Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi is the greatest humanist teacher, reformer and democrat of the times of the bourgeois revolution in Switzerland and France, a representative of the progressive intelligentsia of that period. He devoted more than half a century of his life to public education.
Biography
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi was born in 1746 in Zurich (Switzerland), the son of a doctor. The boy's father died early. That is why Johann's upbringing was done by his mother, along with a devoted maid - a simple peasant woman. Both women courageously and selflessly fought against poverty. And this made an indelible impression on the boy. Influenced his future views and the plight of the peasants, which he saw while in the village with his grandfather.
Pestalozzi received his primary education in a German school, and his secondary education in Latin. Acquaintance with the miserable program and the low level of professionalism of teachers caused extremely negative emotions in the young man.
After graduating from high school, Pestalozzi became a student at the Collegium of the Carolinum. In this higher educational institution, he graduated from junior courses in philology and philosophy.
At the age of 17, Johann got acquainted with the work of J. J. Rousseau "Emil, or On Education". This novel delighted the young man. Even then, the pedagogical ideas of J. G. Pestalozzi were briefly outlined. They included the need for natural education, the development of the senses, the strict observance of a certain system and the discipline of children, which is based on trust and love for the educator.
After the release of the new work of J. J. Rousseau "The Social Contract" Pestalozzi no longer had any doubts that his mission was to serve the people.
In 1774, Johann organized a shelter in Neuhof for homeless children and orphans. The money for the maintenance of this institution was earned by the children themselves. However, the idea that it was possible to maintain a shelter at the expense of this source was already initially a utopia. In 1780 it had to be closed due to lack of funds.
For the next 18 years, Pestalozzi devoted himself to literary work. In 1799 he reopened the orphanage. This institution, which was located in the Swiss city of Stanz, contained 80 children from 5 to 10 years old. However, this orphanage did not last long. A few months later it was closed. In connection with the outbreak of hostilities, the premises were given over to the infirmary.
Soon, Pestalozzi began to work as a teacher, and a little later he organized his own institute, where, together with his employees, he continued the experiments of simplified education that he had begun in Stanza. Soon he created an educational institution, which was a huge success. However, Pestalozzi was still not satisfied with his work, because not peasant children went to this school, but the sons of we althy people who were preparing to enter the university. In 1825, Pestalozzi closed his institute, which lasted 20 years. Two years later, at the age of 82, the great teacher passed away.
Scientific papers
In 1781, Pestalozzi completed and published the work "Lingard and Gertrude", which became a pedagogical novel. At the beginning of the 19th century he introduced new writings to his readers. They reflected Pestalozzi's pedagogical ideas regarding new methods of primary education. These are four books. Among them are the works of Pestalozzi "How Gertrude Teaches Her Children", "The ABC of Visualization, or the Visual Teaching of Measurement", "The Book of Mothers, or a Guide for Mothers on How to Teach Their Children to Observe and Speak", "The Visual Teaching of Number". In 1826 another work saw the light. Pestalozzi, being an elderly man of eighty years old, completed his works with the composition "Swan Song". It was the result of the professional activity of the great teacher.
The essence of Pestalozzi's ideas
The whole life of the great democratic teacher was spent in economically backward Switzerland, which was considered a peasant country. All this could not but affect the worldview of Pestalozzi. His vision of the world and the pedagogical views developed by him influenced him.
According to Pestalozzi's theory, all the positive inclinations that a person has must be developed to the maximum extent. The teacher compares the art of the educator with artgardener. Nature itself has endowed the child with a certain strength, which should only be developed, strengthened and directed in the right direction, eliminating negative external obstacles and influences that can disrupt the natural movement of development.
According to Pestalozzi's pedagogical ideas, the center of raising children is the formation of a person's personality and moral character. The purpose of such work is the harmonious and comprehensive development of all the abilities and natural forces of man. At the same time, the teacher cannot suppress the process of natural development of the individual. He only has to guide the growing person along the right path and not allow him to have a negative influence on him that can turn the child aside.
The essence of education, as Pestalozzi understands it, lies in harmony with nature. However, targeted learning is essential for every child. After all, if he is left to himself, then development will proceed spontaneously and will not allow him to achieve the necessary level of harmonious development of the individual, which is necessary for a person as a member of society.
Elementary Education Theory
This concept is central to the pedagogical practice of a democratic teacher. According to Pestalozzi's theory of elementary education, the educational process should begin with the simplest elements, and only then gradually move towards what is considered more complex. At the same time, it is necessary to use various directions in training.
This is labor and physical, aestheticand moral education, as well as mental education. Various aspects of the educational process must be embodied in interaction. This will allow a person to develop harmoniously.
