16

Pedagogy

Introduction

Pedagogy, defined in the Oxford Dictionary of Education as 'the art or science of teaching', was, for most of the twentieth century, largely ignored by educationists. The term 'pedagogue' had come to be associated with pedantry and dogmatism, a teacher with a limited and narrow view. Nevertheless, pedagogy has a long and interesting history and its possible value is now becoming increasingly recognised.

Johann Amos Comenius

One of the earliest educators to become interested in a methodical study of pedagogy was Johann Amos Comenius (1592-1670) who was discussed in Chapter 7. Born in Moravia, where he later taught, his educational ideas were set out in his book The Great Didactic with the sub-title, 'the Whole Art of Teaching All things to all Men' (1657). Comenius wished to change the meaningless drill in grammar and rhetoric which characterised the schools of his day. He wrote:

They are the terror of boys, and the slaughterhouses of minds places where a hatred of literature and books is contracted, where ten or more years are spent in learning what might be acquired in one, where what ought to be poured in gently is violently forced in and beaten in, where what ought to be put clearly and perspicuously is presented in a confused and intricate way, as if it were a collection of puzzles - places where minds are fed on words.1

The Great Didactic set out 'to seek and to find a theory of instruction, to which teachers may teach less, but learners may learn more.' For this purpose, Comenius divided the period of a child's growth into four distinct phases - infancy, childhood, boyhood and youth - each with their own distinctive types of institutions: for infancy, the mother's knee, for childhood the vernacular school, for boyhood the Latin school or gymnasium and for youth, the university and travel.

Although Comenius did not specifically discuss psychology in his writings, nevertheless his method of instruction were based on a well-formed theory of the mental life and growth of children. Knowledge through the senses formed the basis of the principles of method which he applied in his schools of infancy and the vernacular school. The child's imagination was to be enlarged as his or her knowledge grew, and memory was to be developed and strengthened through practice, though not by mere cramming, but by exploring from the known to the unknown.2

One of Comenius's major contributions to the advancement of pedagogy was the fitting of instruction to the mental development stages of the child. He advocated firm discipline, but urged teachers to seek the motives which stimulated children to learn, and to relate schoolwork to life. Comenius provided instructional assistance by devising a series of attractive textbooks, often illustrated and graded in word difficulty, a practice subsequently adopted by generations of teachers. Thus, Comenius's programme contained a large pedagogical element, much of it addressed to the teacher. In many ways, he was ahead of his time, and for many decades his work was forgotten.

John Locke

Although no mention is made of Comenius in the educational writings of the English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), nevertheless it is clear that he adopted many of his principles (see also Chapter 7). There were obviously differences in their philosophy: Locke saw the process of education as the hardening of the child's body and mind by restraining eating and drinking and by inculcating good habits. In his book Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), Locke saw the child as 'white paper on wax'; this contrasted with Comenius who wrote, 'Nature has implanted within us the seed of learning, of virtue, and of piety. The object of education is to bring these seeds to perfection.' On the other hand, Locke believed that unhappy experiences caused children to dislike those aspects of learning with which the experience was associated. Though the teacher's authority was to be firmly established, he urged that 'playing and childish actions are to be left perfectly free and unrestrained' and that parents should be aware of making rules which were beyond the capacities of children to keep.

Locke, like some of his contemporaries, was unhappy with the narrow and rigid methods of teaching practised in the seventeenth century grammar schools. In Some Thoughts Concerning Education he wrote:

Let the master's industry and skill be never so great, it is impossible he should have fifty or an hundred scholars under his eye, any longer that they are in the school together; nor can it be expected that he should instruct them successfully in anything but their books.3

Importantly, Locke recognises that because of differences in personalities and mental capacities, there is a need to treat each child as unique. 'Each man's mind has some peculiarity, as well as his face, that distinguishes him from all others; and there are possibly scarce two children who can be conducted by the same method'.4 In relating his philosophy to the learning process, Locke initially dismisses 'excessive anxiety' by parents about their children's learning, since, to him, knowledge is secondary, with virtue the main object of education and culture. Nevertheless, he devotes a substantial section to the subjects which should form a curriculum and how they should be taught: Latin should be taught colloquially, learning by heart was 'useless', and arithmetic was to be encouraged, as 'the best sort of abstract reasoning'. Towards the end of this chapter, Locke states, 'This I am sure, nothing so much clears a learner's way, helps him so much on it, and makes him go so easy and so far in any inquiry, as a good method.'5

Locke's views can be criticised on a number of grounds, such as his assumption that the mind and the body were distinct entities which called for separate treatment; that the education of the senses should be of lesser importance (Locke believed, for instance, that the taste for poetry in children should be suppressed), and his assumption that the child could be credited with capacities like those of an adult. Nevertheless, he was one of the earliest educationists to make a link between pedagogy and theories of childhood.

