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Chapter 8

EUROPEAN ORIGINS OF

MODERN CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

THE ENuGHrENMENT IS DESIGNATED AS 1HE period between the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and the French Revolution in 1789. This era was characterized by a continuation of Reformation humanism, whereby man was put at the center of the universe and allowed to be the supreme artisan of his destiny. It is marked by an emphasis upon the concepts of reason, science, progress, personal happiness, scientific inquiry, and the endowed rights of all mankind. Whereas the philoso- phies intrinsic to the Middle Ages were predicated upon the works of Aristotle and Aquinas's integration of theology and philosophy (faith and reason), the Enlightenment brought about a separation of these entities.

The worldview of the Middle Ages, the Medieval synthesis, rested on a dualistic conception of reality in which the natural order was viewed as somewhat inferior to the supernatural. The Reformation saw a reawakening of human interest in the awe of the supernatural order. The Enlightenment era saw theorists looking to nature to find clues on how life should be lived. Education was important in that, in the minds of the Enlightenment philosophes (philosophers), it prepared people to live according to the principles of nature. 1

1. Gerald L. Gutek, Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Education: A Bio- graphical Introduction (Upper Saddle River, NJ.: Merrill Prentice-Hall, 2001), 110.

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Anthony, Michael J., and Warren S. Benson. Exploring the History and Philosophy of Christian Education : Principles for the 21st Century, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/amridge/detail.action?docID=6339650. Created from amridge on 2022-01-20 16:35:25.

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The theme of the Reformation was developing a new paradigm for think- ing about God's relationship with His creation. No longer limited by the dysfunctional theology of unregenerate clergy, constricted by multiple layers of bureaucratic ecclesiastical hierarchy, or confined by the bonds of tradi- tion, the reformed church was free to enjoy a relationship with God typified by renewed vigor and vitality. The Enlightenment took this freedom one step further; it encouraged man to explore the world apart from God.

For many of the thinkers of the Enlightenment ... it was important that human beings stopped gazing upward to heaven and begin look- ing at the natural world about them. They should observe and study natural phenomena and from their observations extract the prin- ciples needed to operate in the "real world." The principles of the natural universe could be discovered, the Enlightenment theorists believed, by means of science and use of the scientific method. 2

Newfound freedoms to think and act according to one's personal beliefs, as opposed to the prescribed expectations of the church, created an environ- ment ripe for new discoveries about the universe. Man was free to ask ques- tions that a few years earlier would have been used against him in a court of inquisition. All across Europe, men were testing new hypotheses about how things worked, how to make society better, and whether the church played a necessary role in the shaping of government and culture.

EUROPEAN CULTURAL CONTEXT OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Disillusioned by a thousand years of religious intolerance and man-cen- tered ecclesiastical institutionalism, society was left with two choices: reform the church with a focus on returning to the efficacy of the New Testament model (the intent of the Reformation theologians), or reject God altogether and establish a new worldview totally devoid of God ( the intent of the Enlightenment philosophes). Indicative of this attitude, the Enlightenment philosophe Voltaire stated in Candide, "Let's eat some Jesuit." Although to state that all Enlightenment philosophes were atheists would be incorrect, their perspective would be more accurately described as agnostic. They be- lieved in a higher power or universal force of some kind, but, they viewed

2. Ibid.

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this force as unknowable and impersonal. To them, whoever (or whatever) created the universe got the whole thing started and then simply left it to its own devices.

Enlightenment thinkers preferred the world of facts. Facts were drawn from observable behavior that could be tested and measured in controlled environments. The scientific method that we take for granted in our schools and laboratories today had its beginnings in this period. "In their investiga- tions of the natural world, the philosophes were vitally preoccupied in col- lecting scientific information about the world. Their enthusiasm for scientific research led them to develop such natural sciences as geology, chemistry, botany, zoology, and physics."3

The Enlightenment had profound sociological implications for countries all across the European continent. It threatened the monarchial reigns of national governments with its emphasis on free thinking. "Voltaire and Hume saw an intimate relation between politics, commerce, and religion. Freedom of trade and freedom of opinion, they said, were inextricably linked with civil freedom, and religious tolerance appeared to be linked to commercial prosperity." 4 These new ways of thinking influenced not only the European continent but also many of the Founding Fathers of the American Revolu- tion. We will return to this theme in chapter 10, our discussion of "Christian Education in Colonial America."

