The Convention also adopted the metric system of weights and measures; enacted laws under which the peasants could acquire title to the lands they had tilled for so long; and began the unification of the laws of the different parts of the country into a single set, which later culminated in theCode Napoléon.
4.The Directory(1795-99)and the Consulate(1799-1804). The Revolution had by this time largely spent itself, the Directory followed, and in 1799 Napoleon became First Consul and for the next sixteen years was master of France. The Law of 1795 for primary schools (R. 258 b) was but feebly administered under the Directory, as foreign wars absorbed the energies and resources of the Government. Napoleon's chief educational interest, too, was in opening up opportunities for talent to rise, in encouraging scientific work and higher specialized institutions, and in developing schools of a type that would support the kind of government he had imposed upon France. The secondary and higher schools he established and promoted cost him money at a time when money was badly needed for national defense, and primary education was accordingly neglected during the time he directed the destinies of the nation. His educational organizations and work we shall refer to again in a later chapter.
The Revolutionary enthusiasts had stated clearly their theory of republican education, but had failed to establish a permanent state school system according to their plans. This now became the work of the nineteenth century. In the meantime, in the new United States of America the same ideas were taking shape and finding expression, and to the developments there we next turn.
WANING OF THE OLD RELIGIOUS INTEREST. As early as 1647 Rhode Island Colony had enacted the first law providing for freedom of religious worship ever enacted by an English-speaking people, and two years later Maryland enacted a similar law. Though the Maryland law was later repealed, and a rigid Church-of-England rule established there, these laws were indicative of the new spirit arising in the New World. By the beginning of the eighteenth century a change in attitude toward the old problem of personal salvation had become evident. Frontier conditions; the gradual rise of a civil as opposed to a religious form of town government; the rising interests in trade and shipping; the beginnings of the breakdown of the old aristocratic traditions and customs transplanted from Europe; the rising individualism in both Europe and America—these all helped to weaken the hold on the people of the old religious doctrines.
By 1750 the change in religious thinking in the American Colonies had become quite marked. [11] Especially was this change evidenced in the dying-out of the old religious fervor and intolerance, and the breaking-up of the old religious solidarity. While most of the Colonies continued to maintain an "established Church," other sects had to be admitted to the Colony and given freedom of worship. The Puritan monopoly in New England was broken, as was also that of the Anglican faith in the central Colonies. The day of the monopoly of any sect in a Colony was over. New secular interests began to take the place of religion as the chief topic of thought and conversation, and secular books began to dispute the earlier predominance of the Bible. A few colonial newspapers had begun (seven by 1750), and these became expressive of the new colony interests.
CHANGING CHARACTER OF THE SCHOOLS. These changes in attitude toward the old religious problems materially affected both the support and the character of the education provided in the Colonies. The Law of 1647, requiring the maintenance of the Latin grammar schools, had been found to be increasingly difficult of enforcement, not only in Massachusetts, but in all the other New England Colonies which had followed the Massachusetts example. With the changing attitude of the people, which had become clearly manifest by 1750, the demand for relief from the maintenance of this school in favor of a more practical and less aristocratic type of higher school, if higher school were needed at all, became marked. By the close of the colonial period the new American Academy (p. 463), with its more practical studies, had begun to supersede the old Latin grammar school.
The elementary school experienced something of the same difficulties. Many of the parochial schools died out, while others declined in character and importance. In Church-of-England Colonies all elementary education was left to private initiative and philanthropic and religious effort (p. 373). In the southern Colonies the classes in society and the character of the plantation life made common schools impossible, and the feeling of any need for elementary schools almost entirely died out. In New England the eighteenth century was a continual struggle on the one hand to prevent the original religious town school from disappearing, and on the other to establish in its place a series of scattered and inferior district schools, while either church or town support and tuition fees became ever harder to obtain. Among other changes of importance the reading school and the writing school now became definitely united, in all the smaller places and in the rural districts, as a measure of economy, to form the American school of the "3 Rs." New textbooks, too, containing less of the gloomily religious than theNew England Primer, and secular rather than religious in character (p. 443), appeared after 1750 and began to be used in the schools. After 1750, too, it was increasingly evident that the old religious enthusiasm for schools had largely died out; that European traditions and ways and types of schools no longer completely satisfied; and that the period of the transplanting of European educational ideas and schools and types of instruction was coming to an end. Instead, the evolution of a public or state school out of the original religious school, and the beginnings of the evolution of distinctly American types of schools, better adapted to American needs, became increasingly evident in the Colonies as the eighteenth century progressed.
RISE OF THE CIVIL OF STATE SCHOOL. As has been stated earlier, the school everywhere in America arose as a child of the Church. In the Middle Colonies, where the parochial-school conception of education was the prevailing type, the school remained under church control until after the foundation of our national government. In New England, though—and the New England evolution in time became the prevailing American practice—the school passed through a very interesting development during colonial times.
As we have seen (p. 360), each little New England town was originally established as a little religious republic, with the Church in complete control. The governing authorities for church and civil affairs were much the same. When acting as church officers they were known as Elders and Deacons; when acting as civil or town officers they were known as Selectmen. The State, as represented in the colony legislature or the town meeting, was clearly the servant of the Church, and existed in large part for religious ends. It was the State acting as the servant of the Church which enacted the Massachusetts laws of 1642 and 1647 (Rs. 190, 19l), requiring the towns to maintain schools for religious ends. Now, so close was the connection between the religious town, which controlled church affairs, and the civil town, which looked after roads, fences, taxes, and defense—the constituency of both being one and the same, and the meetings of both being held at first in the meeting-house—that when the schools were established the colony legislature placed them under the civil—as involving taxes, and being a public service—rather than under the religious town. The interests of one were the interests of both, and, being the same in constituency and territorial boundaries, there seemed no occasion for friction or fear. From this religious beginning the civil school and the civil school-town and school-township, with all their elaborate school administrative machinery, were later evolved.
The erection of a town hall, separate from the meeting-house, was a first step in the process. School affairs now were discussed at the town hall, instead of in the church. The town authorities now appointed committees to locate and build schoolhouses, select and certificate the teachers, and visit and examine the school. Next a regular town school committee was provided for. To this was given the management of the town school, and town taxes, instead of church taxes, were voted for buildings and maintenance. The minister continued to certificate the grammar-school master until the close of the colonial period, but the power to certificate the elementary-school teachers passed to the town authorities early in the eighteenth century. By the close of the century all that the minister—as the only surviving representative of church control—had left to him was the right to accompany the town authorities in the visitation of schools. Thus gradually but certainly did the earlier religious school in America pass out from under the control of the Church and come under the control of the State. When our national government and the different state governments were established, the States were ready to accept, in principle at least, the theory gradually worked out in New England that schools are state institutions, and should be under the control of the State.
