808. pp. i68.
5. Wickersham, James Pyle.
History of education in Pennsylvania.
Lancaster, i886. p. 484.
VI PESTALOZZIAN SCHOOL AT THE NEW HARMONY COMMUNITY.
I. Hill, G. Birbeck.




BIBLIOGRAPHY


223


Life of Sir Rowland Hill. London, i880.
2. Lockwood, George Browning.
New   Harmony   communities.  Marion,
(Indiana), I902. pp. 282.
3. Maclure, William.
Opinions on various subjects. New Harmony, I83I. pp. 640.
4. Owen, Robert.
Life of Robert Owen. Written by himself. London, 1857. Two volumes. pp.
390 and 358.
5. Owen, Robert Dale.
Threading my way: twenty-seven years
of autobiography. New York and London,
1874. pp. 360.
6. [Packard, Frederick Adolphus].
Life of Robert Owen. Philadelphia, I866.
pp. 264.
7. Wood, C. H.
First disciple of Pestalozzi. Indiana
School Journal, November I892. Vol. 37.
pp. 659-665.




224


PESTALOZZIAN MOVEMENT


8. [Woodbridge, William Channing].
Mr. Owen's school at New Harmony.
American Journal of Education, June 1826,
Vol. I. pp. 377-378.
VII PESTALOZZIANISM IN NEW ENGLAND.
i. Alcott, Amos Bronson.
Primary education: an account of the
method of instruction in primary school
No. I of Cheshire, Connecticut. American
Journal of Education, January and February, 1827. Vol. 3. pp. 26-3I and 86-94.
2. Alcott, William A.
William Channing Woodbridge. Barnard's American Journal of Education, 1858.
Vol. 5. pp. 5I-64.
3. Barnard, Henry.
A chapter in the history of normal schools
in New   England. Barnard's American
Journal of Education, 1856. Vol i. pp.
587-592.




BIBLIOGRAPHY


225


4. Barnard, Henry.
Educational labors of Lowell Mason.  Barnard's American Journal of Education, 1858.
Vol. 4. pp. 141-148.
5. Barnard, Henry.
James G. Carter. Barnard's American
Journal of Education, 1858. Vol. 5. pp.
407-416.
6. Barnard, Henry.
William Russell, editor of the first series of
the American Journal of Education.
Barnard's American Journal of Education'
I857. Vol. 3. pp. I39-I46.
7. Boutwell, George Sewell.
Pestalozzian system. Popular Science
Monthly, November 1893. Vol. 44. pp.
55-56.
8. Fowle, William Bentley.
Vocal music. American Annals of Education, May I835. Vol. 5. pp. 225-229
9. Mason, William.




226


PESTALOZZIAN MOVEMENT


Memories of a musical life. New York,
190I. pp. 275-290.
IO. Mathews, William Smythe Babcock.
A hundred years of music in America.
Philadelphia, 1900. pp. 34-44.
I i. Monroe, Will Seymour.
Educational labors of Henry Barnard: a
study in the history of American pedagogy.
Syracuse, 1893. pp. 35.
12. Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer.
Record of Mr. Alcott's school exemplifying
the principles and methods of moral
culture. Boston, 1874.  Third edition.
pp. 297.
13. Sanborn, Franklin Benjamin.
A. Bronson Alcott: a memoir. Barnard's
American Journal of Education, I877. Vol.
27. pp. 225-236.
X I4. Sanborn, Franklin Benjamin and Harris,
William Torrey.
A. Bronson Alcott: his life and philosophy.
Boston, 1893. Two volumes. pp. 679.