The Enlightenment offered a serious challenge to the theologians and Christian educators of its day as well. The Enlightenment philosophes were highly critical of the established church. By proposing that knowledge came from the senses, experience, reason, and feelings rather than from history, tradition, or a universal authority, the Enlightenment thinkers tended to un- dermine the theological and philosophical presuppositions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Christians. The response of many of those believers was to become overly defensive and argumentative. The Roman Catholic Church became particularly embroiled in debate with these philosophes and issued numerous declarations and condemnations of Enlightenment writ- ings. Eventually, however, the smoke cleared, and the church was able to look for the kernel of truth in their criticisms. In time, Christian scholars and church educators accepted some of the educational theories and practices of the Enlightenment thinkers. The most renowned of these pre-Enlightenment

3. Ibid., 151. 4. Peter Gay, Age of Enlightenment (New York: Time, 1966), 103.

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and Enlightenment thinkers included the French philosophes Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau; the English scholars Newton, Locke, and Hobbes; the German philosophers Kant and Lessing; the Scottish philosopher David Hume; and, in the United States, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.5

Time and space will not allow a detailed examination of each of these indi- viduals, but a brief overview of the most predominant philosophers will provide the reader a general feeling of what the Enlightenment period was all about. We will consider them in chronological order (as opposed to geographic proximity) to illustrate how the thoughts and impressions of one influenced those who came later.

5. John L. Elias, A History of Christian Education: Protestant, Catholic, and Or- thodox Perspectives (Malabar, Fla.: Krieger, 2002), 127-28.

6. These terms have been defined in countless philosophy texts. Some of these specific definitions have been extrapolated from a variety of sources. Included among them are the following: James M. Baldwin, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1957); Nicholas Horvath, Essentials of Philosophy (Woodbury: Barron's Educational Series, 1974); Jack Terry, Edu- cational Philosophy (Dallas: Maple Springs, 1982); and Warren Young, A Chris- tian Approach to Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1954).

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7. The concept of realism has undergone conceptual changes over the centuries. For example, Platonic or conceptual realism is actually closer to modern ideal- ism than to modern realism. It assumes that the "real" is the permanent or unchanging. See Harold H. Titus, Living Issues in Philosophy (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970), 243.

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EUROPEAN ENLIGHTENMENT PHILOSOPHERS

In England, the transition from respect for religion to skepticism began with a group of Cambridge Platonists. In response to the contentious bicker- ing of various denominational sects that had developed (e.g., Waldensians, Hussites, Lollards, Albigensians, Puritans, and Anabaptists), they proposed to reduce the essential teachings of Christianity to its basic fundamentals. According to these rationalists, Christianity was essentially the practice of reason, the demonstration of virtue, and mystical contemplation. Reason and faith were not seen as contradictory but rather complementary. Reason was viewed as the road to faith; faith enhanced reason. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, this rationalist theology was continued by a larger community known as Latitudinarians. Some of the most prominent British clergymen of that time were associated with this movement. Latitudinarians denounced the use of unbridled emotion, which was being advocated by revivalist preachers. Instead, they espoused and defended the use of reason. They stressed the ethical conduct of man, which would be demonstrated by good deeds, moral behavior, and civic contributions. 8

Chief among these British Latitudinarians was a philosopher named John Locke (1632-1704). Although he is known more for his contributions to the field of educational psychology, Locke was considered one of the Enlightenment's major predecessors. As a seventeenth-century philosopher born in Somersetshire, England, he experienced the embryonic start of the Enlightenment soon after the Glorious Revolution, in which the Catholic monarch James II was unseated from the throne, thereby allowing a Protes- tant succession. Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity encouraged a more tolerant attitude toward the many religious sects that had emerged from the Reformation, except for atheists and Roman Catholics. According to Locke, miracles were simply natural occurrences that only seemed to be supernatu- ral because they lay outside the bounds of human understanding. Although he did not deny that Christianity was a viable religion, he did argue that Christianity could be reduced to one essential tenet: Jesus Christ was the Messiah. Everything else was, in the words of Locke, "fiction, merely the invention of superstitious or power-hungry priests." 9 His philosophical per-

8. Gay, Age of Enlightenment, 32. 9. Ibid.

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spectives set the tone for the theological beliefs of the Church of England throughout the eighteenth century. 10

As applied to education, Locke's ideology espoused a philosophical em- piricism that held to the supremacy of reason over religious faith, revelation, and tradition. His basic assumption was that human nature was not innate at birth but was the result of environmental influences that came about through- out one's life. Virtue was not endowed but communicated through various experiences along life's path. At birth, a child possessed what Locke called tabula rasa, or blank slate. Impressions were put on this slate as a result of one's interaction with the environment. Although Locke has been credited with popularizing the concept of tabula rasa, it was first used by Plato in a

10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., 37.

