JOSEPH NEEF: A PESTALOZZIAN PIONEER. 373 

 JOSEPH NEEF: A PESTALOZZIAN PIONEER. 



By a. cabman. 



THE Hon. George S. Boutwell, in the November number of The 

 Popular Science Monthly, referred to a recent article by Prof. 

 W. W. Aber on the Oswego State Normal School, in which is 

 claimed for that school the credit of introducing into this country 

 the Pestalozzian system of teaching. The Oswego School was 

 founded in 1853, and Mr. Boutwell says that from about the year 

 1839 this "art of teaching was taught" in the Massachusetts State 

 Normal Schools. 



While the first schools for teachers of the Pestalozzian system 

 may have been in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania may yet claim the 

 credit of having the first Pestalozzian school for children in Amer- 

 ica. It was established in 1809 by Joseph Neef, at a spot then 

 called the Falls of the Schuylkill, some four miles from the old 

 city of Philadelphia, now part of Fairmount Park. 



Francis Joseph Nicholas Neef was born in Soultz, Alsace, 

 December 6, 1770. He was educated for the Roman Catholic 

 priesthood, but at the age of twenty- one, when about to take 

 orders, he gave up the idea of entering the Church, as not being 

 at all suited to his tastes. He entered the French army under 

 Napoleon, attaining high rank therein, and in the battle of Areola 

 was severely wounded in the head by a spent ounce ball, which 

 he carried to the day of his death, a period of over fifty years. 

 After leaving the army he became teacher of languages in Pesta- 

 lozzi's celebrated school at Burgdorf, Switzerland, where he re- 

 mained for some years, being then sent by Pestalozzi to Paris at 

 the request of a philanthropic society whose attention and interest 

 had been at tracted to the good work being done at Burgdorf. 



During Neef's stay in Paris, Mr. William Maclure, an Ameri- 

 can patron of education, science, and philanthropy, visited Pesta- 

 lozzi's school, which had by that time been moved to Yverdun. 

 Mr. Maclure was so favorably impressed by the rational methods 

 employed in this school that he conceived the generous idea of 

 establishing a similar institution near Philadelphia, where he was 

 then living. Pestalozzi recommended to him his former coadjutor, 

 Joseph Neef, as a man thoroughly imbued with his principles and 

 well fitted to introduce them into the Western world. Neef, when 

 approached on the subject, hesitated, for, though master of eight 

 languages, he was ignorant of the English. Persuaded, however, 

 that he could soon overcome this difficulty, he came to America, 

 and such was his success that within a year he published a work 

 of one hundred and sixty- eight pages in the English language, 

 with the following descriptive title : Sketch of a Plan and Method 



