Pestalozzi's Intuitive Pedagogy of Elementary School: how Arithmetic was taught?

Abstract

This article aims to understand the methodological arrangement in Pestalozzi's arithmetic teaching in elementary school. The question arises: How arithmetic was taught in the Pestalozzi elementary school way? By transforming some of Pestalozzi texts in documents, I noticed that the Swiss teacher systematized a pedagogical theory that changed the status of the triad: student-knowledge-teacher. This is a pedagogy based in the activity of the human spirit manifested by intuition. I called it intuitive pedagogy. A pedagogy that psychologized the elementary knowledge, under the pretext of following human nature through the sensitive and rational intuitions. Put together in the simplest form, the knowledge of arithmetic has been reduced, in some way, to the tangible, visible and accessible elements to all senses.

Keywords:
Arithmetic; Intuitive Pedagogy; Pestalozzi