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metaphorical sense as a waxed tablet. Aristotle used the metaphor of a piece of writing paper to express the relation of potential to actual reason. Descartes used the phrase but only in passing and not with the same meaning that Locke later espoused. Interestingly, Locke himself did not use the phrase, although he speaks of the mind as being a white sheet of paper upon which "imprinting" sensations on the mind were made. 12

Locke began by rejecting the idea of innate ideas. He thought that all knowledge came from experience. By experience, Locke meant two things: sensations, which come from man's interaction with the material world around him/her; and reflections, which result from the mind's operations upon the sensations. To Locke, nothing entered the intellect that did not first come through the senses. Sensation and reflection are the sources of all ideas from which subsequent human thought originates. From his suggestion that thought was merely the putting together of ideas came the Association-Connectionist school, which became a dominant force in psychology for many years. 13

Much of the intellectual life of the Enlightenment grew out of investiga- tions and discoveries made in the natural sciences. Sir Isaac Newton (1642- 1727) probably typified this perspective more than anyone else of his day. He published Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in 1687, build- ing upon the monumental advances made by the sciences during the Refor- mation. In it, he postulated the "laws of nature," which became the scientific gospel until the late nineteenth century. Among these "laws" were the law of gravitation and the law of cause and effect. As a result, the universe became known as an orderly system immune from supernatural intervention. To Newton, the world was, for all intents and purposes, a well-oiled machine running on autopilot and immune from divine intervention. This view later evolved into philosophical materialism, which stated that nothing existed apart from atoms, which operated according to mechanical and mathemati- cal natural laws. The opposite viewpoint, held by such idealists as Bishop George Berkeley of the Church of England, held that the world was purely spiritual and mental. As such, material substances were merely a figment of our imagination and changed their qualities as our ability to understand

12. James M. Baldwin, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology ( Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1957), 660.

13. Warren Young, A Christian Approach to Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1954), 108-9.

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them changed. 14 What was needed during this time of public scientific de- bate was someone who could bring together these two opposing sides in one coherent dialogue. The man who would do this was a French philoso- pher named Franyois Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778).

Voltaire held to a deist worldview, which taught that God was the Su- preme Creator of the universe, but once He set the universe in motion, He stepped back and remained aloof from the daily operations of His creation. It wasn't that He was incapable of intervening but that He chose not to do so. To intercede in the affairs of the world would be to conclude that God had made a mistake and needed somehow to improve or correct His error. Deism held no room for miracles, prophecy, the deity of Christ, or the Bible as God's revelation to man. Although Voltaire broke from the viewpoint of traditional Christianity and embraced Newtonian science, he did not wander as far as materialism. 15 For this reason, he was viewed as a moderating voice between Newtonian science and materialism.

In France, Voltaire was concerned about the injustices he had observed among the masses. He rejected forms of government led by perverted kings and priests and believed that education was the key to releasing man from the bondage of his intellectual ignorance. He championed the cause of the destitute and worked tirelessly to advance the cause of social justice and equality of rights. He was known for his wit and took advantage of opportu- nities to share it with those around him. A sample of such would include the following quotes: 16

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens and giving it to the other.

Marriage is the only adventure open to a coward.

I have never made but one prayer to God: "O Lord, make my en- emies ridiculous." And God granted it.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

14. R. Freeman Butts, A Cultural History of Education: Reassessing our Educa- tional Traditions (New York: McGraw Hill, 1947), 319.

15. Ibid. 16. Gay, Age of Enlightenment, 59.

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All the reasoning of men is not worth one sentiment of women.

Men use thought only to justify their wrong doing, and employ their speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Voltaire had strong personal opinions about the need for educational and political reform. Because education would free the masses to enjoy their pitiful existence, he wanted education to be more accessible to them. Voltaire would not have advocated a Christian education per se because he was a deist and did not believe in a personal deity but rather one marked by scien- tific methods of inquiry and characterized by justice and equality for all of its participants. His personal philosophy had a profound impact on the Found- ing Fathers of the American Revolution across the Atlantic.

In England, David Hume (1711-76) carried the banner of deism although he was viewed as being more temperate than Voltaire. Born into a Scottish family living in Edinburgh, Hume published numerous articles on the sub- jects of philosophy, ethics, economics, and politics in a three-volume work titled Treatise (1739 and 1740). Although that work "fell dead-born from the presses," as Hume lamented, it became a popular text soon after his death. Expanding on the views expressed in Treatise, he subsequently wrote An Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding (1748), An Enquiry Con- cerning the Principles of Morals (1752), and Dissertations on the Passions (1757). Although Hume never won much acclaim for his writings in the field of philosophy, much to his personal disillusionment, he did win a great deal of respect and admiration for his writings in the field of history. His History of England (1754) allowed him to enjoy a good deal of financial gain. With his newfound wealth, he traveled to France where he acquainted himself with the French philosophes. After a season of interaction with Voltaire, Diderot, and Helvetius, Hume returned to Edinburgh, where he busied him- self writing the controversial Dialogues Concerning Natural Religions. He completed that work but chose not to have it published until after his death in 1776. Hume arranged in his will for its publication, and his nephew pub- lished it in 1779.17