BIBLIOGRAPHY


227


15. Semi-centennial and other exercises of the
state normal school at Westfield, Mass.
Boston, I889. pp. 79.
I6. Winship, Albert Edward.
Great American educators, with chapters
on American education. New York,[Igoo].
pp. IOI-II4.
I7. Woodbridge, William Channing.
On vocal music. American Institute of
Instruction for 1830. pp. 233-255.
VIII   PESTALOZZIANISM AT TH'E OSWEGO NORMAL SCHOOL.
I. Aber, William M.
Oswego normal school. Popular Science
Monthly, May I893. Vol. 43. pp. 51-76.
2. Calkins, Norman Allison.
History of object teaching. Barnard's
American Journal of Education, I863. Vol.
I2. pp. 633-645.
y 3. Gordy, J. P.
Rise and growth of the normal school idea




228


PESTALOZZIAN MOVEMENT


in the United States. Washington, 1891.
pp. 61-75.
4. Greene, Samuel Stillman.
Object teaching: its general principles and
the Oswego system. Proc. National Teachers' Association for I865. pp. 245-270.
5. Historical sketches relating to the first
quarter century of the state normal and
training school at Oswego, N. Y. Oswego,
i888. pp. 303.
6. Hollis, Andrew Phillip.
Contribution of the Oswego normal school
to educational progress in the United
States. Boston, 1898. pp. 128.
7. Jones, M. E. M.
Laws of childhood. Barnard's American
Journal of Education, I863. Vol. 12. pp,
629-632.
8. Monroe, Will Seymour.
Herman Kriisi, an American Pestalozzian.
Journal of Education (Boston) November
5th, 1903. Vol. 53. pp. 304-305.




BIBLIOGRAPHY


229


9. Monroe, Will Seymour.
Memoir of Professor Mary Sheldon Barnes.
Journal of Education (Boston), September
I5th, I898. Vol. 48. p. I75.
Io. Phelps, William Franklin, et. al.
Primary instruction by object lessons:
report of the committee of the primary
schools of Oswego. Barnard's American
Journal of Education, I863. Vol. 12. pp.
605-628.
i. Sheldon, Edward Austin.
Object teaching. Barnard's American
Journal of Education, I864. Vol 14. pp.
93-102.
12. Wilbur, Harvey Backus.
Object system of instruction as pursued in
the schools of Oswego. Barnard's American Journal of Education, I865. Vol. I5
pp. 189-208.
I3. Winship, Albert Edward.
Great American educators, with chapters




230


PESTLAOZZIAN MOVEMENT


on American education. New York [900oo
pp. 145-161.
IX   WILLIAM T. HARRIS AND PESTALOZZIANISM
IN SCHOOLS OF ST. LOUIS.
I. Barnard, Henry.
William Torrey Harris and St. Louis public
schools. Barnard's American Journal of
Education I880. Vol. 30. pp. 625-640.
2. de Guimps, Roger.
Pestalozzi: his life and work. Translated
by John Russell with an introduction by
R. H. Quick [and an editor's preface by
William T. Harris]. New York, 1897. pp.
438.
3. Harris, William Torrey.
Course of study in the district schools.
Fourteenth annual report of the board of
directors of the St. Louis public schools..
St. Louis, 1869. pp. 88-98.
4. Harris, William Torrey.
Herbert and Pestalozzi compared. Edu —




BIBLIOGRAPHY


23I


cational Review, May 1893. Vol. 5. pp.
417-423.
5. Harris, William Torrey.
A      How to teach natural sciences in public
schools. Syracuse, 1895. Second edition.
pp. 46.
X   PESTALOZZIAN LITERATURE IN THE UNITED
STATES.
I. Barnard, Henry, editor.
Pestalozzi  and   Pestalozzianism. New
York, I859. Two parts. pp. 238 and 230.
The same, enlarged under the title Pestalozzi and his educational system. Syracuse, I906. pp. 745.*
2. Biber, E.
Life and trials of Pestalozzi [Greenbank's
Periodical Library]. Philadelphia, I833.
3. de Guimps, Roger.
Pestalozzi; his aim and work. Translated by Margaret Cuthbertson Crombie.
Syracuse, 1889. pp. 32!0. The same,
*See foot note on page 210.




