er. But he made the mistake of saying that teaching should be
taken out of the hands and homes of the clergy, and then the clergy said
a few things about him.

Pestalozzi at first met with very meager encouragement. Only poor and
ignorant people entrusted their children to his care, and some of the
parents were actually paid in money for the services of the children.
The thought that the children were getting an education and being useful
at the same time was quite beyond their comprehension.

Pestalozzi educated by stealth. At first he took several boys and girls
of eight, ten or twelve years of age, and had them work with him in his
garden. They cared for fowls, looked after the sheep, milked the cows.
The master worked with them, and as they worked they talked. Going to
and from their duties, Pestalozzi would call their attention to the
wild birds, and to the flowers, plants and weeds. They would draw
pictures of things, make collections of leaves and flowers, and keep a
record of their observations and discoveries. Through keeping these
records they learned to read and write and acquired the use of simple
mathematics. Things they did not understand they would read about in the
books found in the teacher's library. But books were secondary and quite
incidental in the scheme of study. When work seemed to become irksome
they would all stop and play games. At other times they would sit and
just talk about what their work happened to suggest. If the weather was
unpleasant, there was a shop where they made hoes and rakes and other
tools they needed. They also built bird-houses, and made simple pieces
of furniture, so all the pupils, girls and boys, became more or less
familiar with carpenter's and blacksmith's tools. They patched their
shoes, mended their clothing, and at times prepared their own food.

Pestalozzi found that the number of pupils he could look after in this
way was not more than ten. But to his own satisfaction, at least, he
proved that children taught by his method surpassed those who were given
the regular set courses of instruction. His chief difficulties lay in
the fact that the home did not co-operate with the school, and that
there was always a tendency to "return to the blanket."

Pestalozzi wrote accounts of his experiments and emphasized his belief
that we should educate through the child's natural activities; also that
all growth should be pleasurable. His shibboleth was, "From within,
out." H