Pestalozzi’s Pedagogical Thought
Pestalozzi’s pedagogical thinking is considered a reference in modern popular pedagogy. Born in Zurich on January 12, 1746, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi was an influential pedagogue and educator who believed that solutions to the contradictions and poverty in society could be addressed with a good education.
Pestalozzi’s pedagogical thinking was developed in the context of a cultural and intellectual movement that took place in the 18th century, mainly in Europe, known as the ‘Enlightenment’.
This movement aimed to demonstrate that human reason and knowledge could combat ignorance and achieve a better world, thus inspiring profound social and cultural changes, such as the French Revolution.
Pestalozzi’s pedagogical thinking, his origins and early experiences
His first teaching experience began on a farm near the canton of Aargau (Switzerland) in 1975, which he would call Neuhof (New Farm). On this farm, he taught poor children and orphans to work with yarn and cotton weaving, in a context marked by the economic and social crisis in Europe.
Pestalozzi ended his experience at Neuhof when he recognized the mistake he had made in introducing children to the productive world.
He then began dedicating himself to the literary world, under the influence of the ideas of the Enlightenment movement. He was inspired by one of the movement’s main representatives, Jean Jacques Rousseau, thus publishing one of his most important works, Leonardo and Gertrude, A Book for the People (1781).
He later moved to Stans (Switzerland) to care for children orphaned by war, and that’s where his educational theory of “intuition” emerged, later creating a school for training educators under the principles. fundamentals of your method.
This method is included in some of his following works: Pestalozzi Method (1800), How Gertrude Teach Her Children (1801) – a work in which he extols the educational work of mothers – and ABC of intuition (1803).
Finally, in Yverdon (Switzerland), in 1805, he established an educational institute as a boarding school for the preparation of teaching. In it, the Pestalozzian principles that defined a renewing spirit of education were applied and whose success attracted students from different countries.
Central ideas of Pestalozzi’s pedagogical thinking
Pedagogical principles of your method
- It develops a scientific method for early childhood education that argues that education does not take place spontaneously, but rather requires outside help. This help should allow children to use their intuitive senses and faculties to see the world.
- For this, we must proceed in a natural and intuitive way, following and respecting the proper course of child development.
- It defends the need for education in the family environment, entrusting this responsibility to mothers. Furthermore, it raises the need for the education of these mothers as an instrument to improve early childhood education.
- He argued that they should be a first affective contact that should be continued later in school, through the children’s affective bonds with their peers.
- He was an advocate of co-education, that is, of mixed education. In addition, he advocated the teaching of morals and religion, but this should start in the family environment and then continue in school.
- It develops an education based on the acquisition of knowledge through constant interaction with the environment. This indicates that it places practice and experience in opposition to a theoretical education based only on books.
- He defended the existence and need to create institutions for children without financial resources.
Didactic principles of your method
- Teach numbers based on the children’s prior knowledge, starting from the simplest to the most complex.
- Use of concrete materials so that children can practice the exercises, such as tables with numbers.
- Language teaching starting from the sound of words and their union in sentences. Later, little by little, new vocabularies would be introduced, making it possible for children to exercise with simple conversations.
- Language reinforced through reading and writing.
- It developed the children’s memory through simple explanations of objects and materials, prioritizing descriptions to work on their perception.
- It made children practice drawing as a way to learn to measure and reproduce the objects around them. In addition, he also stated that drawing exercised the movement of the hand, thus forming the basis for writing.
- Used physical education, influencing body resistance.
Final considerations
Like other great pedagogues and thinkers of his time, Pestalozzi’s pedagogical thinking represented a great advance in relation to the concept of childhood.
Pestalozzi considered childhood to be a stage with an identity of its own, in which the child was not a passive subject to whom knowledge should be provided.
This pedagogue helped to strengthen the idea that it is children who, with the mediation of adults, should be able, by themselves, to discover the world and, thus, learn to think about it.