Hume is viewed as one of the most influential philosophers of modern times. He rejected the world-machine concept of Newton and the theologi-

17. Sterling P. Lamprecht, Our Philosophical Traditions (New York: Appleton- Century-Crofts, 1955), 325-26.

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cal explanations of biblical creation. He was an open-minded inquirer into the world around him and uncommitted to any particular viewpoint. He was even known to argue against his own conclusions in part because he did not want to offend his reader and because he himself was somewhat uncertain about them. In the three volumes that he published between 1748 and 1751, he openly criticized his earlier material found in Treatise. He was open to criticism and was even willing to take the lead in discrediting his own think- ing. "Hume's unorthodox views in religion and politics gained him great notoriety, so that by the time he retired he was generally known as 'the gentle sceptic' and the 'great infidel."' 18

Perhaps no other individual so personifies the philosophes of the Enlight- enment as does Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78). He was born in Geneva to a watchmaker, Isaac Rousseau. His mother died when he was just nine days old. His father preferred to educate his son outside the bounds of traditional schooling and chose rather to guide him through the reading of numerous classical books such as Ovid's Metamorphoses, Plutarch's Lives of Famous Men, and Plato's Republic. As a result of an altercation with the law, his father abandoned him, and he spent the rest of his childhood years being shuffled between foster homes. Perhaps that was why he chose an orphan boy as the principal character in his novel Emile. In his early adolescent years, he sought employment under the tutelage of the town clerk, to whom he was apprenticed as a notary. After being fired for lack of attention to the finer details of the job, he began an apprenticeship as an engraver. Rousseau claims he was mistreated at the hands of his supervisor so at the age of sixteen, he ventured off to begin life on his own.

He wandered through Europe trying to determine how best to spend his life. After a brief pilgrimage in Italy, he ventured to Savoy, where he became the beneficiary of a wealthy widow named Madame de Warens, who con- verted him to Roman Catholicism. For a brief time he seriously considered becoming a priest. Soon after venturing to France, he tested the waters in the fine arts. Skilled in music, which he had learned while living with his benefactress, he wrote several operas and ballets and began a career as a music teacher. He never seemed to find personal fulfillment in this vocation, however, so he accepted a position as secretary to the French ambassador in Venice. He was dismissed from that job as a result of quarreling with his

18. Richard H. Popkin and Avrum Stroll, Philosophy Made Simple (New York: Made Simple Books, 1956).

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superiors. With no place to go, he returned to Paris and lived a life of reck- less abandon, leaving behind several illegitimate children. In addition to those children, he fathered five children through a mistress named Therese Levasseur, an illiterate servant girl. Each child was subsequently deposited in a local orphanage.

During this period of his life, he became friends with several prominent French philosophes, chief among them being Diderot. In 1750, the Academy of Dijon awarded Rousseau a prize for his essay on the question of whether the development of the sciences and the arts had contributed to the im- provement of morals. Rousseau's position on the subject was that man, in fact, deteriorates as civilization advances. He believed that the soul of man actually became more corrupt as a result of the advances of science and the arts. He advocated a return to more primitive methods of social order and civil development.

In this climate of self-criticism Jean Jacques Rousseau worked out his ideas for a better society-ideas that were widely misunderstood in his own time and continue to be so today. Partly this was Rousseau's own fault. Morbid and suspicious, he turned against all his friends and turned his friends against him. Also it was partly the fault of his prose, which is lively and epigrammatic in style, and invites quota- tion out of context. Thus he got the reputation for being a utopian dreamer who wanted to do away with organized society and go "back to nature" and the state of the "noble savage."19

Although Rousseau wrote a number of significant works covering a wide range of topics, most noteworthy for our emphasis on educational philoso- phy was a novel titled Emile. Some people have viewed this work as a dis- course on child development, whereas others dismiss it as an unrealistic attempt to espouse a utopian model for restructuring society. Emile was a young orphan who grew under the care of a tutor. Removed from the poten- tially damaging effects of society, the child was exposed to nature, where his natural inclination toward moral behavior could be cultivated. The book begins by revealing its philosophical intentions: "Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of Things; everything degenerates in the

19. Gay, Age of Enlightenment, 62.

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hands of man." In making this statement, Rousseau was ridiculing the Cal- vinist doctrine of the depravity of man and the spiritual deprivation caused by original sin. To Rousseau, man is not born in a state of depravity but assumes this state as a result of his existence in a morally corrupt society. To prevent this damaging influence, Emile is to be raised with as much interac- tion with nature as possible. Metaphorically, this new Adam of the Enlight- enment will be the father of a new, naturally educated race of men and women. In this context, it might be possible for an entire race of men and women to create a radical world order in which social, political, economic, and educational institutions can function naturally.20

The challenge comes for Rousseau when he tries to find a way to educate the children living in this new utopian realm. The schools that he had wit- nessed during his journeys across Europe held little hope for the future. In- deed, these corrupt bastions of learning were counterproductive for developing educated children. Their harsh, authoritative instructional methods displayed a philosophy of education that was antithetical to Rousseau's because the children spent far too much time in structured classrooms hunched over books and listening to lectures, rather than being allowed to run free in nature.

