EDUC 3102

19th period Historical Foundations

I will be discussing about the Historical Foundations in the 19th period
- Pestalozzi: General and Special Methods
- Froebel: The Kindergarten Movement
- Herbart: Moral and Intellectual Development
- Spencer: Utilitarian and Scientific Education

Pestalozzi: General and Special Methods

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Swiss social reformer and educator, is known as the Father of Modern
Education.
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi contributions are
(1) his educational philosophy and instructional method that encouraged harmonious intellectual,
moral, and physical development;
(2) his methodology of empirical sensory learning, especially through object lessons; and
(3) his use of activities, excursions, and nature studies that anticipated Progressive education.
Pestalozzi's method rested on two major premises:
(1) children need an emotionally secure environment as the setting for successful learning; and
(2) instruction should follow the generalized process of human conceptualization that begins with
sensation.
Emphasizing sensory learning, the special method used the Anschauung principle, a process that
involved forming clear concepts from sense impressions. Pestalozzi designed object lessons in which
children, guided by teachers, examined the form (shape), number (quantity and weight) of objects,
and named them after direct experience with them. Object teaching was the most popular and widely
adopted element of Pestalozzianism.
General method - called for educators who provided children with emotional security and affection.
Special Method - considered children’s auditory and visual senses. Pestalozzi devised the “object”
lesson, in which children studied common objects such as plants, rocks, and household objects.
Children would determine an object’s form, draw the object, and then name it.from these lessons in
form, number, and sound came more formal instruction in the three R’s.

Pestalozzi believed that education should develop the powers of ‘Head’, ‘Heart’ and ‘Hands’. He
believed that this would help create individuals who are capable of knowing what is right and what is
wrong and of acting according to this knowledge.
What is the contribution of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi to education?
Pestalozzi’s approach has had massive influence on education, for example, his influence, as well as
his relevance to education today, is clear in the importance now put on:

● The interests and needs of the child

● A child-centered rather than teacher-centered approach to teaching
● Active rather than passive participation in the learning experience
● The freedom of the child based on his or her natural development balanced with the self-discipline to
function well as an individual and in society
● The child having direct experience of the world and the use of natural objects in teaching
● The use of the senses in training pupils in observation and judgment
● Cooperation between the school and the home and between parents and teachers
● The importance of an all-round education – an education of the head, the heart and the hands, but which is led by
the heart
● The use of systemised subjects of instruction, which are also carefully graduated and illustrated
● Learning which is cross-curricular and includes a varied school life
● Education which puts emphasis on how things are taught as well as what is taught
● Authority based on love, not fear
● Teacher training

The foundation of his doctrine was that education should be organic, meaning that intellectual, moral,
and physical education (or, in his words, development of “head, heart, and body”) should be
integrated and that education should draw upon the faculties or “self-power” inherent in the human
being.
https://jhpestalozzi.org/
https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2319/Pestalozzi-Johann-1746-1827.html#:~:text=The%20
general%20method%20in%20which,clear%20concepts%20from%20sense%20impressions.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/Froebel-and-the-kindergarten-movement
Froebel: The Kindergarten Movement

Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852), a German educator, developed what he called “kindergarten”

(children’s garden).
A good way to begin to understand Froebel’s philosophy is to define the word, Kindergarten.
Kindergarten literally means Children’s Garden, which covers Froebel’s concept of “a place for
children” as well as his beliefs about child growth, development, and learning (Elkind, 2015).

● He focused on the 3- and 4-year-old children and believed that their school-
ing should be organized around play and individual and group interests and activities.
● Froebel encouraged a child-centered curriculum based (like Pestalozzi’s) on love, trust, and
freedom.
● Songs, stories, colorful materials, and games were part of the formal curriculum.
● The children could manipulate objects (spheres, cubes, and circles), shape and construct
materials (clay, sand,cardboard), and engage in playful activities (build castles and mountains,
run, and otherwise exercise).
The founder of the kindergarten movement believed that constructive play and self-activity is
important in early childhood.
He believed that “play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the
free expression of what is in the child’s soul.” According to Froebel, in play children construct their
understanding of the world through direct experience with it.

