Article 6: Educating with Heart, Head, and Hands: Pestalozzianism, Women Seminaries, and the Spread of Progressive Ideas in Indian Territory

For centuries education in Western and European countries remained unchanged. Instruction was given under strict disciplinary rules, and the majority of teachers rarely used an alternative to the rote learning method. Even though there were attempts to diversify teaching methods and provide instructors with training prior to the Enlightenment, no era had welcomed the change as much as the Enlightenment. The progressive thinkers of the Enlightenment turned to Switzerland where Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) fearlessly experimented in his classrooms.

In Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism Adolph Diesterweg described the revitalizing change that followed Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s efforts in the field of education and educational methods of instruction. He argued that Pestalozzi’s labors signaled the transition from old to new schooling (Barnard 1859, 2). His influence on education in Western European countries is well documented. However, in the U.S. the extent to which Pestalozzi contributed to the reform in education has been controversial. Historians note that Pestalozzi’s theory was primarily influential in the progressive northeastern part of the U.S. For instance, Edward Sheldon is singled out among educators who first incorporated Pestalozzian principles in school curricula and teacher training (Winship 1900; Barnes 1911; Rogers 1961). Contrary to this claim there is evidence that Pestalozzi’s educational reform reached the Indian Territories west of the Mississippi river prior to Sheldon. Well-developed teaching methods reached American Indian territories through the work of missionaries and teachers, especially women teachers. The link to this spread came with the development of a female educational curriculum, which began first in the female seminaries in Massachusetts and other Eastern States during the Second Great Awakening of the early nineteenth century.