THE EARLY STATE CONSTITUTIONS AND LAWS. In framing the Federal Constitution, in 1787, education, then being regarded largely as a local matter, was left to the States to handle as they saw fit; so we turn to the early state constitutions and laws to see how far the new American States had, by the close of the eighteenth century, advanced toward the conception of education as an affair of the State.
During the period from the Declaration of Independence to the close of the eighteenth century (1776-1800), all the States, except Rhode Island and Connecticut, which considered their colonial charters as satisfactory, formulated and adopted new state constitutions. Three new States—Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee—were admitted to the Union before 1800, and these framed constitutions also. Of the sixteen States forming the Union by 1800, seven had incorporated into their constitutions a clause setting forth the State's duty in the matter of education (R. 259). As in the earlier period of American education, it was Calvinistic New England which incorporated into the constitutions the best provisions regarding learning. In the parochial-school central Colonies the mention was much less emphatic, while the old Anglican-Church Colonies and the new States of Kentucky and Tennessee remained silent on the subject. Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, in particular, incorporated strong sections directing the encouragement of learning and virtue, the protection and fostering of school societies, and the establishment of schools. The Massachusetts provision, afterwards copied by New Hampshire, is so explicit in the matter of state duty that it is worth quoting in full.
Chap. V, Sec. 2. Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of the legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this Commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them; especially the university at Cambridge, public schools, and grammar schools in the towns; to encourage private societies and public institutions, by rewards and immunities, for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and a natural history of the country; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings; sincerity, good humor, and all social affections and generous sentiments among the people.
Though the Federal Constitution made no provision for education or aid to schools, when the Congress of the Confederation, in 1787, adopted the Ordinance for the organization and government of the Northwest Territory, out of which the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin were later carved, it prefixed to this Ordinance the following significant provision:
Art. 3. Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged [in the States to be formed from this Territory].
By the time the first State formed from this western territory was ready to be admitted to the Union (Ohio, 1802), the theory that education is a function of the State had come to be so thoroughly accepted, in principle at least, by the new American people that Congress now began a policy, ever since continued, of aiding each new State to establish and maintain a state system of schools. To this end Congress gave the new State for this purpose a generous endowment of national land, and in addition three townships of land to endow a state university. We also find that the constitutions of the first States created from this new Northwest Territory (Ohio, 1802; Indiana, 1816 [12]) contain for the time good provisions relating to public education. The Ohio provisions (R. 260) are noteworthy for the strong stand for religious freedom and against any discrimination in the schools between rich and poor, while the Indiana provisions (R. 261) are marked for their broad and generous conception of the scope and purpose of a state system of public instruction.
Many of the older States enacted general state school laws early in their history (R. 262). Connecticut continued the general school laws of 1700, 1712, and 1714 unchanged, and in 1795 added $1,200,000, derived from land sales, to a permanent state school endowment fund, created as early as 1750. Vermont enacted a general school law in 1782. Massachusetts and New Hampshire enacted new general school laws, in 1789, which restated and legalized the school development of the preceding hundred and fifty years. All these required the maintenance of schools by the towns for a definite term each year, ordered taxation, and fixed the school studies required by the State. New York, in 1784, created an administrative organization, known as the University of the State of New York, to supervise secondary and higher education throughout the State—an institution clearly modeled after the centralizing ideas of Condorcet, Rolland, and Diderot (p. 477), and very similar to the ideas proposed by Talleyrand and Condorcet and later (1808) embodied in the University of France by Napoleon. In 1795 New York also provided for a state system of elementary education. Georgia created a state system of academies, as early as 1783. Delaware created a state school fund, in 1796, and Virginia enacted an optional school law the same year. North Carolina created a state university, as early as 1795.
THE NEW POLITICAL MOTIVE FOR SCHOOLS. We thus see, in the new United States, the theories of the French revolutionary thinkers and statesmen actually being realized in practice. The constitutional provisions, and even the legislation, often were in advance of what the States, impoverished as they were by the War of Independence, could at once carry out, but they mark the evolution in America of a clearly defined state theory as to education, and the recognition of a need for general education in a government whose actions were so largely influenced by the force of public opinion. The Federal Constitution had extended the right to vote for national officers to all, and the older States soon began to remove their earlier property qualifications for voting and to extend general manhood suffrage to all citizens.
This new development in government by the people, which meant the passing of the rule of a propertied and educated class and the establishment of a real democracy, caused the leading American statesmen to turn early to general education as a necessity for republican safety. In his Farewell Address to the American people, written in 1796, Washington said:
Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.
Jefferson spent the years 1784 to 1789 in Paris, and became a great propagandist in America for French political ideas. Writing to James Madison from France, as early as 1787, he said:
Above all things, I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on this good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due sense of liberty.
[Illustration: FIG. 162. THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826)]
In 1779, then, as a member of the Virginia legislature, Jefferson tried unsuccessfully to secure the passage of a comprehensive bill, after the plan of the French Revolutionary proposals, for the organization of a complete system of public education for Virginia. The essential features of the proposed bill (R. 263) were that every county should be laid off into school districts, five to six miles square, to be known as "hundreds," and in each of these an elementary school was to be established to which any citizen could send his children free of charge for three years, and as much longer as he was willing to pay tuition; that the leading pupil in each school was to be selected annually and sent to one of twenty grammar (secondary) schools to be established and maintained at various points in the State; after two years the leaders in each of these schools were to be selected and further educated free for six years, the less promising being sent home; and at the completion of the grammar- school course, the upper half of the pupils were to be given three years more of free education at the State College of William and Mary, and the other half were to be employed as teachers for the schools of the State. [13]
Though the scheme failed of approval, Jefferson never lost interest in the education of the people for intelligent participation in the functions of government. Writing from Monticello to Colonel Yancey, in 1816, after his retirement from the presidency, he wrote:
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilizationit expects what never was and never will be…. There is no safedeposit (for the functions of government) but with the peoplethemselves; nor can they be safe with them without information.