Use of labor
In his writings, Pestalozzi described in detail all the methods and means of the learning process. At the same time, he paid considerable attention to work. It is he, according to the democrat teacher, that is the most important means of the process of educating a person. Such activity contributes to the development of not only physical strength, but also the mind. In addition, the labor education of the child forms morality in him. A working person is convinced of the great importance of joint activity for rallying people into a social union.
The most valuable activity of Pestalozzi is his desire to create a school that would be inextricably linked with the needs and lives of the masses and contributed to the development of the spiritual forces of the children of workers and peasants. And these students are in dire need of labor knowledge and skills.
This is the school described in the novel "Lingard and Gertrude". Here the teacher introduces his pupils to agriculture, teaches them to process wool and linen, and also to take care of pets.
Judging by this work, it becomes clear that Pestalozzi assigned a significant role to the folk school in preparing the children of working people for the upcoming activities. But at the same time, he constantly emphasized the idea of the need to achieve the highest goal of education, which is the formation of personality.
Bas one of Pestalozzi's pedagogical ideas was the expansion of the primary school curriculum. The teacher-reformer introduced into the learning process the development of writing and reading skills, measuring and counting, singing, drawing and gymnastics, as well as obtaining some knowledge from the field of history and geography. With this, Pestalozzi significantly expanded the boundaries of general education that existed in the folk school of that period, because in these institutions children were taught only the elements of reading and the laws of God.
The introduction of elements of art and general scientific knowledge, socially useful work and physical education into the curriculum contributed to the preparation of a more knowledgeable and cultured worker.
As a propagandist and organizer of the labor school and a person closely connected with real life, Pestalozzi was categorically against scholastic verbal education. It did not allow children to acquire the skills and knowledge that they needed in life.
Physical Education
The great teacher considered the basis of this direction of education to be the natural desire of children to move, which makes them be restless, play, always act and grab everything. At the same time, physical education according to Pestalozzi is what contributes to the development of volitional qualities, feelings and minds of students. The game for children provides movement of the joints. Moreover, the democratic teacher believed that it was necessary to lay the foundations for the physical education of the child even in the family. Natural home gymnastics by children is performed here with the help of their mother. It is she who helps her child first stand onlegs, and then take the first steps. After the child learns to independently do all the movements that the human body is capable of, he will begin to take part in domestic work.
The entire Pestalozzi school gymnastic system was built on the basis of the simplest exercises. When they were performed, movements were implied similar to those performed by people when, for example, they drink or lift weights, that is, they do ordinary things.
According to Pestalozzi, the use of a system of such sequential exercises allows you to develop the child physically. At the same time, such classes will prepare children for work and form the necessary skills in them.
Pestalozzi assigns a large place in the implementation of physical education to the implementation of military games, drills and exercises. All these activities at his institute were closely combined with excursions in Switzerland, hiking trips and sports games.
Moral education
Pestalozzi's pedagogical ideas were also aimed at developing students' active love for the people around them. The democrat teacher saw the simplest element of this direction in the child's love for his mother. This feeling arises in children based on their natural physical needs. A mother who takes care of her child generates in him love and gratitude for her, which develops into close spiritual ties. All this, according to Pestalozzi, is possible in pedagogy. And in the event that the school is built on the teacher's love for his students, she will be able tosuccessfully conduct their moral education.
The task of the teacher at the same time is to gradually transfer the naturally arisen feeling of the child - love for the mother, to the people in his environment. In the beginning, it should be the father, sisters, brothers, and then everyone else. As a result, the child will extend his love as a whole to humanity and feel that he is a member of society.
According to Pestalozzi, morality can be developed in children through constantly doing things that benefit others. Moreover, the foundations of this education are laid in the family. Further development of morality should be carried out in the school. But this can only be done by an educational institution in which the teacher's fatherly love for children takes place.
When a child enters school, the circle of his social relations expands considerably. The task of the teacher in this case is their correct organization, based on the active love of children for all those with whom they communicate.
In his writings on pedagogy, Pestalozzi expressed the conviction that the moral behavior of a child cannot be formed through moralizing. This can be done only through the development of moral feelings. He pointed out the great importance for children of moral deeds that require endurance and self-control, which makes it possible to form the will of a young person.
The most valuable aspects of Pestalozzi's theory of elementary education in relation to moral education is an indication of its inseparable connection with physical development. In addition, the great merit of the teacher-The reformer was also required to develop moral behavior without using moral sermons, but with directing children to do good deeds.
Religious education
Morality Pestalozzi closely associated with faith. However, he did not have in mind the ritual religion, which he criticized. He spoke of that natural power of God that allows a person to love all people. Indeed, according to the inner religion, they can be considered as brothers and sisters, that is, children of the same father.