The four stages of Rousseau's model of education revolve around a belief that educational methods should take into consideration the natural stages of development through which a child goes: infancy, childhood, early adoles- cence, and late adolescence. This theme would later serve as a foundational element of the Swiss educational theorist Jean Piaget. To Rousseau, each stage had its own set of physical, social, emotional, and educational consid- erations that had to be addressed in the development of curriculum, disci- pline, instructional methods, etc.

During infancy (birth to five), the child is viewed as an animal in terms of his/her need for physical activity, reliance on feelings, and social interac- tions. Education at this level is primarily concerned with giving the child enough time to play and for exploring the world through the senses. The child should be given freedom to explore the world without restrictions and authority. During childhood (ages five to twelve), the individual is still viewed as an animal that is primarily interested in activity and exploration. The teacher should eschew the study of books and language development, prefer- ring games, sports, constructive play, and the manual arts. 21

20. Gutek, Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Education, 5. 21. Butts, Cultural History of Education, 344.

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During early adolescence ( twelve to fifteen), when reason and self- consciousness appear, the curriculum should gravitate toward stimulating curiosity and useful activity, which are the only real motives for learning. Because the child is largely nonsocial at this stage, Rousseau was a strong advocate of the student reading Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. In this classic, Crusoe learns how to survive in a natural setting using his independent resources devoid of society's authority or input from others. He should learn by observing nature. At this juncture, Rousseau's educational philosophy of learning by doing as opposed to learning through words is promulgated. It is only in later adolescence that the youth should come to terms with the problems associated in society. That's when the sexual drives and impulses of young people come to the surface and they struggle to find constructive ways to integrate their budding sexuality with socially acceptable activities. At this level of education, the young people are introduced to the study of society, economics, politics, history, and religion. At this point, the youth are encouraged to develop in their moral, aesthetic, and spiritual dimensions. 22

The final chapter of Emile discusses the educational development of girls. Rousseau taught that girls needed religious instruction more than boys did and thought that the best setting for instructing girls was in a convent, where they would offer short prayers to what seems to be a deist's concept of God. 23 After Emile, Rousseau wrote a book titled Social Contract, in which he continued his theme of a utopian society in which education played a major role in the training of its populace.

To say that Rousseau's views were controversial would be a gross under- statement. His wholesale rejection of culture's influence on the educational development of the child was clearly underestimated. His view of man as being innately good contradicts biblical teaching, and believing that a child is basically amoral and unreasonable until the age of twelve minimizes the influence that teachers, coaches, and other adult role models can have on the constructive development of children. Although he emphasized strongly the role that parents play in the child's early growth, he forbade common forms of discipline that Christian parents must demonstrate if they are to abide by the biblical injunction to "discipline your son while there is hope"

22. Ibid. 23. Elias, History of Christian Education, 137.

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(Prov. 19:18) because discipline is indeed evidence of a parent's love and commitment to their child's healthy growth and development (Heb. 12:4- 11 ). Rousseau's philosophy of education helps us understand the role that exists between the child's personal academic development and the contribu- tion that he or she is expected to make in becoming a contributing member of society. Educational philosopher John Dewey would take up this charge years later and develop his democratic ideals of the learner based on Rousseau's foundational thinking.

The writings of David Hume and Jean:Jacques Rousseau had a profound impact on the thinking of a German philosopher named Immanuel Kant ( 1724- 1804 ). Hume taught him that the law of cause and effect could only be as- sumed, never proven. "Kant set out to give a defense of common sense notions about the world, which had been undermined by Hume. Kant felt that empiri- cists failed to acknowledge that the human mind makes its own contributions to sense-based knowledge and imposes its subjective categories upon the world. This reorientation of epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, had its effect upon the philosophy of education." 24 He also embraced Rousseau's belief in the ultimate goodness of man and came to believe that ethical and moral values were not something to be acquired through classroom instruction but rather were intrinsically imbedded in man's nature. 25

Kant is best known for his critical analysis of human knowledge, which he saw as a "philosophy of philosophy." His trilogy of criticism, Pure Reason (1781), Practical Reason (1788), and Judgment (1790), sought to examine the three most important aspects of philosophy: metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. "Beginning at age sixteen and continuing for a lifetime, Kant was insatiably interested in the scientific realm and in its epistemology. His de- fense of a priori concepts were applied to the disciplines of math, physics, morality, and everyday experiences. Time, space, number, and cause and effect were among his a priori givens."26

Perhaps one of the more lasting influences of Kant's thinking is the devel- opment of moral law as a basis for ethical behavior. In his Metaphysics of

24. Kenneth 0. Gangel and Warren S. Benson, Christian Education: Its History and Philosophy (Chicago: Moody, 1983), 196.

25. Gay, Age of Enlightenment, 147. 26. Cheryl L. Fawcett, The Evangelical Dictionary of Christian Education, ed.

Michael J. Anthony (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), s.v. "Immanuel Kant."