In 1819 the founding of the University of Virginia crowned Jefferson's efforts for education by the State. This institution, the Declaration of Independence, and the statute for religious freedom in Virginia stand to- day as the three enduring monuments to his memory. [14]
Other of the early American statesmen expressed similar views as to theimportance of general education by the State. John Jay, first ChiefJustice of the United States, in a letter to his friend, Dr. BenjaminRush, wrote:
I consider knowledge to be the soul of a Republic, and as the weak and the wicked are generally in alliance, as much care should be taken to diminish the number of the former as of the latter. Education is the way to do this, and nothing should be left undone to afford all ranks of people the means of obtaining a proper degree of it at a cheap and easy rate.
James Madison, fourth President of the United States, wrote:
A satisfactory plan for primary education is certainly a vital desideratum in our republics.
A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
John Adams, with true New England thoroughness, expressed the new motive for education still more forcibly when he wrote:
The instruction of the people in every kind of knowledge that can be of use to them in the practice of their moral duties as men, citizens, and Christians, and of their political and civil duties as members of society and freemen, ought to be the care of the public, and of all who have any share in the conduct of its affairs, in a manner that never yet has been practiced in any age or nation. The education here intended is not merely that of the children of the rich and noble, but of every rank and class of people, down to the lowest and poorest. It is not too much to say that schools for the education of all should be placed at convenient distances and maintained at the public expense. The revenues of the State would be applied infinitely better, more charitably, wisely, usefully, and therefore politically in this way than even in maintaining the poor. This would be the best way of preventing the existence of the poor….
Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.
Having founded, as Lincoln so well said later at Gettysburg, "on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," and having built a constitutional form of government based on that equality, it in time became evident to those who thought at all on the question that that liberty and political equality could not be preserved without the general education of all. A new motive for education was thus created and gradually formulated in the United States, as well as in revolutionary France, and the nature of the school instruction of the youth of the State came in time to be colored through and through by this new political motive. The necessary schools, though, did not come at once. On the contrary, the struggle to establish these necessary schools it will be our purpose to trace in subsequent chapters, but before doing so we wish first to point out how the rise of a political theory for education led to the development of a theory as to the nature of the educational process which exercised a far-reaching influence on all subsequent evolution of schools and teaching.
1. What do the proposals of La Chalotais, Rolland, and Turgot indicate as to the degree of unification of France attained by the time they wrote?
2. What new subjects did Diderot add to the religious elementary school of his time?
3. Show how the decline in efficiency of the Jesuits was a stimulating force for the evolution of a system of public instruction in France.
4. Show the statesman-like character of the proposals made in the legislative assemblies of France for the organization of national education.
5. Assuming that there had been enough funds to carry out the law (1793) of the Convention for primary instruction, what other difficulties would have been met that would have been hard to surmount?
6. Compare the Lakanal school with an American elementary school of a half-century ago.
7. Show that many of the important educational reforms of Napoleon were foreshadowed in the National Convention.
8. Was Napoleon right in his attitude toward education and schools?
9. Explain the lack of success of the revolutionary theorists in the establishment of a state system of education.
10. Explain why the breakdown of the old religious intolerance came earlier in the American Colonies than in the Old World.
11. Show the great value of the Laws of 1642 and 1647 in holding New England true to the maintenance of schools during the period of decline.
12. What might have been the result in America had the New England Colonies established the school as a parish institution, as did the central Colonies?
13. Analyze the Massachusetts constitutional provision for education, and show what it provided for.
14. Show the similarity of the University of the State of New York to the proposals for governmental control in France.
15. Explain why the French revolutionary ideas as to education were realized so easily in the new United States, whereas France did not realize them until well into the nineteenth century.
16. Compare Jefferson's proposed law with the proposals of Talleyrand for France.
17. Just what type of educational institutions did Washington have in mind in the quotation from his Farewell Address? John Jay? John Adams?
In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are reproduced:
254. Dabney: The Far-Reaching Influence of Rousseau's Writings.255. La Chalotais: Essay on National Education.256. Condorcet: Outline of a Plan for Organizing Public Instruction inFrance.257. Report: Founding of the Polytechnic School at Paris.258. Barnard: Work of the National Convention in France.(a) Various legislative proposals.(b) The Law of 1795 organizing Primary Instruction.259. American States: Early Constitutional Provisions relating toEducation.260. Ohio: Educational Provisions of First Constitution.261. Indiana: Educational Provisions of First Constitution.262. American States: Early School Legislation in.263. Jefferson: Plan for Organizing Education in Virginia.
1. Explain the conditions of society under which the emotional writings of a man of the type of Rousseau could have made such a deep impression (254) on the nation.
2. In how far do nations to-day accept the theories of La Chalotais (255)?
3. What type of administrative organization was proposed by Condorcet (256)?
4. What does the founding of the Polytechnic School (257) indicate as to the French interest in science?
5. What real progress was made by the National Convention (258 a), and to what degree did it fail? 6. Explain the type of school system proposed and the conception of education lying behind the early constitutional provisions (259) for education in each of the American States.
7. In what respects were the educational provisions of the first Ohio constitution (260) remarkable?
8. In what respects were the educational provisions of the first Indiana constitution (261) remarkable?
9. Characterize the early school legislation reproduced (262).
10. Just what type of educational system did Jefferson propose to organize in Virginia (263)?
Barnard, Henry.American Journal of Education, vol. 22, pp.651-64.Compayré, G.History of Pedagogy, chapters 15, 16, 17.Cubberley, E. P.Public Education in the United States, chapter3.
In chapters XVII and XVIII we traced the development of educational theory up to the point where John Locke left it after outlining his social and disciplinary theory for the educational process, and in the chapter preceding this one we traced the evolution of a new state theory as to the purpose of education to replace the old religious theory. The new theory as to state control, and the erection of a citizenship purpose for education, made it both possible and desirable that the instruction in the school, and particularly in the vernacular school, should be recast, both in method and content, to bring the school into harmony with the new secular purpose. In consequence, an important reorganization of the vernacular school now took place, and to this transformation of the elementary school we next turn.
ICONOCLASTIC NATURE OF THE WORK OF ROUSSEAU. The inspirer of the new theory as to the purpose of education was none other than the French-Swiss iconoclast and political writer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose work as a political theorist we have previously described. Happening to take up the educational problem as a phase of his activity against the political and social and ecclesiastical conditions of his age, drawing freely on Locke'sThoughtsfor ideas, and inspired by a feeling that so corrupt and debased was his age that if he rejected everything accepted by it and adopted the opposite he would reach the truth, Rousseau restated his political theories as to the control of man by society and his ideas as to a life according to "nature" in a book in which he described the education, from birth to manhood, of an imaginary boy, Émile, and his future wife, Sophie. In the first sentence of the book Rousseau sets forth his fundamental thesis:
All is good as it comes from the hand of the Creator; all degenerates under the hands of man. He forces one country to produce the fruits of another, one tree to bear that of another. He confounds climates, elements, and seasons; he mutilates his dog, his horse, his slave; turns everything topsy-turvy, disfigures everything. He will have nothing as nature made it, not even man himself; he must be trained like a managed horse, trimmed like a tree in a garden.
