Teaching had hardly changed since Ptolemy's day. Education was by rote and rod. A young, ugly, runty, sad-eyed Swiss scholar wanted to do something about it. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi had already thought of preaching as a career—and his first sermon was so bad, the tale goes, that he laughed out loud in the middle of it. He tried law, and flopped again. At 22, in the year 1768, he bought a farm—and failed at that, too. But while his crops went to ruin, he filled his house with waifs, strays and farm kids, and...
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