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Morals and his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant put forth the philosophi- cal position that came to be known as formalism, by which he sought to discover moral principles that were inherently right or wrong apart from any particular circumstance (as opposed to situational ethics). In other words, he wanted to know if a common set of moral standards governed thinking and behavior that were somewhat universal in origin. In this point, he inherited the Christian reverence for a divine "natural" law that transcended culture or geopolitical boundaries. He blended this divine law with an esteem for the individual self and developed a school of moral philosophy that was con- cerned with what ought to be. According to Kant, in man is found a sense of duty, the "I ought," or moral law, that comes about before experience and is found in the deepest core of man's existence. As such, these laws of nature and reason are essentially one. Kant proposed three criteria, or formula- tions, of this moral law: the Principle of Universality, the Principle of Hu- manity as an End, and the Principle of Autonomy. 27

Reacting to Rousseau's views on childhood discipline, Kant sought to bring a more balanced perspective to bear. In his book On Education, he supported many of Rousseau's views on education with a stronger philo- sophical foundation in German idealism. He took issue with Rousseau by arguing for a moral education that gave the child more freedom through discipline. Children were awarded freedom in their early years provided they did not impinge on the rights of others. To Kant, the value of discipline was in its ability to help children learn to be independent of others. He wanted children to learn how to do the right things not because of habit but for their own reasons. This teaching of critical thinking skills at such an early age was a significant contribution to the system of education in its day. 28 It also ran counter to the traditional philosophy that viewed children as incapable of developing critical reasoning abilities. To this point, most educators saw children as repositories of information and the teaching-learning process as simply the transmission of information from one repository to another. Kant challenged all of that and paved the way for Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget's groundbreaking work in the early twentieth century.

To this point, most of the philosophes of the Enlightenment empha- sized espousing philosophical and educational theories but were deficient

27. Titus, Living Issues in Philosophy, 364-65. 28. Elias, History of Christian Education, 141.

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in their ability to apply these theories practically. It was much easier to proclaim boldly how things ought to be than to risk actually being proved a failure by taking one's views into the classroom. Few Enlightenment philosophes were willing to demonstrate their beliefs by creating schools in which their theories had to stand the test of praxis. Most notable among those who actually developed experimental schools to examine their edu- cational philosophies was a Swiss educator named Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi ( 1746-1827).

His childhood was marked by sadness because of the early death of his father. His grandfather was a minister, and Pestalozzi frequently accompa- nied him to the countryside when he visited families in his parish. At this time in his young life, he developed a heartfelt compassion for the impover- ished and destitute conditions that characterized Switzerland at the end of the eighteenth century as a result of the French wars. Pestalozzi believed that society could be improved by empowering individuals toward achievement, security, and self-respect. With this end in mind, he created at Neuhof and Stans orphanages for poor children whose fathers had been killed in the wars. Later, he established boarding schools for boys at Burgdorf and Yverdon, where he received his greatest acclaim for the manner in which he integrated his educational philosophy with praxis. 29

Pestalozzi was a man of tremendous forethought and vision. He dared to view education for what it could become rather than lamenting all that it wasn't. He conducted his schools with sympathy and gentleness. Through his orphanages and boarding schools, he provided a living and learning envi- ronment in which children received mild discipline and moral and religious instruction in addition to a comprehensive curriculum consisting of drawing, music, reading, writing, geography, arithmetic, and nature studies. Through his curriculum, he emphasized the development of sense perceptions by associating models and actual objects with the various symbols and symbols that those models represented. Using this form of sense realism, Pestalozzi modeled a much more liberal approach to elementary education than was common at that time. 30

29. Butts, Cultural History of Education, 426. 30. Ibid.

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31. David Gough, The Evangelical Dictionary of Christian Education, ed. Michael J. Anthony (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), s.v. "Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi."