232


PESTALOZZIAN MOVEMFNT


translated by John Russell, New York,
I897, pp. 438.
4. Kriisi, Herman, Jr.
Pestalozzi; his life, work, and influence.
New York, [1875]. pp. 248.
5. Maclure, William.
An epitome of the improved Pestalozzian
system of education.  American Journal
of Science and Arts, February 1826, Vol:
IO. pp. I45-I56.
6. Monroe, Will Seymour.
Pestalozzian literature in America. Kindergarten Magazine, May, I894, Vol. 6. pp.
673-676.
7. Pestalozzi.
Leonard and Gertrude. Translated and
abridged by Eva Channing, with an introduction by G. Stanley Hall. Boston, I888.
pp. I8I.
8. Pestalozzi.
How Gertrude teaches her children. Translated by Lucy E. Holland and Frances E.




BIBLIOGRAPHY


233


Turner; and edited, with introduction and
notes, by Ebenezer Cooke. Syracuse, 1894
pp. 256.
9. Pestalozzi.
Letters on early education, addressed to
J. P. Greaves, Esq., Boston, 1830. Same,
Syracuse, 1898. pp. i80.
Io. Pinloche, A.
Pestalozzi and the foundation of the
modern elementary school. New York,
I901. pp. 306.
I 1. von Raumer, Karl.
Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism. Edited
by Henry Barnard. Part one: Memoir
of Pestalozzi, and biographical sketches
of several of his assistants and disciples.
pp. 238. Part two: Selections from the
publications of Pestalozzi. pp. 230. New
York, 1859.] Now published at Syracuse,
N. Y.]








INDEX


Abbott, Jacob, 161
Aber, William M.-Bibliography, 227
Academician, first American educational journal, 206
Academy of Natural Science at Philadelphia, 73
Agassiz, Louis, 128, 187
Alcott, Amos Bronson-Sketch, with portrait, 145-157; early
Pestalozzian interest, 146; Pestalozzian school at Cheshire, 147; labors in Philadelphia, 153; Temple school in
Boston, 154; last years, 157; quoted, 149, 152; bibliography, 224.
Alcott House in England, 38, 155.
Alcott, Louisa May, 154.
Alcott, William A.-associated with Win. C. Woodbridge, 143;
quoted, 141; bibliography, 224.
Alicante, Maclure's industrial school at, 29, 48
American Annals of Education, 142-143
American Geological Society, 45
American Institute of Instruction, 133, 144, 188
American Journal of Education, 129-130
American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia, 46
Arithmetic, 86
d' Arusmont, Phiquepal, 51, 105, 111, 1:15
Bache, Alexander Dallas, 23
Bardeen, C. W.-Publisher of Pestalozzian literature, 33, 210,
211
Barnard, Henry-Sketch, with portrait, 164-168; earliest Pestalozzian interest, 164; Pestalozzian schools in Europe
235




236


INDEX


visited, 165; American Journal of Education, 166; contributions to Pestalozzian literature, 167, 212; quoted,
130, 158, 196, 197; bibliography, 215, 218, 224, 225, 230,
231.
Barnes, Mary Sheldon-Sketch, 190-193; labors at Oswego
Normal School, 190; studies in historical method, 192;
quoted, 171, 173, 175.
Bergerac, Pestalozzian School at, 28
Biber, E.-Bibliography, 231
Bibliography of Pestalozzian literature, 215-233
de Biran, Maine, 28
Blochmann, Karl Justus, 25
Books, use of, by Neef, 95
Boston, music in the schools of, 161
Boutwell, George S., 136, 139, 225
Brooks, Charles-Sketch, 134-135
Burgdorf, Pestalozzi's school at, 62
Buss, Johannes, 64
Butler, Nicholas Murray-Quoted, 89