His book, published in 1762, in no sense outlined a workable system of education. Instead, in charming literary style, with much sophistry, many paradoxes, numerous irrelevant digressions upon topics having no relation to education, and in no systematic order, Rousseau presented his ideas as to the nature and purpose of education. Emphasizing the importance of the natural development of the child (R. 264 a), he contended that the three great teachers of man were nature, man, and experience, and that the second and third tended to destroy the value of the first (R. 264 b); that the child should be handled in a new way, and that the most important item in his training up to twelve years of age was to do nothing (R. 264 c, d) so that nature might develop his character properly (R. 264 e); and that from twelve to fifteen his education should be largely from things and nature, and not from books (R. 264 f). As the outcome of such an education Rousseau produced a boy who, from his point of view, would at eighteen still be natural (R. 264 g) and unspoiled by the social life about him, which, after all, he felt was soon to pass away (R. 264 i). The old religious instruction he would completely supersede (R. 264 h).
[Illustration: FIG. 163. THE ROUSSEAU MONUMENT AT GENEVA]
So depraved was the age, and so wretched were the educational practices of his time, that, in spite of the malevolent impulse which was his driving force, what he wrote actually contained many excellent ideas, pointed the way to better practices, and became an inspiration for others who, unlike Rousseau, were deeply interested in problems of education and child welfare. One cannot study Rousseau's writings as a whole, see him in his eighteenth-century setting, know of his personal life, and not feel that the far-reaching reforms produced by hisÉmileare among the strangest facts in history.
THE VALUABLE ELEMENTS IN ROUSSEAU'S WORK. Amid his glittering generalities and striking paradoxes Rousseau did, however, set forth certain important ideas as to the proper education of children. Popularizing the best ideas of the Englishman, Locke (p. 433), Rousseau may be said to have given currency to certain conceptions as to the education of children which, in the hands of others, brought about great educational changes. Briefly stated, these were:
1. The replacement of authority by reason and investigation.
2. That education should be adapted to the gradually unfolding capacities of the child.
3. That each age in the life of a child has activities which are normal to that age, and that education should seek for and follow these.
4. That physical activity and health are of first importance.
5. That education, and especially elementary education, should takeplace through the senses, rather than through the memory.
6. That the emphasis placed on the memory in education isfundamentally wrong, dwarfing the judgment and reason of the child.
7. That catechetical and Jesuitical types of education should beabandoned.
8. That the study of theological subtleties is unsuited to child needsor child capacity.
9. That the natural interests, curiosity, and activities of childrenshould be utilized in their education.
10. That the normal activities of children call for expression, andthat the best means of utilizing these activities are conversation,writing, drawing, music, and play.
11. That education should no longer be exclusively literary andlinguistic, but should be based on sense perception, expression,and reasoning.
12. That such education calls for instruction in the book of nature,with home geography and the investigation of elementary problems inscience occupying a prominent place.
13. That the child be taught rather than the subject-matter; life hererather than hereafter; and the development of reason rather thanthe loading of the memory, were the proper objects of education.
14. That a many-sided education is necessary to reveal childpossibilities; to correct the narrowing effect of specialized classeducation; and to prepare one for possible changes in fortune.
A new educational ideal presented. Rousseau'sÉmilepresented a new ideal in education. According to his conception it was debasing that man should be educated to behave correctly in an artificial society, to follow blindly the doctrines of a faith, or to be an obedient subject of a king. Instead he conceived the function of education to be to evolve the natural powers, cultivate the human side, unfold the inborn capacities of every human being, and to develop a reasoning individual, capable of intelligently directing his life under diverse conditions and in any form of society. A book setting forth such ideas naturally was revolutionary [1] in matters of education. It deeply influenced thinkers along these lines during the remaining years of the eighteenth century, and became the inspiring source of nineteenth-century reforms. As Rousseau'sSocial Contractbecame the political handbook of the French Revolutionists, so hisÉmilebecame the inspiration of a new theory as to the education of children.
Coming, as it did, at a time when political and ecclesiastical despotisms were fast breaking down in France, when new forces were striving for expression throughout Europe, and when new theories as to the functions of government were being set forth in the American Colonies and in France, it gave the needed inspiration for the evolution of a new theory of non- religious, universal, and democratic education which would prepare citizens for intelligent participation in the functions of a democratic State, and for a reorganization of the subject-matter of education itself. A new theory as to the educational purpose was soon to arise, and the whole nature of the educational process, in the hands of others, was soon to be transformed as a result of the fortunate conjunction of the iconoclastic and impractical discussion of education by Rousseau and the more practical work of English, French, and American political theorists and statesmen. Out of the fusing of these, modern educational theory arose.
INFLUENCE OF THEÉMILEIN GERMAN LANDS. TheÉmilewas widely read, not only in France, but throughout the continent of Europe as well. In German lands its publication coincided with the rising tide of nationalism—the "Period of Enlightenment"—and the book was warmly welcomed by such (then young) men as Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Richter, Fichte, and Kant. It presented a new ideal of education and a new ideal for humanity, and its ideas harmonized well with those of the newly created aristocracy of worth which the young German enthusiasts were busily engaged in proclaiming for their native land. The ideal of the perfected individual, strong in the consciousness of his powers, now found expression in the new "classics of individualism" which marked the outburst of the best that German literature has ever produced. As Paulsen [2] well says:
Rousseau exercised an immense influence on his times, and Germany was stirred perhaps even more deeply than France. In France Voltaire continued to be regarded as the great man of his time, whereas, in Germany, his place in the esteem of the younger generation had been taken by the enthusiast of Geneva. Kant, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, all of them were roused by Rousseau to the inmost depths of their natures. He gave utterance to the passionate longing of their souls: to do away with the imitation of French courtly culture, by which Nature was suppressed and perverted in every way, to do away with the established political and social order, based on court society and class distinctions, which was felt to be lowering to man in his quality as a reasonable being, and to return to Nature, to simple and unsophisticated habits of life, or rather to find a way through Nature to a better civilisation, which would restore the natural values of life to their rightful place and would be compatible with truth and virtue, sincerity and probity of character.