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As an educational realist, Pestalozzi believed that truth was gained through sensory perception. Instructional methodologies that employed the senses were developed to facilitate these experiences. He called for the use of object lessons in the classroom because he believed that a student would learn best if he/ she could smell, touch, taste, or hear an object in addition to seeing it. In addition to object lessons, teachers employed field trips, audio- visual aids, and classroom demonstrations/ experiments. Realist teachers are concerned about the mastery of facts as a means of appropriating naturalism (e.g., the natural law that governs the universe). They desire for their stu- dents to comprehend the universal laws of nature. They rely heavily on in- ductive logic as they move from particular facts gleaned through the use of sensory perception to the more general laws that can be inferred from those data. 32

In 1781, Pestalozzi published a novel, much like Rousseau's Emile, titled Leonard and Gertrude. In this manuscript, he promoted his views concern- ing the social good and revealed his desire for changes in the educational system that would contribute to social, political, and moral reforms. Because that book was so widely received, he published two additional novels with similar themes: How Gertrude Teaches Her Children (1801) and Epochs (1803).

One of the most enduring contributions of Pestalozzi was the value that he placed on the teaching profession. Because his view of the learning pro- cess was defined in terms of a drawing out more than the traditional pouring in, it required a new paradigm in teacher training. The teacher must not only know the subject matter but also be able to organize it in terms of the nature of the learner and to direct the student such as to facilitate content mas- tery.33 Pestalozzi developed a school for training teachers and taught them the importance of fostering a nurturing classroom environment. He believed that the environment most conducive for learning was marked by a loving and caring instructor. The teacher and the parents were viewed as partners; the educational process was best fostered in a symbiotic relationship be- tween home and school.

Soon teachers and school administrators came from all across Europe to

32. George R. Knight, Philosophy and Education (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press, 1998), 50.

33. Charles B. Eavey, History of Christian Education (Chicago: Moody, 1964), 402.

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witness the applied philosophy of Pestalozzi. Chief among those who were influenced by his views were Johann Herbart and Friedrich Froebel. Pestalozzi' s views were taken into consideration during the various educational reforms that occurred in Prussia during the early nineteenth century. Years later in America, his concept of teaching as a distinct profession gave impetus to the formation of some of North America's greatest teachers colleges.

Picking up the torch that Pestalozzi passed to him was a German educator named Johann Friedrick Herbart (1776-1841). Like others before him, he endured a difficult childhood because of the divorce of his parents at an early age. He was reared by an overprotective mother, who arranged for him to be schooled at home by tutors. One of these tutors was a university student named U elzen. Because U elzen had a deep and abiding love for theology and philosophy, he instilled in his young student the love of these disciplines early in his academic development. At age twelve, Herbart began formal schooling at the local Latin school, and in 1794 he entered the Uni- versity ofJena with his mother, who chose to attend classes with him. Herbart continued his love for the study of philosophy and was heavily influenced in the study of idealism by Professor Johann Gottlieb Ficthe. Ficthe was a fol- lower of Kant, but in time Herbart gravitated more toward his own form of realism. At the University of Jena, Herbart joined a student literary club named the Association of Free Men. Students in this society immersed them- selves in the profound readings and discourses of philosophes who had gone before them. 34

Upon graduation, Herbart secured employment as a tutor at a school directed by Friedrich von Steiger. He had also traveled to see firsthand the school system developed by Pestalozzi. After receiving his doctorate in psy- chology from the University of Gottingen in 1802, he remained as a profes- sor of philosophy for the next seven years. During this season of his life, he began to write books that brought together his own version of philosophical realism and the educational practice that he had observed under von Steiger and Pestalozzi. It was a prolific season for Herbart as he published numerous books on the topics of pedagogy, educational reform, childhood develop- ment, general psychology, and educational psychology.

A depiction of Herbart's model of education can be summarized as a five- step process:

34. James E. Reed and Ronnie Prevost, A History of Christian Education (Nash- ville: Broadman & Holman, 1993), 248.

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1. Preparation: the student is prepared for learning by recalling past ex- periences and concepts that have been learned before arriving in the classroom.

2. Presentation: the new information to be learned is presented and ex- plained to the student.

3. Associati-pn: the student seeks to determine the relationship between past experiences and the new material to be learned.

4. Generalization: the student seeks to discover principles or general concepts from the previous step.

5. Application: the student explores ways whereby the principles can be applied to real-life situations. 35

Herbart was one of the few Enlightenment thinkers who did not have contempt for the contributions of religion on educational development. For this reason, Christian educators of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries found it more palatable to integrate the theories of Herbart into their own philosophy of education. "Herbart insisted that an adequate educational theory must include a comprehensive analysis of the aims, intended out- comes, and means of education. This is a balance that contemporary Chris- tian educators have discovered and appreciated in the analytic educational philosophy of William Frankena." 36

The final Enlightenment philosophe who will be discussed is a German educator who was also heavily influenced by Pestalozzi. Friedrich Wilhelm Froebel ( 1782-1852) is best known as the father of the kindergarten. Froebel was the son of a Lutheran pastor in Oberweissbach, Germany. His mother died when he was just nine months old, and he grew up a lonely, dejected, and introverted child. Upon completing his academic preparation in the field of forestry, he was unable to find employment in that field, so he secured a position as a tutor. He was sent to observe the instructional meth- odologies that Pestalozzi was using at his school in Yverdon. This experience had a profound impact on him, resulting in a new career emphasis. He found fulfillment in teaching, and after receiving further formal training in the field at the University of Berlin, he opened a kindergarten for young children in Keilhau in 1817. There he furthered the instructional emphasis

35. Ibid., 250. 36. Daniel C. Stevens, The Evangelical Dictionary of Christian Education, ed.

Michael J. Anthony (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), s.v. "Johann Friedrich Herbart."

