1.

MARTIN LUTHER
 Martin Luther was born on
November 10, 1483, in
Eisleben, Saxony, in modern
southeast Germany.
 Martin Luther’s parents, Hans
and Margarette Luther, were
of peasant linage. However
Hans had some success as a miner and ore smelter, and in
1484 the family moved from Eisleben to nearby Mansfeld, where
Hans held ore deposits.
 Hans Luther knew that mining was a tough business and wanted
his promising son to have better: He wanted him to become a
lawyer. At age seven, Martin Luther entered school in Mansfeld.
At 14 Martin Luther went north to Magdeburg, where he
continued his studies. In 1498, he returned to Eisleben and
enrolled in a school, studying grammar, rhetoric and logic. He
later compared this experience to purgatory and hell.
 In 1501, Martin Luther entered the University of Erfurt, where he
received a Master of Arts degree in grammar, logic, rhetoric and
metaphysics. At this time, it seemed he was on his way to
becoming a lawyer.
 In July 1505, Luther had a life-changing experience that set him
on a new course to becoming a monk. Caught in a horrific
thunderstorm where he feared for his life, Luther cried out to St.
Anne, the patron saint of miners, “Save me, St. Anne, and I’ll
become a monk!” The storm subsided and he was saved.
Most historians believe this was not a spontaneous act, but an
idea already formulated in Luther’s mind. The decision to
become a monk was difficult and greatly disappointed his father,
but he felt he must keep a promise. Luther was also driven by
fears of hell and God’s wrath, and felt that life in a monastery
would help him find salvation.
 The first few years of monastic life were difficult for Martin
Luther, as he did not find the religious enlightenment he was
seeking. A mentor told him to focus his life exclusively on Christ
and this would later provide him with the guidance he sought.
 At age 27, Luther was given the opportunity to be a delegate to
a Catholic church conference in Rome. He came away more
disillusioned, and very discouraged by the immorality and
corruption he witnessed there among the Catholic priests. Upon
his return to Germany, he enrolled in the University of
Wittenberg in an attempt to suppress his spiritual turmoil. He
excelled in his studies and received a doctorate, becoming a
professor of theology at the university.
 Through his studies of scripture, Martin Luther finally gained
religious enlightenment. Beginning in 1513, while preparing
lectures, Luther read the first line of Psalm 22, which Christ
wailed in his cry for mercy on the cross, a cry similar to Luther’s
own disillusionment with God and religion. Two years later, while
preparing a lecture on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, he read,
“The just will live by faith.” He dwelled on this statement for
some time. Finally, he realized the key to spiritual salvation was
not to fear God or be enslaved by religious dogma but to believe
that faith alone would bring salvation. This period marked a
major change in his life and set in motion the Reformation.
 Following the publication of his 95 Theses, Martin Luther
continued to lecture and write in Wittenberg. In June and July
of 1519 Luther publicly declared that the Bible did not give
the pope the exclusive right to interpret scripture, which was
a direct attack on the authority of the papacy. Finally, in
1520, the pope had had enough and on June 15 issued an
ultimatum threatening Luther with excommunication. On
December 10, 1520, Luther publicly burned the letter. In
January 1521, Martin Luther was officially excommunicated
from the Roman Catholic Church.
 In March 1521, Luther was summoned before the Diet of
Worms, a general assembly of secular authorities. Again,
Luther refused to recant his statements, demanding he be
shown any scripture that would refute his position. There was
none. On May 8, 1521, the council released the Edict of
Worms, banning Luther’s writings and declaring him a
“convicted heretic.” This made him a condemned and wanted
man. Friends helped him hide out at the Wartburg Castle.
While in seclusion, he translated the New Testament into the
German language, to give ordinary people the opportunity to
read God’s word.
 In 1525, Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, a former
nun who had abandoned the convent and taken refuge in
Wittenberg. Together, over the next several years, they had
six children.
 From 1533 to his death in 1546, Martin Luther served as the
dean of theology at University of Wittenberg. During this time
he suffered from many illnesses, including arthritis, heart
problems and digestive disorders. The physical pain and
emotional strain of being a fugitive might have been reflected
in his writings. Some works contained strident and offensive
language against several segments of society, particularly
Jews and to a lesser degree, Muslims, including Luther’s
treatise The Jews and Their Lies.
 Martin Luther died on February 18, 1546 at the age of 62
during a trip to his hometown of Eisleben.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION:
 Martin Luther was at the forefront of those who realized the
need for change in education, and with characteristic zeal he
sought to effect improvements in Wittenberg and throughout
Germany. While he composed only a few works that treat
education directly, his other writings often reveal an attempt
to relate education to the doctrinal rediscoveries of the
 Reformation, and especially to subject learning to the
"theology of the cross". The few treatises Luther did dedicate
strictly to education had such impact that they may be
deemed seminal for the development of reformed schooling
in the sixteenth century. These works not only influenced
teachers and preachers throughout Germany, but they also
encouraged other theologians to consider the role of
education in society.
 Another treatise by Luther on education is the so-called
"Sermon on Keeping Children in School" (1530), published in
the form of an open letter. Having received disappointing
results of a survey regarding the improvement of life in
church, home and school, Luther realised that his earlier call
for educational reform had gone largely unheeded. Clearly,
changing the thought and behaviour of people would not be
so easy as Luther had hoped at first. Many parents still
preferred to direct their children to the work force and the
immediate material rewards it would afford, than to invest in
spiritual development and moral reform. Luther's wish for
them is that they "seek first the kingdom of God and His
righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well
(Matthew 6:31-33).

