Southern Illinois University - Obelisk Yearbook (Carbondale, IL)

Page 15 text:

Pestalozzi Most successful teachers think of them- selves as akin to Socrates, but Pestalozzi tried to conceive of himself as one of the children he taught. His principles of in- struction have enjoyed world-wide adopt- tion because they are founded on the be- lief that all the admirable powers of man are due neither to art nor to chance but to nature. In accordance with this belief, his methods of imparting knowledge to a child followed an order of succession ex- actly parallel with the course of natural development. Because of Pestalozzi's theory that the teacher should adjust his pace to that of the student, we to-day judge a teacher's worth largely by his ability to look at knowledge from the student's point of view.