International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1932)

538 Intuition is the foundation of all our knowledge ; and we must draw the necessary conclusion that correctness of intuition is the basis of correct judgment. " The defects of European education, or rather, the artifices that take the place of natural processes, have brought Europe to the point at which she now stands ; there is only one remedy for the moral, civil and religious depression which exists at present or which we have reason to expect in the future ; to lead back our artificial, empty and charlatan education to its beginnings, and recognize intuition as the foundation of all knowledge ; in other words, recognize that all our knowledge must start from intuition and be brought back to intuition ". The extract quoted confirms what we said above, namely, that Pestalozzi counted on the new educational method alone for the reform of society. The following extract is a further proof of Pestalozzi 's faith in the efficacy of the visual method. After declaring that " only those ideas whose clearness is not to be increased even by its own experience, are clear to a child ", he continues as follows : " In order to enrich the child's mind with clear ideas, we must take care to put before its eyes in every study such objects as possess in themselves the visible and distinct characteristic proper to the species to which they belong, and at the same time we must teach it to distinguish the essential from the accidental. " The " nihil admirari " that has hitherto been the privilege of the old and decrepit, is becoming the inheritance of childhood and innocence. "... The first instruction given to a child must not be addressed to either the intelligence or the reason, but to the heart and senses, and must come from the mother ". But Pestalozzi continues the same method in the later education. With the definite object of increasing the points of contact between education and observation and of taking the living experience of the child as the point of departure, he procures numberless engravings representing objects known or unknown to the scholar, making the lesson consist in the naming of the parts, the description of their forms, uses, etc. His, therefore, is the merit of having made the visual method the foundation of intuitive education. If this method, exaggerated or falsified by the master's followers, gave origin to that parody of the object lesson which, as practised by some, became but a mere source of boredom to the pupil, the responsibility cannot be laid to the charge of its creator, for the principle he laid down still preserves its unimpaired value, and long experience has genuinely proved that the ' lesson on things ", rationally understood and ably imparted, is more likely than any other to arouse the scholar's attention and at the same time develop his intellect, without either exhausting its virgin strength or leaving it to vegetate in culpable inactivity. The child, new to the world and dazzled by the splendour of the things that surround it, needs a wise and farseeing guide who, while stimulating its faith and enthusiasm, directs and, where necessary, modifies them ; and who, leading the child progressively and without effort to the observation of whatever appeals to its senses, makes of it an active and thinking being, conscious of its own dignity. It is to this end that the Pestalozzi method tends. And if its creator insists so urgently upon it, to a degree that might be thought exaggerated by a superficial observer* since the integral application of any method, however good, implies a false note of conventionalism in the educational process, whose dominant note should instead be spontaneity, we may answer the caviller with Sganzini's phrase : " Pestalozzi fostered this method in order to avoid any perversion of the educational task : mechanicalism, form