Three Great Teachers.

The three great educational reformers whose work had a bearing on the subject he was dealing with were Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel, and the period of these three men was about the time of the French Revolution. Rousseau, indeed, was a great factor in bringing about the Revolution. Pestalozzi was a contemporary of the Revolution and of Napoleon, and Froebers period came up to 1862. Rousseau's idea in connection with a boy's education was: "Exercise his body, his organs, his senses, his powers; but keep his mind passive as long as possible." Rousseau saw the essential truth that it was the worst thing in the world to force knowledge upon a child and stunt its proper natural development. Where he made the mistake was in thinking too exclusively that childhood was the sleep of reason, in ignoring the life of a child as an intellectual and moral being. His successor, Pestalozzi, was greatly influenced by him, but saw life through a different temperament. He, too, realised that a child had a right to live its life as a child, and that its learning should be developed from its natural tendencies. "You have no right," he said, "to take away from a child the divine right of finding things out." The teacher was to develop the pupil along the lines of his own natural being. Further Pestalozzi felt that family life supplied the true ideal for the bringing up of children. He treated them seriously, and held that the best national teaching could be evolved in association with the practical work of the country. Though a visionary, he was also a practical teacher, which Rousseau was not, and he aimed at developing the growing child all round in body, mind, and morals. The keynote of his own practice was intense earnestness and sympathy. He had immense difficulties to contend with in following his system in Switzerland. He had not only to teach the children, but to look after their physical needs; and he brought his pupils in six months to a physical condition that could not be compared with that in which he received them. Their mental and moral progress was almost as surprising, yet it was long before he was accorded any general recognition. Froebel spent a couple of years with Pestalozzi to fit himself for teaching. He realised that education should be more highly systematised. Froebel desired to bring about the evolution of perfect men and women, and his system for children was only a first stage in a broad scheme of education, which should be carried on throughout school life. But nowadays what was started in kindergarten was rarely carried out beyond the kindergarten period. After this comparatively short period of time spent in teaching the senses, and gradually developing the faculties of the 'child in their due order, the pupil was handed over to the tender mercies of school books, cram, and examination. This was quite contrary to Froebel's teaching and to that of Herbert Spencer, whose book on education said the first and last word on this point. Froebel's conception of the true aim of the educator—viz., that he should slowly bring out and develop in their due order and proportion all the latent powers and faculties of the pupil—physical, mental, and moral—is entirely opposed to our system of strenuous, compulsory cramming and examination, with rewards and temptations in the way of prizes, scholarships, displays, and public praise for the winners. Froebel aimed at making all forms of learning healthy and enjoyable for the pupil, basing his system on the fact that the normal exercise of every natural faculty is accompanied by pleasurable feelings. He always had in his mind's eve the natural growth and unfolding of a plant or flower, and his favorite saying was: "Give space and time and rest."