European Demands for New Education: Political, National, Private

Abstract

The all-encompassing educational demand around 1800 in all of Europe directed attention to Pestalozzi. In the five years from 1803 to 1808, an impressive network of interested persons and enthusiasts developed in Europe who saw in “the Pestalozzi method” just the key to the future that they believed that they needed: peaceful, natural, educational, and religious. In the first years, when Pestalozzi was in Burgdorf, the network was limited to German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland, parts of Germany, and Denmark, where educated circles also spoke German. Closer contacts with Spain started in 1806 and with some French and American philanthropists in 1807. Several educational reform institutes were founded, often under the label “Pestalozzi method.”