The Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) envisioned a science of education based on the psychology of child development. He laid the foundation of the modern primary school.

Johann Pestalozzi was born in Zurich on Jan. 12, 1746. His father died shortly afterward, and Pestalozzi was raised in poverty. This early experience with the life of degradation of the poor developed in him an acute sense of justice and a determination to help the underprivileged. He chose to enter the ministry, but his studies in theology at the University of Zurich were without distinction. He tried law and politics, but his humanitarianism was mistaken for radicalism and he became very unpopular even with those he sought most to help. In 1769 he settled on his farm, "Neuhof," at Birr, Switzerland, where he planned to fight poverty by developing improved methods of agriculture.

At Neuhof, Pestalozzi realized that schoolteaching was his true...