Cabell, C.-Visit to Pestalozzi, 68
Calhoun, William B., 132
Calkins, Norman A.-History of object
123; bibliography, 227
Camp, David N., 180, 182
Carter, James G.-Sketch, 131-133
Channing, Eva, 211
Channing, William Ellery, 156
Chavannes, D. A., 28, 45, 205
Clendy, Pestalozzi's orphan school at, 32
Cochran, David H., 180
Colburn, Dana Pond, 130, 188
Combe, George, 130


teaching, 180; quoted,




INDEX


237


Compayre, Gabriel,-Bibliography, 215
Condillac's Logic, 94, 221
Connecticut Common School Journal, 165
Cooke, Ebenezer, 211
Crombie, Margaret Cuthberton, 215
Davis, Emerson, 137
Denmark, Pestalozzianism in, 29
Denzel, Bernard Gottlieb, 24
Dickinson, John W., 137, 138, 164
Diesterweg, Friedrich Adolph Wilhelm, 26
Dinter, Gustav Friedrich, 25
Dock, Christopher, 77
Dwight, Nathaniel, 141
Edgeworth, Maria, 130
Edwards, Richard, 182
Emerson, George B., 188
Emerson, Ralph Wraldo, 31, 156
England, Pestalozzianism in, 30, 37
Farnham, George L., 180
Farragut, David Glasgow, 106
Farragut, Loyall-Bibliography, 222
von Fellenberg, Phillip Emmanuel.-Sketch, 11-12
Fichte, John George.-Sketch, 15-16
Form study, 87
Fowle, William B., 129, 225
Framingham Normal School, 135
France, Pestalozzianism in, 27-29
Fr6bel, Friedrich-Sketch, 16-17
Frotegeot, Marie D., 51, 111, 112
Fuller, Margaret-Teacher in Alcott's School, 154
Gallaudet, Thomas Hopkins, 125, 129
Gardette, C. D.-Quoted, 98, 101; bibliography, 222




238


INDEX


Geography, 20, 93
Germany, Pestalozzianism in, 14, 26
Gill, John, 35, 216
Girls, education of, at New Harmony, 121
Gordy, J. P.-Bibliography, 221
Grammar, 87
Greaves, James Pierrepont.-Sketch, 31-34; association with
Pestalozzi, 31; secretary of Infant School Society, 32;
organization of Alcott House, 33; relations with Amos
Bronson Alcott, 155
Greene, Samuel Stillman, 182, 228
Griscom, John.-Sketch, with portrait, 207-208; visit to Pestalozzi, 51, 207; Year in Europe, 208; quoted 59; bibliography, 218
Gruener's Pestalozzian school at Frankfort, 16
de Guimps, Roger-Pupil of Pestalozzi, 14; quoted, 68; bibliography, 216, 230, 231
Guyot, Arnold, 128, 187
Gymnastics, 90
Hall, Samuel R., 129
Hall, G. Stanley, 104, 211
Harnisch, Wilhelm, 22
Harris, William Torrey-Sketch, with portrait, 195-203; Herbart and Pestalozzi compared, 18; early educational
labors, 195; superintendent of schools at St. Louis, 196;
course in natural science, 199; annual reports, 201; views
on sense training, 202; quoted, 18; bibliography, 216,
226, 230, 231
Harrison, Elizabeth, 130
Harrison, Thomas F., 180
Herbart, Johann Friedrich-Sketch, 17-19
Hill, G. Birbeck-Bibliography, 222
Hill, Sir Rowland, 120