The great German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), was so deeply stirred by theÉmilethat the regularity of his daily walks and the clearness of his thinking were disturbed by it. Goethe called the book "the teacher's Gospel." Schiller praised Rousseau as "a new Socrates, who of Christians wished to make men." Herder acclaimed Rousseau as a German, and his "divine work" as his guide. Jean-Paul Richter confessed himself indebted to Rousseau for the best ideas in hisLevana. Lavater declared himself ready for a Reformation in education along the lines laid down by Rousseau.
[Illustration: FIG. 64. BASEDOW (1723-90)]
BASEDOW AND HIS WORK. Perhaps the most important practical influence exerted by theÉmilein German lands came in the work of Johann Bernard Basedow and his followers. Basedow was a North German who had been educated in theGymnasiumat Hamburg, had studied in the theological faculty at Leipzig, had been a tutor in a nobleman's family, and had been a teacher in aRitterakademiein Denmark and theGymnasiumat Altona. Deeply imbued with the new scientific spirit, in thorough revolt against the dominance of the Church in human lives, and incited to new efforts by his reading of theÉmile, Basedow thought out a plan for a reform school which should put many of Rousseau's ideas into practice. In 1768 he issued hisAddress to Philanthropists and Men of Property on Schools and Studies and their Influence on the Public Weal, in which he appealed for funds to enable him to open a school to try out his ideas, and to enable him to prepare a new type of textbooks for the use of schools. He proposed in this appeal to organize a school which should be non-sectarian, and also advocated the creation of a National Council of Education to have charge of all public instruction. These were essentially the ideas of the French political reformers of the time. The appeal was widely scattered, awakened much enthusiasm, and subscriptions to assist him poured in from many sources. [3]
In 1774 Basedow published two works of more than ordinary importance. The first, aBook of Method for Fathers and Mothers of Families and of Nations, was a book for adults, and outlined a plan of education for both boys and girls. The keynotes were "following nature," "impartial religious instruction," children to be dealt with as children, learning through the senses, language instruction by a natural method, and much study of natural objects. The ideas were a combination of those of Bacon, Comenius, and Rousseau. The second book, in four volumes, and containing one hundred copper-plate illustrations, was the famousElementary Work(Elementarwerk mit Kupfern) (R. 266), the first illustrated school textbook since theOrbis Pictus(1654) of Comenius. This work of Basedow's became, in German lands, theOrbis Pictusof the eighteenth century. By means of its "natural methods" (R. 265) children were to be taught to read, both the vernacular and Latin, more easily and in less time than had been done before, and in addition were to be given a knowledge of morals, commerce, scientific subjects, and social usages by "an incomparable method," founded on experience in teaching children. The book enjoyed a wide circulation among the middle and upper classes in German lands.
BASEDOW'SPHILANTHROPINUM. In 1774 Prince Leopold, of Dessau, a town in the duchy of Anhalt, in northern Germany, gave Basedow the use of two buildings and a garden, and twelve thousand thalers in money, with which to establish his long-heraldedPhilanthropinum, which was to be an educational institution of a new type. Great expectations were aroused, and a widespread interest in the new school awakened. Education according to nature, with a reformed, time-saving, natural method for the teaching of languages, were to be its central ideas. Children were to be treated as children, and not as adults. Powdered hair, gilded coats, swords, rouge, and hoops were to be discarded for short hair, clean faces, sailor jackets, and caps, while the natural plays of children and directed physical training were to be made a feature of the instruction. The languages were to be taught by conversational methods. Each child was to be taught a handicraft—turning, planing, and carpentering were provided— for both social and educational reasons. Instruction in real things— science, nature—was to take the place of instruction in words, and the vernacular was to be the language of instruction. The institution was to have the atmosphere of religion, but was not to be Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, or Jewish, and was to be free from "theologizing distinctions." Latin, German, French, mathematics, a knowledge of nature (geography, physics, natural history), music, dancing, drawing, and physical training were the principal subjects of instruction. The children were divided into four classes, and the instruction for each, with the textbooks to be used, was outlined (R. 265).
The school opened with Basedow and three assistants as teachers, and two of Basedow's children and twelve others as pupils. Later the school came to have many boarding pupils, drawn from as far-distant points as Riga and Spain. In 1776 a public examination was held, to which many distinguished men were invited, and the work which Basedow's methods could produce was exhibited. These methods seem to have been successful, judging from the rather full accounts which have been left us. [4] The school represented a new type of educational effort, and was frankly experimental in purpose. It was an attempt to apply, in practice, the main ideas of Rousseau'sÉmile. Basedow tried the plan of education outlined by Rousseau with his own daughter, whom he named Émilie.
As a promising experiment the school awakened widespread interest, and Basedow was supported by such thinkers of the time as Goethe and Kant. The year following the "Examination" Kant, then professor of philosophy at the University of Königsberg, contributed an article to theKönigsberg Gazetteexplaining the importance of the experiment Basedow was making. Still later, in his university lecturesOn Pedagogy, he further stated the importance of such a new experiment, in the following words:
It was imagined that experiments in education were not necessary; and that, whether any thing in it was good or bad, could be judged of by the reason. But this was a great mistake; experience shows very often that results are produced precisely the opposite to those which had been expected. We also see from experiment that one generation cannot work out a complete plan of education. The only experimental school which has made a beginning toward breaking the path was the Dessau institution. This praise must be given to it, in spite of the many faults which may be charged against it; faults which belong to all conclusions based upon such undertakings; and which make new experiments always necessary. It was the only school in which the teachers had the liberty to work after their own methods and plans, and where they stood in connection, not only with each other, but with men of learning throughout all Germany.
BASEDOW'S INFLUENCE, AND FOLLOWERS. Basedow, though, was an impractical theorist, boastful and quarrelsome, vulgar and coarse, given to drunkenness and intemperate speech, and fond of making claims for his work which the results did not justify. In a few years he had been displaced as director, and in 1793 thePhilanthropinumclosed its doors. The school, nevertheless, was a very important educational experiment, and Basedow's work for a time exerted a profound influence on German pedagogical thought. He may be said to have raised instruction in theRealienin German lands to a place of distinct importance, and to have given a turn to such instruction which it has ever since retained. [5] The methods of instruction, too, worked out in arithmetic, geography, geometry, natural history, physics, and history were in many ways as revolutionary as those evolved by Pestalozzi later on in Switzerland. In his emphasis on scientific subject-matter Basedow surpassed Pestalozzi, but Pestalozzi possessed a clearer, intuitive insight into the nature and purpose of the educational process. The work of the two men furnishes an interesting basis for comparison (R. 271), and the work of each gave added importance to that of the other.
