Letters of Pestalozzi on the Education of Infancy: Addressed to Mothers

Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich

Boston : Carter and Hendee, 1830

Octavo. viii, 51 pages 19 cm. Original boards, later cloth reback. Soiling and minor staining to boards. Contemporary signature of Mrs. Waldo T. Pierce, 1831. Occasional spotting, minor toning, marginal dampstain. Scattered pencil marginalia. A new translation of Pestalozzi's letters addressed to J.P. Greaves, omitting both the date and Greaves from the address. This American edition has 9 letters of the 34 contained in the 1827 English edition. 

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi was one of the greatest pioneers of modern education. The groundwork of his method of education has roots in Rousseau's "Social Contract" and "Emile." He created a new educational spirit, interest in education, and a new school atmosphere, namely, love for the children. Pestalozzian ideas were transplanted to America by one of Pestalozzi's assistants, the Alsatian Joseph Neef, who opened a school in Philadelphia in 1808, and later taught at New Harmony, Indiana. Certain Pestalozzian elements could be found among American progressive educators of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who, like Pestalozzi, opposed traditional schools' formalism and verbalism and emphasized children's interests and needs. Such educational emphases as the child-centered school, child permissiveness, and hands-on process learning had their origins with Pestalozzi. AI 3017; PMM 258