➔ Froebel put great emphasis on play in child education. Just like work and lessons, games or
play should serve to realize the child’s inner destiny. Games are not idle time wasting; they are
“the most important step in the development of a child,” and they are to be watched by the
teachers as clues to how the child is developing.
➔ Froebel was especially interested in the development of toys for children—what he called
“gifts,” devised to stimulate learning through well-directed play.
➔ These gifts, or playthings, included balls, globes, dice, cylinders, collapsible dice, shapes of
wood to be put together, paper to be folded, strips of paper, rods, beads, and buttons.
➔ The aim was to develop elemental judgment distinguishing form, color, separation and
association, grouping, matching, and so on. When, through the teacher’s guidance, the gifts
are properly experienced, they connect the natural inner unity of the child to the unity of all
things (e.g., the sphere gives the child a sense of unlimited continuity, the cylinder a sense
both of continuity and of limitation).
➔ Even the practice of sitting in a circle symbolizes the way in which each individual, while a
unity in himself, is a living part of a larger unity. The child is to feel that his nature is actually
joined with the larger nature of things.

Froebel stood for the socializing or educational idea of providing, as he put it in founding his
kindergarten, “a school for the psychological training of little children by means of play and
occupations.” The school, that is, was to have a purpose for the children, not the adults. The
curriculum consisted chiefly of three types of activities:

(1) playing with the “gifts,” or toys, and engaging in other occupations designed to familiarize children
with inanimate things,
(2) playing games and singing songs for the purpose not only of exercising the limbs and voice but
also of instilling a spirit of humanity and nature, and
(3) gardening and caring for animals in order to induce sympathy for plants and animals. All this was
to be systematic activity.

https://www.communityplaythings.com/resources/articles/2021/What-We-Can-Learn-from-Froebels-Ki
ndergartens
https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1999/Froebel-Friedrich-1782-1852.html
https://early-education.org.uk/friedrich-froebel/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/Froebel-and-the-kindergarten-movement
Herbart: Moral and Intellectual Development
Johann Herbart (1776–1841) was a German philosopher known for his contributions to moral
development in education and for his creation of a methodology of instruction designed to es-
tablish a highly structured mode of teaching.

The chief aim of education was moral development, which he considered to be basic and necessary
to all other educational goals or purposes.

The chief objective of Herbartian education was to produce a good person who had
many interests. Herbart argued that virtue is founded on knowledge and misconduct is the prod-
uct of inadequate knowledge or of inferior education. Thus, he gave education a vital role in
shaping moral character.

Herbart specified five major kinds of ideas as the foundation of moral character:
(1) the idea of inner freedom, which referred to action based on one’s personal convictions;
(2) the idea of perfection, which referred to the harmony and integration of behavior;
(3) the idea of benevolence, by which a person was to be concerned with the social welfare of others;
(4) the idea of justice, by which a person reconciled his or her individual behavior with that of the
social group; and
(5) the idea of retribution, which indicates that reward or punishment accrues to certain kinds of
behavior.

Drawing from his ideas on moral education, Herbart also specified two major bodies of
interests that should be included in education: knowledge interests and ethical interests.
● Knowledge interests involved empirical data, factual information, and speculative ideas, and
● Ethical interests included sympathy for others, social relationships, and religious sentiments.

- Herbart’s aim was to produce an educated individual who was also of good character and high
morals. He believed that if a person’s cognitive powers are properly exercised and his or her
mind is stocked with proper ideas, then the person will use that knowledge to guide his or her
behavior. The person who lives and acts according to knowledge will be a moral person.

Herbart developed the concepts of curriculum correlation

According to the doctrine of correlation, each subject should be taught in such a way that it refers to
and relates to other subjects. Knowledge would then appear to the learner as an
integrated system of ideas that form an apperceptive mass—the whole of a person’s previous
experience—into which new ideas could be related.
Herbart believed that the subjects of history, geography, and literature were ideally suited
as core subjects.