2. ST JOHN BAPTIST DE LA SALLE

 Born April 30, 1651 to one of few
wealthy families in France, John
Baptist de La Salle was
privileged enough to receive
formal schooling. (Saint Jean-
Baptiste, n.d.). By age 16, La
Salle was appointed Canon of
the Cathedral at Reims. He studied theology at the College
Des Bons Enfants and after receiving a Masters in Arts was
sent to Paris to attend the seminary of Saint- Sulpice. La
 Salle reached status of ordained priest in 1678 and two
years later earned a doctorate in theology from the
University of Reims.
 Upon earning his doctorate, La Salle became the protector of
the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus, a school run charity for
girls. In order to be more effective in his charitable
endeavor, and possibly to better understand the
circumstances of those whom he aimed to serve, La Salle
renounced his position as Canon and left his family’s home
and wealth to move in with teachers, forming a community
that became known as the Brothers of the Christian
Schools, or the de La Salle Brothers (Saint John Baptist,
2010).
 Despite dissent from certain groups, La Salle succeeded in
establishing this novel type of school. These schools were
unique in their place and time for several reasons. For one,
students were taught in colloquial language rather than in
the language of the wealthy and the clergy. Within the
schools, students were divided into groups based on ability
and were taught an integrated curriculum of religious and
secular instruction (Saint John Baptist, 2010). Students were
taught by nonclerics who believed in La Salle’s mission. In
order to outfit his schools with competent instructors, La
Salle instituted programs for training “lay teachers,” and
even offered education class on Sunday for those who
worked during the week (Saint John Baptist, 2010). La Salle
also became famous for developing a teaching method
known as “the Simultaneous Method.” This current day class
method involves one person (the teacher) reading while
others follow along pointing to the words and reading them
silently (Knight, 2009).
CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION
 The lack of education of the working class and the poor
became a concern for La Salle. It was this sector of the
 population that would receive his full attention. La Salle’s
primary interest was the education of male teachers, who
would later be employed as teachers of working class and
poor boys.
 He also believed that everything learned in life must be
functional, in that one would be able to use the knowledge
later in life. In his teachings, he emphasized a practical
approach to all subjects. To this end, La Salle had his
teachers teach in the vernacular, rather than in the language
of the church or the upper class (Saint Jean Baptist de la
Salle, 2010.) This allowed the students to share what they
had learned with their parents, extending the knowledge to
more people. classes. Also, the fact that La Salle chose to
educate lay people to become teachers suggests that he
valued well-prepared teachers who were educated in
foundations of Education.
 Based on the population that La Salle aimed to serve in the
schools that he founded, it is possible that his goals for
education were socially motivated and aimed at creating
equity among the people of France and the world through
equal opportunities for education. However, because La
Salle’s curriculum included religious as well as secular
instruction, La Salle held religious guidance as a goal of
education.

3. FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
 (born April 21, 1782,
Oberweissbach, Thuringia, Ernestine
Saxony [now in Germany]—died June
21, 1852
 German educator who was founder of
the kindergarten and one of the most
influential educational reformers of the
19th century.
 Froebel was the fifth child in a clergyman’s family. His mother
died when he was only nine months old, and he was neglected
as a child until an uncle gave him a home and sent him to
school. Froebel acquired a thorough knowledge of plants and
natural phenomena while at the same time beginning the study
of mathematics and languages. After apprenticeship to a
forester, he pursued some informal university courses
at Jena until he was jailed for an unpaid debt. He tried various
kinds of employment until he impulsively took a teaching
appointment at a progressive model school in Frankfurt run by
Anton Gruner on lines advocated by the Swiss educator Johann
Heinrich Pestalozzi. Froebel became convinced of his vocation
as a teacher at the school.
 After two years as assistant to Gruner, Froebel went to Yverdon,
Switz., where he came into close contact with Pestalozzi.
Though he learned much at Yverdon, he quickly discovered the
weakness of organization that characterized Pestalozzi’s work.
In 1811 Froebel entered the University of Göttingen, where
military service in the Napoleonic Wars soon interrupted his
studies. During the campaign of 1813 he formed a lasting
friendship with H. Langenthal and W. Middendorff, who became
his devoted followers and who joined him at a school he opened
at Griesheim in Thuringia in 1816. Two years later the school
moved to Keilhau, also in Thuringia, and it was there that
Froebel put into practice his educational theories. He and his
friends and their wives became a kind of
educational community, and the school expanded into a
flourishing institution. During this time Froebel wrote numerous
articles and in 1826 published his most
important treatise, Menschenerziehung (The Education of Man),
a philosophical presentation of principles and methods pursued
at Keilhau.
 CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION:
 His most important contribution to educational theory was his
belief in “self-activity” and play as essential factors in child
education. The teacher’s role was not to drill or indoctrinate
the children but rather to encourage their self-expression
through play, both individually and in group activities. Froebel
devised circles, spheres, and other toys—all of which he
referred to as “gifts” or “occupations”—that were designed to
stimulate learning through play activities accompanied by
songs and music. Modern educational techniques in
kindergarten and preschool are much indebted to him.

4. JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
 born June 28, 1712, Geneva,
Switzerland—died July 2, 1778,
Ermenonville, France), Swiss-
born philosopher, writer, and
political theorist whose treatises
and novels inspired the leaders
of the French Revolution and the Romantic generation.
 Rousseau was the least academic of modern philosophers and
in many ways was the most influential. His thought marked the
end of the Age of Reason. He propelled political
and ethicalthinking into new channels. His reforms
revolutionized taste, first in music, then in the other arts. He had
a profound impact on people’s way of life; he taught parents to
take a new interest in their children and to educate them
differently; he furthered the expression of emotion rather than
polite restraint in friendship and love. He introduced the cult of
religious sentiment among people who had discarded
religious dogma. He opened people’s eyes to the beauties of
nature, and he made liberty an object of
almost universal aspiration.
 CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION:

a view of children as very different to adults – as innocent, vulnerable,

slow to mature – and entitled to freedom and happiness (Darling 1994:
6). In other words, children are naturally good.

 the idea that people develop through various stages – and that
different forms of education may be appropriate to each.

 a guiding principle that what is to be learned should be determined

by an understanding of the person’s nature at each stage of their
development.

 an appreciation that individuals vary within stages – and that

education must as a result be individualized. ‘Every mind has its
own form’

 each and every child has some fundamental impulse to activity.

Restlessness in time being replaced by curiosity; mental activity
being a direct development of bodily activity.

 the power of the environment in determining the success of

educational encounters. It was crucial – as Dewey also recognized
– that educators attend to the environment. The more they were
able to control it – the more effective would be the education.

 the controlling function of the educator – The child, Rousseau

argues, should remain in complete ignorance of those ideas which
are beyond his/her grasp. (This he sees as a fundamental
principle).

 the importance of developing ideas for ourselves, to make sense of

the world in our own way. People must be encouraged to reason
their way through to their own conclusions – they should not rely on
the authority of the teacher. Thus, instead of being taught other
people’s ideas, Émile is encouraged to draw his own conclusions
from his own experience. What we know today as ‘discovery
learning’ One example, Rousseau gives is of Émile breaking a
window – only to find he gets cold because it is left unrepaired.

 a concern for both public and individual education.

5. JOHANN FRIEDRICH HERBART
 Herbart was born on 4 May
1776 in Oldenburg. German
philosopher Johann Friedrich
Herbart is the founder of the
pedagogical theory that bears
his name, which eventually laid
the groundwork for teacher
education as a university enterprise in the United States and
elsewhere. Herbart was born in Oldenburg, Germany, the only
child of a gifted and strong-willed mother and a father whose
attention was devoted to his legal practice. Herbart was tutored
at home until he entered the gymnasium at the age of twelve,
from which he went on as valedictorian to the University of Jena
at a time when such stellar German intellectuals as Johann
Gottfried Herder, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, and Friedrich von Schiller were associated with that
institution. It was apparently Schiller's Briefe über die
ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (Letters concerning the
aesthetic education of man), then in progress in 1795, that
influenced Herbart to devote himself to philosophy and
education.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION
 Rejected the whole concept of faculties and regarded mental life
as the manifestation of the elementary sensory units or
“presentations.”
 Herbartianism advocated five formal steps in teaching:
1. Preparation
2. Presentation
3. Association
4. Generalization
5. Application
6. JOHANN HEIRICH PESTALOZZI

