Essays on Educational ReformersQuick, Robert Hebert
History
Essays on Educational Reformers
Quick, Robert Hebert
Education -- History; Educators
Again he says (and I quote at length on the point, as it is indeed the
key to Pestalozzianism), “Why have I insisted so strongly on attention to
early physical and intellectual education? Because I consider these as
merely leading to a higher aim, to qualify the human being for the free
and full use of all the faculties implanted by the Creator, and to direct
all these faculties towards the perfection of the whole being of man,
that he may be enabled to act in his peculiar station as an instrument
of that All-wise and Almighty Power that has called him into life” (To
Greaves, p. 160).
§ 86. Believing in this high aim of education, Pestalozzi required a
proper early training for all alike. “Every human being,” said he, “has
a claim to a judicious development of his faculties by those to whom the
care of his infancy is confided” (_Ib._ p. 163).
§ 87. Pestalozzi therefore most earnestly addressed himself to mothers,
to convince them of the power placed in their hands, and to teach them
how to use it. “The mother is qualified, and qualified by the Creator
Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child;
... and what is demanded of her is—a _thinking love_.... God has given to
thy child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point remains
undecided—how shall this heart, this head, these hands, be employed? to
whose service shall they be dedicated? A question the answer to which
involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee....
It is recorded that God opened the heavens to the patriarch of old, and
showed him a ladder leading thither. This ladder is let down to every
descendant of Adam; it is offered to thy child. But he must be taught
to climb it. And let him not attempt it by the cold calculations of the
head, or the mere impulse of the heart; but let all these powers combine,
and the noble enterprise will be crowned with success. These powers are
already bestowed on him, but to thee it is given to assist in calling
them forth” (To Greaves, p. 21). “Maternal love is the first agent in
education.... Through it the child is led to love and trust his Creator
and his Redeemer.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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