INDEX


239


History teaching, 192
Hofwyl, Fellenberg's institute at, 11-12
Holbrook, Josiah, 129
Holland, Lucy E., 211
Hollis, Andrew P., 139, 228
Home and Colonial School Society, 35, 186
Hughes, James L.-Bibliography, 216
Indiana legislature and Maclure, 51
Infant schools, 32, 47, 112
Interest, doctrine of, 89
Jacotot, Joseph, 130
Johnson, Walter R., 125
Jones, Margaret E. M., 178, 179, 228
Jordan, David Starr, 50
Jullien, Marc Antoine, 28, 64
Kosciusco, Thaddeus, 42
Kruesi, Herman, Jr.-Sketch, with portrait, 185-190; labors in
Switzerland, 186; teacher in English Pestalozzian schools,
186; work in Massachusetts and New Jersey, 187; at
Oswego, 189; quoted, 27; bibliography, 216, 232
Kruesi, Hermann, Sr.-Sketch 12-13; bibliography, 216
Language study, 92
Lesueur, Charles A., 50, 117
Lockwood, George B.-Bibliography, 223
Louisville, Neef's school at, 107
Maclure, William-Sketch, with portrait, 39-60; visit to Fellenberg, 12; interest in the United States, 40; visits to Pestalozzi, 41, 57; early Pestalozzian publications, 43;
geological survey, 44; Philadelphia Academy of Science,
46; industrial school at Alicante, Spain, 27, 47; New Harmony community, 49; philanthropic work, 55; character,




240


INDEX


56; engagement of Joseph Neef for the United States, 66,
71; conflict of his views with those of Robert Owen, 122;
Pestalozzian publications, 205; quoted, 12, 49, 51, 53, 57,
110, 169; bibliography, 218, 223, 232
Mann, Horace, 21, 23, 125, 128, 133, 187
Martineau, Harriet, 155
Mason, Lowell-Sketch, 158-164; director of music in Boston
schools, 163; visits to Pestalozzian schools in Europe, 163
Mason, William-Bibliography, 225
Massachusetts normal schools 135-139
Matthews, William S. B., 162, 226
May, Samuel J., 151
Mayo, Charles, 29, 34, 35, 217
Mayo, Elizabeth, 35
Military exercises, 117
Monroe, Paul-Bibliography, 217
Monroe, Will S.-Bibliography, 219, 221, 222,226, 228, 229, 232
Morton, Samuel G., 53
Munroe, James Phinney,-Bibliography, 217
Muralt, 29
Music, 93, 144, 161
Napoleon, 27, 62, 66, 67
Naegeli, Hans George, 14
National Teachers' Association, 182, 183
Neef, Joseph-Sketch, with portrait, 61-126; career as a soldier
under Napoleon, 61; teacher under Pestalozzi at Burgdorf, 62; engaged by Maclure to come to the United
States, 70; personal characteristics, 73; Plan and method
of education, 77-94; translation of Condillac's Logic, 94;
Methods of instruction, 94; school at Philadelphia, 97 -105; school at Village Green, 105-107; school at Louisville,
107-108; with the New Harmony Community, 109-126;
quoted, 66, 68, 74, 102, 126; bibliography, 220, 221, 222




INDEX


241


Neef, Mrs. Joseph, 64, 66, 111, 112
Neuhof, Pestalozzi's school at, 174
New Harmony Community, 109-126
New Harmony Gazette, 111
New Lanark, infant schools at, 46
Newman, Samuel P., 137
Object teaching, 84, 170
Oswego Normal School, 169-193
Oswego Orphan and Free School Association, 172
Owen, Mrs. Richard, 64
Owen, Robert-Founder of infant schools, 46-47; relation to
the New Harmony Community 109-126; views on education, 122; quoted, 55, bibliography, 223
Owen, Robert Dale, 116, 219, 223
Packard, Frederick A., 223
Paris, Pestalozzian school at, 66
Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer, 154, 226
Pennell, C. L., 182
Pennypacker, Samuel W., 77
Pestalozzi-Compared with Herbart, 18.: Maclure's visits, 41,
57; institute at Yverdon, 41; aid rendered by Maclure,
59; school at Burgdorf, 62; described by Neef, 78; orphanages at Stanz and Neuhof, 174; educational doctrines,
82; Letters on early education, 209-210; Leonard and
Gertrude, 80, 209, 211; quoted 13,,'35; bibliography, 232,
233
Pestalozzian literature in English, 205-2131
Pestalozzianism in Switzerland, 10-14; in Germany, 14-27; in
France and Spain, 27-29; in Denmark and Russia, 29 -30; in England, 30-37
Phelps, William F., 180, 189, 229
Philadelphia Academy of Science, 46