From Dessau an interest in pedagogical ideas and experiments spread over Europe, and particularly over German lands. Other institutions, modeled after thePhilanthropinum, were founded in many places, and some of Basedow's followers [6] did as important work along certain lines as did Basedow himself. His followers were numerous, and of all degrees of worth. They urged acceptance of the new ideas of Rousseau as worked out and promulgated by Basedow; vigorously attacked the old schools, making converts here and there; and in a way helped to prepare northern German lands for the incoming, later, of the better-organized ideas of the German-Swiss reformer Pestalozzi, to whose work we next turn.
THE INSPIRATION OF PESTALOZZI. Among those most deeply influenced by Rousseau'sÉmilewas a young German-Swiss by the name of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who was born (1746) and brought up in the ancient city of Zurich. Inspired by Rousseau's writings he spent the early part of his life in trying to render service to the poor, and the latter part in working out for himself a theory and a method of instruction based on the natural development of the child. To Pestalozzi, more than to any one else, we owe the foundations of the modern secular vernacular elementary school, and in consequence his work is of commanding importance in the history of the development of educational practice.
Trying to educate his own child according to Rousseau's plan, he not only discovered its impracticability but also that the only way to improve on it was to study the children themselves. Accordingly he opened a school and home on his farm at Neuhof, in 1774. Here he took in fifty abandoned children, to whom he taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, gave them moral discourses, and trained them in gardening, farming, and cheese- making. It was an attempt to regenerate beggars by means of education, which Pestalozzi firmly believed could be done. At the end of two years he had spent all the money he and his wife possessed, and the school closed in failure—a blessing in disguise—though with Pestalozzi's faith in the power of education unshaken. Of this experiment he wrote: "For years I have lived in the midst of fifty little beggars, sharing in my poverty my bread with them, living like a beggar myself in order to teach beggars to live like men."
Turning next to writing, while continuing to farm, Pestalozzi now tried to express his faith in education in printed form. HisLeonard and Gertrude(1781) was a wonderfully beautiful story of Swiss peasant life, and of the genius and sympathy and love of a woman amid degrading surroundings. From a wretched place the village of Bonnal, under Pestalozzi's pen, was transformed by the power of education. [7] The book was a great success from the first, and for it Pestalozzi was made a "citizen" of the French Republic, along with Washington, Madison, Kosciusko, Wilberforce, and Tom Paine. He continued to farm and to think, though nearly starving, until 1798, when the opportunity for which he was really fitted came.
PESTALOZZI'S EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTS. In 1798 "The Helvetic Republic" was proclaimed, an event which divided Pestalozzi's life into two parts. Up to this time he had been interested wholly in the philanthropic aspect of education, believing that the poor could be regenerated through education and labor. From this time on he interested himself in the teaching aspect of the problem, in the working-out and formulation of a teaching method based on the natural development of the child, and in training others to teach. Much to the disgust of the authorities of the new Swiss Government, citizen Pestalozzi applied for service as a schoolteacher. The opportunity to render such service soon came.
That autumn the French troops invaded Switzerland, and, in putting down the stubborn resistance of the three German cantons, shot down a large number of the people. Orphans to the number of 169 were left in the little town of Stanz, and citizen Pestalozzi was given charge of them. For six months he was father, mother, teacher, and nurse. Then, worn out himself, the orphanage was changed into a hospital. A little later he became a schoolmaster in Burgdorf; was dismissed; became a teacher in another school; and finally, in 1800, opened a school himself in an old castle there. He now drew about him other teachers interested in improving instruction, and in consequence could specialize the work. He provided separate teachers for drawing and singing, geography and history, language and arithmetic, and gymnastics. The year following the school was enlarged into a teachers' training-school, the government extending him aid in return for giving Swiss teachers one month of training as teachers in his school. Here he wrote and publishedHow Gertrude teaches her Children, which explained his methods and forms his most important pedagogical work (R. 267); aGuide for teaching Spelling and Reading; and aBook for Mothers, devoted to a description of "object teaching." In 1803, the castle being needed by the government, Pestalozzi moved first to Munchenbuchsee, near Hofwyl, opening his Institute temporarily in an old convent there. For a few months, in 1804, he was associated with Emanuel von Fellenberg, at Hofwyl (p. 546), but in October, 1804, he moved to Yverdon, where he reëstablished the Institute, and where the next twenty years of his life were spent and his greatest success achieved.
[Illustration: FIG. 166. THE SCENE OF PESTALOZZI'S LABORS]
THE CONTRIBUTION OF PESTALOZZI. The great contribution of Pestalozzi lay in that, following the lead of Rousseau, he rejected the religious aim and the teaching of mere words and facts, which had characterized all elementary education up to near the close of the eighteenth century, and tried instead to reduce the educational process to a well-organized routine, based on the natural and orderly development of the instincts, capacities, and powers of the growing child. Taking Rousseau's idea of a return to nature, he tried to apply it to the education of children. This led to his rejection of what he called the "empty chattering of mere words" and "outward show" in the instruction in reading and the catechism, and the introduction in their place of real studies, based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning. "Sense impression" became his watchword. [8] As he expressed it, he "tried to organize and psychologize the educational process" by harmonizing it with the natural development of the child (R. 267). To this end he carefully studied children, and developed his methods experimentally as a result of his observation. To this end, both at Burgdorf and Yverdon, all results of preceding teachers and writers on education were rejected, for fear that error might creep in. Read nothing, discover everything, and prove all things, came to be the working guides of himself and his teachers.
The development of man he believed to be organic, and to proceed according to law. It was the work of the teacher to discover these laws of development and to assist nature in securing "a natural, symmetrical, and harmonious development" of all the "faculties" of the child. Real education must develop the child as a whole—mentally, physically, morally—and called for the training of the head and the hand and the heart. The only proper means for developing the powers of the child was use, and hence education must guide and stimulate self-activity, be based on intuition and exercise, and the sense impressions must be organized and directed. Education, too, if it is to follow the organic development of the child, must observe the proper progress of child development and be graded, so that each step of the process shall grow out of the preceding and grow into the following stage. To accomplish these ends the training must be all-round and harmonious; much liberty must be allowed the child in learning; education must proceed largely by doing instead of by words, the method of learning must be largely analytical; real objects and ideas must precede symbols and words; and, finally, the organization and correlation of what is learned must be looked after by the teacher.
