[Sidenote: Mann and his _Seventh Annual Report_;]
[Sidenote: Sheldon and the Oswego ‘object lessons.’]
The most influential propaganda of the Pestalozzian doctrines in general, however, came through the account of the German school methods in the _Seventh Annual Report_ (1843) of Horace Mann (see p. 308), and through the inauguration of the ‘Oswego methods’ by Dr. Edward A. Sheldon. Mann spoke most enthusiastically of the success of the Prussian-Pestalozzian system of education and hinted at the need of a radical reform along the same lines in America. The report caused a great sensation, and was bitterly combated by conservative sentiment throughout the country, but the suggested reforms were largely effected. Dr. Sheldon, on the other hand, caught his Pestalozzian inspiration from Toronto, Canada, where he became acquainted with the formalized methods of the Mayos through publications of the Home and Colonial School Society (see p. 291). He resolved to introduce the principles of Pestalozzi into the Oswego schools, of which he was at that time superintendent, and in 1861 secured from the society in London an instructor to train his teachers in these methods. There was some criticism of the Oswego methods on the ground of formalism, but as a whole they were pronounced a success, and in 1865 the Oswego training school was made a state institution. This was the first normal school in the United States where ‘object lessons’ were the chief feature, but a large number of other normal schools upon the same basis sprang up rapidly in many states, and the Oswego methods crept into the training schools and the public systems of numerous cities. As a consequence, during the third quarter of the nineteenth century, Pestalozzianism, though somewhat formalized, had a prevailing influence upon the teachers and courses of the elementary schools in the United States.
[Sidenote: Estate at Hofwyl to train Pestalozzian teachers.]
=Pestalozzi’s Industrial Training Continued by Fellenberg.=--Such was the wide influence of Pestalozzi upon education. But while throughout his work he continued to make new applications of his observational methods, his principle of combining industrial training with intellectual education, which he had begun so successfully at Neuhof and Stanz, could not be continued at Burgdorf. His pupils there came chiefly from aristocratic families and were not obliged to support themselves by manual labor. However, Pestalozzi still hoped to save enough of the income from the school payments of the rich to found a small agricultural school for the poor on this plan and connect it with the ‘institute,’ and while this institution was never started, the opportunity for carrying out his aim came through his friend, Emanuel von Fellenberg (1771-1844). Fellenberg belonged to a noble family of Berne, but, like Pestalozzi, he believed that an amelioration of the wretched moral and economic conditions in Switzerland should be accomplished by education. To secure the means for an experiment in this direction, he persuaded his father to purchase for him an estate of six hundred acres at Hofwyl, just nine miles from Burgdorf. Here Pestalozzi urged him to undertake his favorite idea of industrial education, and in 1806, with the aid of Zeller (see p. 289), who had been sent him by Pestalozzi, he opened a school to train teachers in the Pestalozzian method.