§ 53. In consequence of this report, Pestalozzi in June 1800 was made master of the second school of Burgdorf, a school numbering about 70 boys and girls from 10 to 16 years old. With them Pestalozzi did not get on so well. Ramsauer, a poor boy of 10 who afterwards helped Pestalozzi at Yverdun and became one of his best teachers, has left us his remembrances. Two things seemed clear to the child’s mind: 1st, that their teacher was very kind but very unhappy; 2nd, that the pupils did not learn anything and behaved very badly. Many schoolmasters have smiled in derision at this account of Pestalozzi’s actual teaching; but in reading it several things should be borne in mind. First Ramsauer as a child would have a keen eye and good memory for the master’s eccentricities; but how far the teaching succeeded he could not judge, for he did not know what it aimed at. Then again he saw that Pestalozzi’s zeal was for the whole school, not for individual scholars. But the child who knew of nothing beyond Burgdorf could not tell that Pestalozzi was thinking not so much of the children of Burgdorf as of the children of Europe. For Burgdorf—whether it was pleased to honour or to dismiss Pestalozzi—could not contain him. His aims extended beyond the town, beyond canton Bern, beyond Switzerland even; and he was consumed with zeal to bring about a radical change in elementary education throughout Europe. The truth which was burning within him he has himself expressed as follows: “If we desire to aid the poor man, the very lowest among the people, this can be done in one way only, that is, _by changing his schools into true places of education, in which the moral, intellectual, and physical powers which God has put into our nature may be drawn out_, so that the man may be enabled to live a life such as a man should live, contented in himself and satisfying other people. Thus and only thus does the man, whom in God’s wide world nobody helps and nobody can help, learn to help himself.” “The public common school-coach throughout Europe must not simply be better horsed, but still more it must be _turned round and be brought on to an entirely new road_.” (Quoted by Morf, P. I, p. 211.)