Pestalozzi believes that the education process should start with some of the simplest "elements" that children can accept, and then gradually turn to more and more complex elements to promote the all-round and harmonious development of children's natural abilities and strengths. It is advocated that the teaching of children should start with the simplest elements and then gradually expand and deepen. According to this principle, he summed up three elements: morality, intelligence and physique. See paragraphs 2, 3 and 4 of Knowledge Point 4 for specific elements and methods.
The theory of factor education basically conforms to the teaching law of primary education and becomes the most basic principle of primary education reform. Pestalozzi believes that in the primary education stage, reading, writing, arithmetic, preliminary geometry, measurement, painting, singing, gymnastics, geography, history, nature and other courses. It should be set up that all course writing and teaching content should focus on their own elements. Pestalozzi's exploration of teaching elements and his suggestion of expanding primary school teaching curriculum deserve attention.
Pestalozzi believes that any talent within a person is related to certain activities, so the development of each ability comes from special activities and training, while the development of intelligence mainly comes from thinking, so teachers should guide and organize students to carry out various thinking exercises in teaching. Pestalozzi emphasized that it is of positive significance to cultivate and develop students' wisdom and intelligence through thinking practice in teaching.
He sometimes overemphasized formal exercises, which led to some formalistic tendencies and had a certain impact on the development of formal education theory in Europe at that time. Paying too much attention to details and the practice of various elements, thus ignoring the overall structure and extensive learning, has a feeling of "seeing the trees but not the forest", which is not conducive to the all-round development of children. Pestalozzi's Essentialism Education