 Pestalozzi was born on January 12,

1746, in Zürich, Switzerland. His
father was a surgeon and oculist who
died at age 33 when Pestalozzi, the
second of three children, was 6 years
old; he belonged to a family who had
fled the area around Locarno due to
its Protestant faith. His mother, whose maiden name was Hotze,
was a native of Wädenswil on the lake of Zürich.The family also
had a maid, Barbara Schmid, nicknamed Babeli. After the death
of Pestalozzi's father it was only through the help of Babeli that
Pestalozzi's mother could financially support the family.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION:

 Pestalozzi was a Romantic who felt that education must be

broken down to its elements in order to have a complete
understanding of it. Based on what he learned by operating
schools at Neuhof, Stans, Burgdorf and Yverdon, he
emphasized that every aspect of the child's life contributed to
the formation of his personality, character, and capacity to
reason. Pestalozzi's educational methods were child-centered
and based on individual differences, sense perception, and the
student's self-activity. Pestalozzi worked in Yverdon to
"elementarize" the teaching of ancient languages, principally
Latin, but also Hebrew and Greek. In 1819, Stephan Ludwig
Roth came to study with Pestalozzi, and his new humanism
contributed to the development of the method of language
teaching, including considerations such as the function of the
mother tongue in the teaching of ancient languages. Pestalozzi
and Niederer were important influences on the theory of physical
education; they developed a regimen of physical exercise and
outdoor activity linked to general, moral, and intellectual
 education that reflected Pestalozzi's ideal of harmony and
human autonomy.
 Pestalozzi's philosophy of education was based on a four-
sphere concept of life and the premise that human nature was
essentially good. The first three "exterior" spheres—home and
family, vocational and individual self-determination, and state
and nation—recognized the family, the utility of individuality, and
the applicability of the parent-child relationship to society as a
whole in the development of a child's character, attitude toward
learning, and sense of duty. The last "exterior" sphere—inner
sense—posited that education, having provided a means of
satisfying one's basic needs, results in inner peace and a keen
belief in God.
 Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Swiss social reformer and educator,
is known as the Father of Modern Education. The modern era of
education started with him and his spirit and ideas led to the
great educational reforms in Europe in the nineteenth century.
 Pestalozzi believed in the ability of every individual human being
to learn and in the right of every individual to education. He
believed that it was the duty of society to put this right into
practice. His beliefs led to education becoming democratic; in
Europe, education became available for everyone.
 Pestalozzi was particularly concerned about the condition of the
poor. Some of them did not go to school. If they did, the school
education was often useless for their needs. He wanted to
provide them with an education which would make them
independent and able to improve their own lives.
 Pestalozzi believed that education should develop the powers of
‘Head’, ‘Heart’ and ‘Hands’. He believed that this would help
create individuals who are capable of knowing what is right and
what is wrong and of acting according to this knowledge. Thus
the well-being of every individual could be improved and each
individual could become a responsible citizen. He believed that
empowering and ennobling every individual in this way was the
 only way to improve society and bring peace and security to the
world. His aim was for a complete theory of education that would
lead to a practical way of bringing happiness to humankind.
 Pestalozzi saw teaching as a subject worth studying in its own
right and he is therefore known as the father of pedagogy (the
method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic
subject or theoretical concept). He caused education to become
a separate branch of knowledge, alongside politics and other
recognised areas of knowledge.
 Pestalozzi’s approach has had massive influence on education,
for example, his influence, as well as his relevance to education
today, is clear in the importance now put on:

 The interests and needs of the child

 A child-centred rather than teacher-centred approach to

teaching

 Active rather than passive participation in the learning

experience

 The freedom of the child based on his or her natural

development balanced with the self-discipline to function well as
an individual and in society

 The child having direct experience of the world and the use of
natural objects in teaching

 The use of the senses in training pupils in observation and

judgment

 Cooperation between the school and the home and between

parents and teachers

 The importance of an all-round education – an education of the

head, the heart and the hands, but which is led by the heart
 The use of systemized subjects of instruction, which are also
carefully graduated and illustrated

 Learning which is cross-curricular and includes a varied school

life

 Education which puts emphasis on how things are taught as well

as what is taught

 Authority based on love, not fear

 Teacher training

 Pestalozzi’s influence over the spirit, the methods and the

theory of education has continued into the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries and most of his principles have been
assimilated into the modern system of education.