Development of Education, Upbringing, And Pedagogical Thought in Primary Classes from the 17th Century to The First Half of the 20th Century

Аннотация

The article traces the long-term evolution of primary-school education from the advent of early modernity to the threshold of contemporary pedagogy. Drawing on published sources, archival materials, and comparative historiography, the study reconstructs how social change, philosophical currents, and institutional reforms reshaped the aims, content, and methods of elementary teaching. It shows that the transition from confessional schooling to Enlightenment rationalism, and later to the child-centered paradigms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, transformed the teacher’s professional identity and recast the place of upbringing in the curricular whole. Particular attention is paid to the circulation of ideas across Europe, the Russian Empire, and the United States, revealing networks of influence that prepared the ground for modern universal primary education. The findings illuminate continuities and ruptures in didactic theory, underline the role of socio- economic factors, and illustrate how early initiatives anticipated later global norms. Keywords: History of pedagogy; primary education; upbringing; didactics; Enlightenment; progressive education. appropriate instruction. This claim challenged Introduction: The seventeenth century marked a traditional exclusivity and provided an intellectual decisive moment in the history of European schooling. scaffold for subsequent reforms. Confessional imperatives, civic anxieties, and mercantile aspirations collectively encouraged By the early eighteenth century the Enlightenment governments and religious orders to expand literacy valorised reason and empirical inquiry, inspiring among the young. Johann Amos Comenius articulated educational thinkers such as John Locke to foreground a universalist ideal in Didactica Magna, proposing that experience and habit in character formation. In every child, regardless of estate or gender, could be parallel, emerging nation-states began to perceive guided toward wisdom through structured, age- primary schools as instruments for moulding International Journal of Pedagogics 182 https://theusajournals.com/index.php/ijp International Journal of Pedagogics (ISSN: 2771-2281) industrious, loyal citizens. These ambitions intensified statistics to gauge on-the-ground realities. Where during the Industrial Revolution, when the demands of quantitative data proved fragmentary, triangulation factory production aligned with philanthropic with memoirs and inspectors’ diaries offered campaigns to eradicate ignorance. The Lancaster and qualitative corroboration. The chronological frame of Bell monitorial systems, for all their mechanical rigidity, 1600–1950 guided the sampling process, ensuring promised rapid expansion of schooling at minimal cost representation of pre-Enlightenment, Enlightenment, and evoked fierce debates over discipline, moral industrial, and progressive eras. guidance, and instructional efficiency. The analysis confirms that conceptions of the primary Nineteenth-century romanticism reacted against such school evolved in tandem with shifting notions of utilitarianism. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s holistic childhood, citizenship, and labor. During the vision integrated hand, heart, and head, while Friedrich seventeenth century confessional schools prioritized Fröbel’s kindergarten concept reimagined early catechetical memorization to secure doctrinal education as a nurturing continuum beginning in play. conformity. Instruction remained predominantly oral, Across the Atlantic Horace Mann’s common-school textbooks scarce, and corporal punishment customary. movement welded Protestant ethics to republican Yet Comenius’s advocacy of graduated curricula began citizenship, foreshadowing compulsory attendance to disseminate via Protestant networks, fostering legislation. Meanwhile, in Russia, Konstantin Ushinsky incremental standardization. synthesized Western methodologies with indigenous By the mid-eighteenth century secular rulers, notably traditions, stressing the native language as a medium in Prussia and Austria, institutionalized teacher of moral development. seminaries and mandated schooling as a means of The opening decades of the twentieth century administrative rationalization. The witnessed a convergence of progressive ideas. Maria General¬landschulreglement of 1763 exemplified the Montessori championed self-directed activity, John entwinement of statecraft and pedagogy; it prescribed Dewey framed the classroom as a miniature subjects, teacher qualifications, and inspection democracy, and Anton Makarenko, in the wake of regimes, signaling a decisive shift from clerical to revolution, sought to harmonize collective upbringing bureaucratic oversight. Parallel developments in with productive labor. Each of these figures contested France underscored the tension between universalist the passive reception of knowledge, arguing instead for rhetoric and fiscal limitations, as parish schools environments that cul