Herbart also developed four pedagogical principles that were accepted enthusiastically and
transformed into five steps by his followers; these became known as the Herbartian Method:
(1) preparation, by which the teacher stimulates the readiness of the learner for the new
lesson by referring to materials that were learned earlier;
(2) presentation, in which the teacher presents the new lesson to the students;
(3) association, in which the new lesson is deliberately related to the ideas or materials that students
studied earlier;
(4) systemization, which involves the use of examples to illustrate the principles or generalizations to
be mastered by the students;
and
(5) application, which involves the testing of new ideas or the materials of the new lesson to
determine if students have understood and mastered them.

Herbart’s formal steps of instruction were applied to teacher training as well as adopted by
classroom teachers. In theory, the teacher would prepare carefully by thinking of the five steps
and asking:
What do my students know?
What questions should I ask?
What events should I
relate?
What conclusions should be reached?
How can students apply what they have learned?

To a large extent, these principles still serve as the guidelines for today’s classroom lesson plan.
His five steps also form the basis of what today’s curriculum theorists would refer to as the
instructional or implementation phase of curriculum planning, or what the authors call curriculum
development.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Friedrich-Herbart
https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/Froebel-and-the-kindergarten-movement
Spencer: Utilitarian and Scientific Education
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) was an English social scientist who based his ideas of education
on Charles Darwin’s theory of biological evolution and subsequently introduced the notion of
“survival of the fittest.”
Spencer maintained that simple societies evolve to more complex social systems, characterized by
an increased variety of specialized professions and occupations.
Because of nature’s laws, only intelligent and productive populations adapt to environmental
changes. Less intelligent, weak, or lazy people slowly disappear. Spencer’s notions of excellence,
social-economic progress, and intellectual development based on heredity had immense
implications for education and economic outcomes.
Spencer criticized religious doctrines and classical subject matter as unscientific and un-
related to contemporary society.

He advocated a scientific and practical curriculum suited to industrialized society. Spencer believed
that traditional schools were impractical and ornamental, a luxury for the upper class that failed to
meet the needs of the people living in a modern society

Spencer constructed a curriculum aimed at advancing human survival and progress. His
curriculum included knowledge and activities (in order of importance) for sustaining life, earning
a living, rearing children properly, maintaining effective citizenship, and enjoying leisure time.

Educational program that would apply scientific knowledge and skills for an industrialized society
(such as the one we live in today).

Both John Dewey and Charles Judd were later influenced by Spencer’s thinking when they
formulated a science of education 25 years later based on the methods of hypothesizing, finding
facts, and making generalizations. Edward Thorndike, probably the best-known behavioral
psychologist of the early 20th century, was also influenced by Spencer’s scientific
theories—specifically, those involving Thorndike’s principles of learning and organization of
experiences.

In ``Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical'' (1860), he insisted that the answer to the question
“What knowledge is of most worth?” is the knowledge that the study of science provides.
While the educational methodology Spencer advocated was a version of the sense realism espoused
by reformers from Ratke and Comenius down to Pestalozzi, Spencer himself was a social
conservative. For him, the value of science lies not in its possibilities for making a better world but in
the ways science teaches man to adjust to an environment that is not susceptible to human
engineering. Spencer’s advocacy of the study of science was an inspiration to the American Edward
Livingston Youmans and others who argued that a scientific education could provide a culture for
modern times superior to that of classical education.

In his work "What Knowledge is of Most Worth?" Spencer stated that this question needed to be
answered before any curriculum was chosen or any instruction commenced. Once this question was
answered, it should be made certain that the curriculum aid in advancing survival and progress.

To achieve this advancement Spencer believed that there were five activities necessary in curriculum.
These activities assisted in self preservation, performance of occupations, child-rearing, social and
political participation, and recreation and leisure.

Once again, the main goal was to teach subjects that would contribute to successful living. Spencer's
ideas concerning curriculum were widely accepted in the United States where change was not
resisted.

https://www.slideshare.net/aslan102/herbert-spencercompleted
https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/Froebel-and-the-kindergarten-movement
https://www.studocu.com/row/document/moi-university/education/chapter-03-historical-foundations-of
-curriculum/7782448