[Illustration: PLATE II. JOHANN HEINRICH PESTALOZZI.]
Still more, Pestalozzi possessed a deep and abiding faith, new at the time, in the power of education as a means of regenerating society. He had begun his work by trying to "teach beggars to live like men," and his belief in the potency of education in working this transformation, so touchingly expressed in hisLeonard and Gertrude, never left him. He believed that each human being could be raised through the influence of education to the level of an intellectually free and morally independent life, and that every human being was entitled to the right to attain such freedom and independence. The way to this lay through the full use of his developing powers, under the guidance of a teacher, and not through a process of repeating words and learning by heart. Not only the intellectual qualities of perception, judgment, and reasoning need exercise, but the moral powers as well. To provide such exercise and direction was the work of the school.
Pestalozzi also resented the brutal discipline which for ages had characterized all school instruction, believed it by its very nature immoral, and tried to substitute for this a strict but loving discipline— a "thinking love," he calls it—and to make the school as nearly as possible like a gentle and refined home. To a Swiss father, who on visiting his school exclaimed, "Why, this is not a school, but a family," Pestalozzi answered that such a statement was the greatest praise he could have given him.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF THESE IDEAS. The educational consequences of these new ideas were very large. They in time gave aim and purpose to the elementary school of the nineteenth century, transforming it from an instrument of the Church for church ends, to an instrument of society to be used for its own regeneration and the advancement of the welfare of all. [9] The introduction of the study of natural objects in place of words, and much talking about what was seen and studied instead of parrot-like reproductions of the words of a book, revolutionized both the methods and the subject-matter of instruction in the developing elementary school. Observation and investigation tended to supersede mere memorizing; class discussion and thinking to supersede the reciting of the words of the book; thinking about what was being done to supersede routine learning; and class instruction to supersede the wasteful individual teaching which had for so long characterized all school work. It meant the reorganization of the work of the vernacular school on a modern basis, with class organization and group instruction, and a modern-world purpose (R. 269).
The work of Pestalozzi also meant the introduction of new subject-matter for instruction, the organization of new teaching subjects for the elementary school, and the redirection of the elementary education of children. Observation led to the development of elementary-science study, and the study of home geography; talking about what was observed led to the study of language usage, as distinct from the older study of grammar; and counting and measuring led to the study of number, and hence to a new type of primary arithmetic. The reading of the school also changed both in character and purpose. In other words, in place of an elementary education based on reading, a little writing and spelling, and the catechism, all of a memoriter type and with religious ends in view, a new primary school, essentially secular in character, was created by the work of Pestalozzi. This new school was based on the study of real objects, learning through sense impressions, the individual expression of ideas, child activity, and the development of the child's powers in an orderly way. In fact, "the development of the faculties" of the child became a by-word with Pestalozzi and his followers.
Pestalozzi's deep abiding faith in the power of education to regenerate society was highly influential in Switzerland, throughout western Europe, and later in America in showing how to deal with orphans, vagrants, and those suffering from physical defects or in need of reformation, by providing for such a combination of intellectual and industrial training.
THE SPREAD AND INFLUENCE OF PESTALOZZI'S WORK. So famous did the work of Pestalozzi become that his schools at Burgdorf and Yverdon came to be "show places," even in a land filled with natural wonders. Observers and students came from America (R. 268) and from all over Europe to see and to teach in his school, and draw inspiration from seeing his work (R. 270) and talking with him. [10] In particular the educators of Prussia were attracted by his work, and, earlier than other nations, saw the far- reaching significance of his discoveries. Herbart visited his school as early as 1799, when but a young man of twenty-three, and wrote a very sympathetic description of his new methods. Froebel spent the years 1808 to 1810 as a teacher at Yverdon, when he was a young man of twenty-six to eight. "It soon became evident to me," wrote Froebel, "that 'Pestalozzi' was to be the watchword of my life." The philosopher Fichte, whose Addresses (1807-08) on the condition of the German people (page 568), after their humiliating defeat by Napoleon, did much to reveal to Prussia the possibilities of national regeneration by means of education, had taught in Zurich, knew Pestalozzi, and afterward exploited his work and his ideas in Berlin. [11] As early as 1803 an envoy, sent by the Prussian King, [12] reported favorably on Pestalozzi's work, and in 1804 Pestalozzian methods were authorized for the primary schools of Prussia. In 1808 seventeen teachers were sent to Switzerland, at the expense of the Prussian Government, to spend three years in studying Pestalozzi's ideas and methods. On their return, these and others spread Pestalozzian ideas throughout Prussia. A pastor and teacher from Würtemberg, Karl August Zeller (1774-1847), came to Burgdorf in 1803 to study. In 1806 he opened a training-school for teachers in Zurich, and there worked out a plan of studies based on the work of Pestalozzi. This was printed and attracted much attention. In 1808 the King of Würtemberg listened to five lectures on Pestalozzian methods by Zeller, and invited him to a position as school inspector in his State. Before he had done but a few months' work he was called to Prussia, to organize a normal school and begin the introduction of Pestalozzian ideas there. From Prussia the ideas and methods of Pestalozzi gradually spread to the other German States.
Many Swiss teachers were trained by Pestalozzi, and these also helped to extend his work and ideas over Switzerland. Particularly in German Switzerland did his ideas take root and reorganize education. As a result modern systems of education made an early start in these cantons. One of Pestalozzi's earliest and most faithful teachers, Hermann Krüsi, became principal of the Swiss normal school at Gais, and trained teachers there in Pestalozzian methods. Zeller's pupils, too, did much to spread his influence among the Swiss. Pestalozzi's ideas were also carried to England, but in no such satisfactory manner as to the German States. Where German lands received both the method and the spirit, the English obtained largely the form. Later Pestalozzian ideas came to the United States, at first largely through English sources, and, after about 1860, resulted in a thoroughgoing reorganization of American elementary education.
After Pestalozzi's institution had become celebrated, and visitors and commissions from many countries had visited him and it, and after governments had vied with one another in introducing Pestalozzian methods and reforms, the vogue of the Pestalozzian ideas became very extended. Many excellent private schools were founded on the Pestalozzian model, while on the other hand self-styled Pestalozzian reformers sprang up on all sides. All this imitation was both natural and helpful; the foolishness and charlatanism in time disappeared, leaving a real advance in the educational conception.