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that he had observed in Yverdon, but he added his own educational philoso- phy to the curriculum. He believed that play was an important component in the learning process and invited children as young as three years old to attend his school. 37

That he tried to integrate his love for natural creation with his educational philosophy should be surprising to no one who understands Froebel' s love for nature, as evidenced by his original career plans. "For him, education enabled persons to realize their essence by living in tune with the Creator's purposes. In Froebel's mystical philosophy children were to identify with this goal by seeing themselves as part of the unity of the world, developing freedom and self-determination." 38 Froebel's highest educational goal was to enable the child to see God clearly revealed in all of His creation. 39 He compared the development of the child with a plant that was growing in a garden; the nature of the child could not be changed, but he or she could grow healthy with the oversight of a good teacher. From this "child's garden" concept he developed the idea for kindergarten.

Froebel believed that children should be encouraged to play as part of their educational development. During this playtime, children manifested significance through symbolic representation with objects around them. For example, as a child played with a ball, he was reminded of the spherical nature of our planet and of the Supreme Creator of the universe. Froebel viewed objects such as cylinders, cubes, balls, and spheres as gifts that had special symbolic potential. Other play materials such as clay, wood, and sand were called occupations because they were the raw materials that a child used to reveal his inner thoughts and feelings. Children were encouraged to use these materials in conjunction with their imagination to express them- selves and to interact socially. The object lesson was also an important ele- ment in his instructional methodology.

In The Education of Man, which he published in 1826, Froebel expressed his educational philosophy regarding the nature of the child, basic theology, and educational psychology. Written in prose, it sought to weave philosophi- cal idealism with romanticism, science, and Christian mysticism. His Lutheran roots were exposed as he proclaimed God as the ultimate Creator of the universe and mankind as His created work. To Froebel, man possessed a

37. Reed and Prevost, History of Christian Education, 252. 38. Elias, History of Christian Education, 144. 39. Ibid.

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spiritual dimension as well as the more obvious physical body. God's intent was that the two would be developed simultaneously and that neither would be ignored at the expense of the other. The role of the teacher was to facilitate the process of each in a timely manner without force or constraint. His blending of theology and educational philosophy make Froebel a lead- ing contributor to modern Christian education.

The Enlightenment was a turbulent time in many respects. Although it represented a general sense of freedom and release from the highly restric- tive paradigms of traditional church education, its emphasis on humanistic explanations of the universe, ultimate truth, and mankind's reason for being made it a challenging time for religious educators. New theories about the universe were being communicated by scientists in the fields of astronomy, biology, medicine, geology, mathematics, etc. These new views, validated by the scientific method, were instrumental in creating new paradigms about the world. Resulting applications were found for politics, government, law, economics, education, and society as a whole.

While many religious educators of the time remained distant from these developments in educational theory and practice, in time they came to see value in some of the components of the Enlightenment educational theory. The greatest stumbling block for most educators was the Enlightenment's somewhat naive view of the human person that did not include an adequate recognition of the doctrine of original sin and human inclination to evil. What irked many a moralist was the negative attitude of some of these theorists to the teachings of the Bible and the catechism to young children. Enlightenment theo- ries tended to minimize the role of religion in education, especially in the education of the young. In the perspective of many church educators these theories permitted too much freedom to the child and too little control to teachers and parents in moral and religious formation. Many of these criticisms were leveled against twentieth- century progressive education, which drew in part on the educa- tional ideas and experiments of Enlightenment educators. 40

40. Ibid., 145.

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41. Young, Christian Approach to Philosophy, 80.

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FoR FURTHER READING

Butts, Robert F. A Cultural History of Education. New York: McGraw Hill, 1947.

Eavey, Charles B. History of Christian Education. Chicago: Moody, 1964. Elias, John L. A History of Christian Education: Protestant, Catholic, and

Orthodox Perspectives. Malabar, Fla.: Krieger, 2002. Gangel, Kenneth 0., and Warren S. Benson. Christian Education: Its His-

tory and Philosophy. Chicago: Moody, 1983. Gay, Peter. Age of Enlightenment. New York: Time, 1966. Gutek, Gerald L. Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Education: A

Biographical Introduction. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill Prentice- Hall, 2001.

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