242


INDEX


Philadelphia, Neef's school at, 97-108
Philbrick, John Dudley, 182
Physical training, 90, 100
Pickard, Josiah Little, 182
Pinloche, A., 27, 217, 233
Plamann, Johann Ernst, 23
Pompee, Ph., 66, 220
Porter, David, 106
Quick, Robert Hebert-Bibliography, 217
Rafinesque, Constantine Samuel, 51
"Ragged School" at Oswego, 173
Ramsauer, Johannes, 23, 63, 220
von Raumer, Karl, 25, 217, 233
Religious instruction, 53, 88
Rhode Island Normal School, 188
Rice, Victor M., 181
Richter, Jean Paul, 130
Ritter, Karl, 19-20
Rowe, David S., 137
Russell, John, 212
Russell, William-Sketch, 128-131; visits to Pestalozzian schools
in Europe, 212; quoted, 115
Russia, Pestalozzianism in, 29
Ryerson, Adolphus E., 170
Saint Louis, schools of, 195-203
Sanborn, Frank B.-Quoted, 155, 156; bibliography, 226
Say, Thomas, 50, 111, 115, 116
Sears, Barnas, 182
Seward, Theodore F., 164
Sheldon, Edward Austin-Sketch, with portrait, 169-185; early
training, 171; orphan school at Oswego, 172; superin



INDEX


243


tendent of schools at Syracuse, 174; return to Oswego,
175; the Oswego training school, 179; Oswego a State
Normal School, 182; bibliography, 229
Sheldon, Mary-See Barnes, Mary Sheldon
Silliman, Benjamin, 49
Spain, Pestalozzianism in, 27-29
Spanish Cortes, 48
de Stael, Anne Louise Germaine, 80
Stanford University, 192
Stanz, Pestalozzi's orphan school at, 174
Stowe, Calvin E., 23
Switzerland, Pestalozzianism in, 10-14
Talleyrand, Charles Maurice, 66
Tenny, Sanborn, 131
Todd, Eli, 165
Thayer, Gideon F., 161
Thrall, Mrs. Sarah Cox, 121
Tobler, Gustav, 13
Toronto educational museum, 170, 175
Troost, Gerard, 51, 117
von Turk, Karl Christian Wilhelm, 20-22
Turner, Frances E., 211
Village Green, Neef's school at, 105
Voitel, 29
Vulliemin, L., 32
Webb, George J., 160
Wehrli, Johann Jacob, 12
Wells, William H., 137
Westfield Normal School, 135, 137-139
Whitaker, William J., 130, 188
White, George T. W., 95
Wickersham, James Pyle, 222




244


INDEX


Wilbur, Harvey P., 180
Willard, Mrs. Emma, 125, 141
Williams, Samuel G., 218
Winship, Albert E.-Bibliography, 227, 229
Woodbridge, William Channing-Sketch, with portrait, 140 -146; account of the New Harmony schools, 112; Pestalozzi's views on music; the institute at Yverdon visited,
208; quoted, 113, 120, 127; bibliography, 224
Wood, C. H.-Bibliography, 220, 223
Yverdon, Pestalozzi's institute at, 42
Zeller, Karl August, 24
kLI IV. ~'r-  -,.~:
68  F5 AA  r - 
68 522            AA A 30
















THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
DATE DUE


/  *,   0V 20


GA        -    a;' 1?.;..,.          ",          *
IR   I  -    I.,I.  -.,   1.. I   -.   I.a1was0:?.


a


~~~__                          _


JUL 2 8 1992


'JU



UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 00234 8111




I                                                    I