THE MANUAL-LABOR SCHOOL OF FELLENBERG. Of the Swiss associates and followers of Pestalozzi one of the most influential was Phillip Emanuel von Fellenberg (1771-1844). The son of a Swiss official of high political and social position, possessed of wealth, having traveled extensively, Fellenberg, having become convinced that correct early education was the only means whereby the State might be elevated and the lot of man made better, resolved (1805) to devote his life and his fortune to the working- out of his ideas. For a short time associated with Pestalozzi, he soon withdrew and established, on his own estate, an Institution which later (1829) came to comprise the following:
1. A farm of about six hundred acres.
2. Workshops for manufacturing clothing and tools.
3. A printing and lithographing establishment.
4. A literary institution for the education of the well-to-do.
5. A lower orrealschool, which trained for handicrafts andmiddle-class occupations.
6. An agricultural school for the education of the poor as farmlaborers, and as teachers for the rural schools.
[Illustration: PLATE 12: FELLENBERG'S INSTITUTE AT HOFWYL. The first Agricultural and Mechanical College. This school contained the germ-idea of all our agricultural education.]
By 1810 the Institution had begun to attract attention, and soon pupils and visitors came from distant lands to study in and to examine the schools. The agricultural school in particular aroused interest. More than one hundred Reports (R. 272) were published, in Europe and America, on this very successful experiment in a combined intellectual and manual- labor type of education. Fellenberg died in 1844, and his family discontinued the school in 1848.
Fellenberg's work was a continuation of the social-regeneration conception of education held by Pestalozzi, and contained the germ-idea of all our agricultural and industrial education. His plan was widely copied in Switzerland, Germany, England, and the United States. It was well suited to the United States because of the very democratic conditions then prevailing among an agricultural people possessed of but little wealth. The plan of combining farming and schooling made for a time a strong appeal to Americans, and such schools were founded in many parts of the country. The idea at first was to unite training in agriculture with schooling, but it was soon extended to the rapidly rising mechanical pursuits as well. The plan, however, was rather short-lived in the United States, due to the rise of manufacturing and the opening of rich and cheap farms to the westward, and lasted with us scarcely two decades. A generation later it reappeared in the Central West in the form of a new demand for colleges to teach agricultural and mechanical arts, but with the manual-labor idea omitted. This we shall refer to again, later on (chapter xxix).
[Illustration: FIG. 167. FELLENBERG (1771-1844)]
SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS WORK. Though some form of parish school for the elements of religious instruction had existed in many places during the later Middle Ages, and foundations providing for some type of elementary instruction had appeared here and there in almost all lands, the elementary vernacular school, as we have previously pointed out, was nevertheless clearly the outcome of the Protestant movement in the sixteenth century, and in its origin was essentially a child of the Church. A child of the Church, too, for more than two centuries the elementary vernacular school remained. During these two centuries the elementary school made slow but rather unsatisfactory progress, due largely to there being no other motive for its maintenance or expansion than the original religious purpose. Only in the New England Colonies in North America, in some of the provinces of the Netherlands, and in a few of the German States had any real progress been made in evolving any different type of school out of this early religious creation, and even in these places the change was in form of control rather than in subject- matter or purpose. The school remained religious in purpose, even though its control was beginning to pass from the Church to the State.
Now, within half a century, beginning with the work of Rousseau (1762), and by means of the labors of the political philosophers of France, the Revolutionary leaders in the American Colonies, the legislative Assemblies and Conventions in France, and the experimental work of Basedow and his followers in German lands and of Pestalozzi and his disciples in Switzerland, the whole purpose and nature of the elementary vernacular school was changed. The American and French political revolutions and the more peaceful changes in England had ushered in new conceptions as to the nature and purpose and duties of government. As a consequence of these new ideas, education had come to be regarded in a new light, and to assume a new importance in the eyes of statesmen. In place of schools to serve religious and sectarian ends, and maintained as an adjunct of the parishes or of a State Church, the elementary vernacular school now came to be conceived of as an instrument of the State, the chief purpose of which was to serve state ends. Some time would, of course, be required to develop the state support necessary to effect the complete transformation in control, and the forces of reaction would naturally delay the process as much as possible, but the theory of state purpose had at last been so effectively proclaimed, and the forces of a modern world were pushing the idea so steadily forward, that it was only a question of time until the change would be effected.
A NEW IMPETUS FOR CHANGE IN CONTROL. Basedow and Pestalozzi, too, had given the movement for a transfer of control a new impetus by working out new methods in instruction and in organizing new subject-matter for the school, and methods and subject-matter which harmonized with the spirit and principles of the new democracy that had been proclaimed. Pestalozzi in particular had sought, guided by a clearer insight into the educational problem than Basedow possessed (R. 271), to create a school in which children might, under the wise guidance of the teacher, develop and strengthen their own "faculties" and thus evolve into reasoning, self- directing human beings, fitted for usefulness and service in a modern world. To make intelligent and reasoning individuals of all citizens, to develop moral and civic character, to train for life in organized society, and to serve as an instrument by means of which an ignorant, drunken, immoral, and shiftless working-class and peasantry might be elevated into men and women of character, intelligence, and directive power, was in Pestalozzi's conception the underlying meaning of the school. After Pestalozzi, the earlier conception as to the religious purpose of the elementary vernacular schools, by means of which children were to be trained almost exclusively "in the principles of our holy religion" and to become "loyal church members," and to "fit them for that station in life in which it hath pleased their Heavenly Father to place them," was doomed. In its stead there was certain to arise a newer conception of the school as an instrument of that form of organized society known as the State, and maintained by the State to train its future citizens for intelligent participation in the duties and obligations of citizenship, and for social, moral, and economic efficiency.
THE WAY NOW BECOMING CLEAR. After two hundred and fifty years of confusion and political failure, the way was now at last becoming clear for the creation of national instead of church systems of elementary education, and for the firm establishment of the elementary vernacular school as an important obligation to its future citizens of every progressive modern State and the common birthright of all. This became distinctively the work of the nineteenth century. It also became the work of the nineteenth century to gather up the old secondary-school and university foundations, accumulated through the ages, and remould them to meet modern needs, fuse them into the national school systems created, and connect them in some manner with the people's schools. To see how this was done we next turn to the beginnings of the organization of national school systems in the German States, France, Italy, England, and the United States. These may be taken as types. As Prussia was the first modern State to grasp the significance of national education, and to organize state schools, we shall begin our study by first tracing the steps by which this transformation was effected there.
1. Compare the statement of the valuable elements in the theories of Rousseau (p. 530) with the main ideas of Basedow (p. 535); Ratke (p. 607); Comenius (p. 409).