Education Philosophy

Although we lack accurate statistics about child mortality in the pre-

industrial period, we do have evidence that in the 1660s, the mortality
rate for children who died within 14 days of birth was as much as 30 per
cent. Nearly all families suffered some premature death. Since all parents
expected to bury some of their children, they found it difficult to invest in
their newborn children. Moreover, to protect themselves from the
emotional consequences of children’s death, parents avoided making any
emotional commitment to an infant. It is no wonder that we find mothers
leave their babies in gutters or refer to the death in the same paragraph
with reference to pickles.
The 18th century witnessed the transformation from an agrarian economy
to an industrial one, one of the vital social changes taking place in the
Western world. An increasing number of people moved from their
villages and small towns to big cities where life was quite different.
Social supports which had previously existed in smaller communities
were replaced by ruthless problems such as poverty, crime, substandard
housing and disease. Due to the need for additional income to support the
family, young children from the poorest families were forced into early
employment and thus their childhood became painfully short. Children as
young as 7 might be required to work full-time, subjected to unpleasant
and unhealthy circumstances, from factories to prostitution. Although
such a role has disappeared in most wealthy countries, the practice of
childhood employment still remains a staple in underdeveloped countries
and rarely disappeared entirely.
The lives of children underwent a drastic change during the 1800s in the
United States. Previously, children from both rural and urban families
were expected to participate in everyday labour due to the bulk of manual
hard working. Nevertheless, thanks to the technological advances of the
mid-1800s, coupled with the rise of the middle class and redefinition of
roles of family members, work and home became less synonymous over
time. People began to purchase toys and books for their children. When
the country depended more upon machines, children in rural and urban
areas, were less likely to be required to work at home. Beginning from
the Industrial Revolution and rising slowly over the course of the 19th
century, this trend increased exponentially after civil war. John Locke,
one of the most influential writers of his period, created the first clear and
comprehensive statement of the ‘environmental position’ that family
education determines a child’s life, and via this, he became the father of
modem learning theory. During the colonial period, his teachings about
childcare gained a lot of recognition in America.
According to Jean Jacques Rousseau, who lived in an era of the American
and French Revolution, people were ‘noble savages’ in the original state
of nature, meaning they are innocent, free and uncorrupted. In 1762,
Rousseau wrote a famous novel Emile to convey his educational
philosophy through a story of a boy’s education from infancy to adult-
hood. This work was based on his extensive observation of children and
adolescents, their individuality, his developmental theory and on the
memories of his own childhood. He contrasts children with adults and
describes their age-specific characteristics in terms of historical
perspective and developmental psychology. Johan Heinrich Pestalozzi,
living during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, sought to
develop schools to nurture children’s all-round development. He agreed
with Rousseau that humans are naturally good but were spoiled by a
corrupt society. His approach to teaching consists of the general and
special methods, and his theory was based upon establishing an
emotionally healthy homelike learning environment, which had to be in
place before more specific instructions occurred.
One of the best-documented cases of Pestalozzi’s theory concerned a so-
called feral child named Victor, who was captured in a small town in the
south of France in 1800. Prepubescent, mute, naked, and perhaps 11 or 12
years old, Victor had been seen foraging for food in the gardens of the
locals in the area and sometimes accepted people’s direct offers of food
before his final capture. Eventually, he was brought to Paris and expected
to answer some profound questions about the nature of human, but that
goal was quashed very soon. A young physician Jean Marc Gaspard Itard
was optimistic about the future of Victor and initiated a five-year
education plan to civilise him and teach him to speak. With a subsidy
from the government, Itard recruited a local woman Madame Guerin to
assist him to provide a semblance of a home for Victor, and he spent an
enormous amount of time and effort working with Victor. Itard’s goal to
teach Victor the basics of speech could never be fully achieved, but
Victor had learnt some elementary forms of communication.
Although other educators were beginning to recognise the simple truth
embedded in Rousseau’s philosophy, it is not enough to identify the
stages of children’s development alone. There must be certain education
which had to be geared towards those stages. One of the early examples
was the invention of kindergarten, which was a word and a movement
created by a German-born educator, Friedrich Froebel in 1840. Froebel
placed a high value on the importance of play in children’s learning. His
invention would spread around the world eventually in a verity of forms.
Froebel’s ideas were inspired through his cooperation with Johann
Heinrich Pestalozzi. Froebel didn’t introduce the notion of kindergarten
until 58 years old, and he had been a teacher for four decades. The notion
was a haven and a preparation for children who were about to enter the
regimented educational system. The use of guided or structured play was
a cornerstone of his kindergarten education because he believed that play
was the most significant aspect of development at this time of life. Play
served as a mechanism for a child to grow emotionally and to achieve a
sense of self-worth. Meanwhile, teachers served to organize materials and
a structured environment in which each child, as an individual, could
achieve these goals. When Froebel died in 1852, dozens of kindergartens
had been created in Germany. Kindergartens began to increase in Europe,
and the movement eventually reached and flourished in the United States
in the 20th century.
THE END