Development of the senses
Pestalozzi's pedagogical ideas are meaningful and rich. Based on the need for the harmonious development of the individual, they closely link two such elements as moral education and mental education. At the same time, the teacher-reformer puts forward the requirement for the presence of educative education.
Pestalozzi's ideas regarding mental education are defined in the epistemological concept developed by him. Its basis is the assertion that any process of cognition necessarily begins with sensory perception, which is further processed by the human mind with the help of a priori ideas.
Pestalozzi also believed that any learning should be carried out using observations and experiences, rising to generalizations and conclusions. The result of this practice is that the child receives visual, auditory and other sensations that encourage him to think and create.
Those ideas about the outside world that a person receivesthanks to the senses, at first they are indistinct and obscure. The task of the teacher is to organize them and bring them to specific concepts.
Pestalozzi criticized the schools that existed at that time. After all, mechanical memorization and dogmatism dominated in them, which dulled the thinking of the students. Among his ideas was the construction of education based on knowledge about the characteristics of the mental development of the child. The starting point for this Pestalozzi considered children's perception of the outside world through the senses. At the same time, he pointed out that man's contemplation of nature is the foundation of learning, since it serves as the basis on which human knowledge is built.
The principle of naturalness
The Democrat teacher presented learning as an art, which is designed to help a person in his natural desire for development. And this is his principle of natural education.
In understanding this issue, Pestalozzi took a significant step forward. Indeed, before him, a similar idea was put forward by Comenius, but he tried to answer the question of the natural conformity of education, choosing analogies with natural phenomena, sometimes mechanically transferring to the process of obtaining knowledge the conclusions that he made when observing the world of animals and plants. Pestalozzi approached this problem from a different angle. He saw the natural conformity of education in the disclosure of the natural forces of the child himself, as well as his psychological characteristics. This ultimately makes it possible to solve the general tasks of the teacher, which consist in educating a harmoniously developedpersonality.
This idea, which arose even before Pestalozzi's writings and was voiced by other authors, became the subject of a serious dispute that arose between supporters of formal and material education.
The main task of teaching as a democratic teacher was stated on the basis of the theory of formal education. She, in his opinion, consists in the awakening of the ability to think and the growth of spiritual forces. Pestalozzi saw the paths of cognitive processes in students in constant movement from vague and chaotic impressions received by the senses to clear ideas and clear concepts. He was convinced that all learning should be based on concrete observations from life, and not on words that are empty and meaningless.
Visibility was considered by Pestalozzi as the highest principle of education, the disclosure of which he devoted a lot of effort. He formulated an idea that was an analogue of the "golden rule" of Comenius, stating that the more senses a student uses when determining the essence of objects and phenomena, the more correct his knowledge of them will be. However, all this is not a mandatory option to familiarize yourself with objects in their natural setting.
Pestalozzi considered visualization as the starting point, giving impetus to the development of the child's spiritual powers, and as something that allows thoughts to work in the future. He suggested using observation in various fields of knowledge. This led to the use of visualization in the study of counting and language, as well as all other academic subjects, which became a means offor the development of thinking.
Pestalozzi pointed out that the teacher needs to teach students to observe, expanding the boundaries of their knowledge over time. But at the same time, the task of the school is to form in children a correct understanding of the objects of the world around them. And this, according to the reformer, is possible when using such elementary teaching aids as the word, number and form. The initial education of children should be built on them, which should first of all speak, count and measure.
Pestalozzi developed a methodology for initial training. With its help, children learned measurement, counting and their native language. This technique was so simplified by its author that it could be used by any peasant mother who started to work with her child.
Teaching Geography
Some of Pestalozzi's ideas also concerned the study of our planet. Here he guides the children from near to far. So, after observing the area that was near them, the students moved on to more complex concepts.
When getting to know a piece of land near a school or with their village, children could acquire initial geographical representations. And only later this knowledge gradually expanded. As a result, students received information about the entire planet.
According to Pestalozzi, the combination of the initial concepts of natural science with the study of native places was very useful for students. He recommended his method, by which childrenwhen using clay, they had to sculpt reliefs familiar to them, and only then proceed to the study of maps.
Conclusion
In the course of his professional activities, Pestalozzi developed private methods and the general foundations of primary education. However, he did not correctly resolve the issue of the unity of the development of the mental powers of students and the process of obtaining knowledge. At times, he overestimated the role of mechanical exercises and followed the lines of formal education.
However, Pestalozzi's idea of developmental schooling played a decisive role in the further development of advanced pedagogical practice and theory. The undoubted merit of the teacher-reformer was his idea of raising the level of mental abilities of children to prepare them for meaningful activity.
