398 



EDUCATION". 



a royal road to learning, and the extravagant 

 encomiums which have been passed upon the 

 method of teaching by object lessons, may 

 possibly, fifty years hence, excite as much 

 amusement among the promoters of education 

 of that time as Governor Clinton's eulogy on 

 honest Joseph Lancaster's system does in our 

 minds at the present day. Still, a notice is due 

 to a system which so many eminent teachers 

 unite in approving. 



" Object teaching," though a novelty m its 

 introduction into the primary schools, is by 

 no means a new thing in the history of edu- 

 cation. Something of the kind may be traced 

 in Egyptian and Spartan education. In 

 times comparatively modern, however, the 

 system found a nearly complete development in 

 the methods of two eminent teachers and 

 writers on education of the seventeenth cen- 

 turyWolfgang Ratich (1571-1635) and John 

 Amos Comenius (1592-1671) and both were 

 indebted, partially at least, to Lord Bacon's 

 " Instauratio Magna " for the first conception 

 of the system. Ratich required the reading 

 over of the lesson to the child by the teacher 

 many times, accompanied each time by expla- 

 nations and illustrations, in order to fix the 

 phrases and the ideas together in his memory. 

 In practice this proved so wearisome to both 

 teacher and child that it was soon abandoned. 

 Comenius was a man of far more practical char- 

 acter. He had early noticed the advantage of 

 presenting to the mind of the child either the 

 object concerning which he wished to instruct 

 him or some representation of it, and the hon- 

 or belongs to him of having been the first to 

 prepare for the use of children a pictorial text 

 book. This work (the " Orbis Sensualium Pic- 

 tus," 1657) was not, like some of the illus- 

 trated school books at the present day, filled 

 with pictures of battles or occurrences of his- 

 tory, but was a true cyclopaedia of nature, fully 

 illustrating, in a popular way, the natural 

 science of the time, and his " Methodus Novis- 

 shna," written as a guide to teachers in his new 

 method of instruction, contains so much that 

 is analogous to the "Manuals of Object Teach- 

 ing" that it is difficult to believe that it was 

 written two centuries ago. The following are 

 a few passages taken from Hoole's transla- 

 tion of the works of Comenius, published in 

 London in 1658: 



The ground of this business is that sensual objects 

 may be rightly presented to the senses, for fear they 

 may not be received. I say, and say it again aloud, 

 that this last is the foundation of all the rest. Now, 

 there is nothing in the understanding which was not 

 before in the sense; and, therefore, to exercise the 

 senses well about perceiving the difference of things, 

 will be to lay the grounds for all wisdom and all wise 

 discourse ; which, because it is commonly neglected in 

 schools, and the things which are to be learned are of- 

 fered to scholars without being understood, or being 

 rightly presented to the senses, it cometh to pass that 

 the work of teaching and learning goeth heavily on- 

 ward, and affordeth little benefit. 



Descend to the very bottom of what is taught, and 

 proceed as nature herself doth, in an orderly way, 

 nrst to exercise the senses well, by representing their 



objects to them, and then to fasten upon the intellect, 

 by impressing the first notions of things upon it, and 

 linking them one to another by a rational discourse. 

 Missing this way, we do teach children as we do par- 

 rots, to speak they know not what. 



Since some things cannot be pictured out with ink, 

 for this reason it were to be wisned that things rare, 

 and not asy to be met with withal at home might be 

 kept ready in every great school, that they may be 

 showed also as often as any words are to be made 

 of them to the scholars. Thus, at least, this school 

 would indeed become a school of things obvious to the 

 senses, and an entrance to the school intellectual. 



Pictures are the representations of all visible things 

 of the whole world. Such a dress may entice witty 

 children that they may not conceit (conceive it) to be 

 a torment to be in the" school. For it is apparent that 

 children, even from their infancy almost, are delighted 

 with pictures. And it will be very well worth the 

 pains to have brought to pass that scarecrows may 

 be taken away out of wisdom's gardens. 



The good bishop goes on to explain the use 

 and necessity of the blackboard, which he il- 

 lustrates by a picture of that useful adjunct for 

 illustration, explains the phonic method of 

 teaching children to read, and inculcates the 

 necessity of sympathy with the children, the 

 necessity of evolving rules from illustrations, 

 and, above all, the entire dependence of the 

 teacher upon God's blessing for success in teach- 

 ing. This " Orbis Sensualium Pictus," revised 

 and modernized occasionally, was largely used 

 as a text book in the schools of Germany till the 

 close of the first third of the present century. In 

 the next century, object teaching was again re- 

 vived as a method of instruction, through the 

 writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau, and the 

 establishment of the " Philanthropinum" by 

 John Bernhard Basedow (1723-1790). Base- 

 dow's "Elementary Book of Human Knowl- 

 edge" (Elementar WerTt) was in four volumes, 

 with 100 plates, and its plan comprised 1st, ele- 

 mentary instruction in words and things ; 2d, 

 a method of teaching children to read without 

 weariness or loss of time (this was essentially 

 a phonic method) ; 3d, natural knowledge ; 4th, 

 knowledge of morals, the mind and reasoning ; 

 5th, natural religion ; 6th, a knowledge of social 

 duties, commerce, &c. Basedow himself was a 

 man of small culture, violent temper, and coarse 

 manners, and in the latter part of his life grossly 

 intemperate ; but some of his assistants, among 

 whom were Wolke, Campe, andSalzman, taught 

 successfully, on his system, and the school at 

 Schnepfenthal, founded by Salzman in 1784, is 

 still in existence. 



The advocates of the method of object teach- 

 ing now in vogue, profess to regard Pestalozzi 

 (1746-1827) as the originator of the system. It 

 seems, however, that most of the principles of 

 their system had been set forth and developed 

 by Comenius, and that Pestalozzi, in so far as 

 he advocated what is to-day known as " object 

 teaching," was but reiterating the system of 

 Comenius. Pestalozzi, though a humane and 

 generous man, had little originality, a meagre 

 and desultory education, and no tact. For a 

 few years past there has been attributed to him 

 the origination of theories and systems of edu- 

 cation which he would have been the last to 