Developments in Germany

Earlier Writers

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries particularly, Germany was the European country which paid most attention to pedagogy. Chairs at universities were established in the subject, often in harness with philosophy. One of the earliest writers was Johann Bernard Basedow (1723-90). He was inspired by Rousseau's Emile, though disagreeing with Rousseau on the extent to which morality could be left entirely to nature, and he also favoured direct instruction. Basedow's contribution to the advancement of the study of pedagogy was an encyclopaedic treatise entitled Elementary Book (1770-72), which set out methods of teaching curriculum content. His treatment of method was intended as much for parents as for teachers. The emphasis was on what was useful for everyday life, including physical education and vocational training, with a strong bias towards humanistic rather than the theological education then current. Languages and science were reduced to their purely practical aspects and art and drawing were encouraged.

The second part of Basedow's strategy was to open a school, called the 'Philanthropium', at Dessau, which would act as an experimental laboratory, where pupils could be taught on the lines set out in the Elementary Book, and also act as a training centre for future teachers. The school was based on the notion that education should be an enjoyable experience, and that children should be treated as children 'so that they might remain longer uncorrupted'. Like Comenius, Basedow emphasised the need to reduce memory work and instead, use children's senses to make acquaintance with the world. In many ways the activities of the Philanthropium was a forerunner of the modern activities curriculum. Goethe, who visited the school, praised Basedow's methods as did Kant in his treatise On Pedagogy, stating, 'It was the only school in which the teachers had liberty to work according to their own methods and schemes, and where they were in free communication with all learned men throughout Germany'.6

There were a number of other academics who took a close interest in the development of pedagogy. Friedrich Edward Beneke (1758-1854), a professor of philosophy at Göttingen University, applied his interest in psychology to education and the school room. His book Doctrine of Education and Instruction, which attempted to establish the phenomenon of mind on a scientific basis, was widely used in German normal schools. Another influential writer, Johann Charles Frederick Rosenkranz (1805-79), professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg University from 1831, published Pedagogics as a System in 1848. His system, designed to make pedagogics a science, consisted of an elaborate scheme which drew on examples from all parts of the world to demonstrate different aspects of the physical, intellectual, moral, national, theocratic and humanitarian modes.7 Like many other overarching pedagogical schemes, its implementation would have been difficult, but it provided a useful framework for educationists to explore.

Friedrich Froebel

The work of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi has already been discussed (see Chapter 8). Before taking up teaching, Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), had spent two years at Yverdon, where Pestalozzi's school had been established. Although he admired Pestalozzi, Froebel was critical of the lack of system with which the institution was conducted, and believed he was too crudely empirical in his work. After undertaking subsequent further study, Froebel considered that 'The one thing needed for Man was unity of development, perfect evolution in accordance with the laws of his being, such evolution as science discovers in the other organisations of nature.' He argued that 'Education becomes a science when the educator himself practises the science of life.' Educational theory, he maintained, 'consists in the principles derived from such insights which ... enables intelligent beings to achieve the purpose for which they are created'. One writer has called this the first expression in the Western educational record that education is capable of becoming a science, and pedagogy a technology.8

Froebel drew his philosophy, which he set out in his book The Education of Man (1826), from four sources: (1) post-Kantian philosophy, especially pantheism, which states that everything is in God and is an expression of His creative will; (2) the development of scientific knowledge for the light it throws on the course of human development; (3) the writings of great educators, in order to create a teacher's own theories; and (4) the scientific observation of human development. The growth of the child, Froebel stated, was like the growth of a plant, to be cared for and tended. He also emphasised the importance of play which led to purposeful activity in the classroom.9 Human growth took place in stages, and the nascent feature of each stage defines the educational aim of a particular stage

The kindergarten, a 'nursery school for little children', was opened in 1837 to put these theories into practice. Froebel developed a series of toys and apparatus called gifts and occupations, which, while providing for children's play, at the same time trained them in dexterity of movement and gave them insights into the laws of nature. Games and singing played an important part in the educational process. The Froebelian movement had become established within his own life time with about 20 kindergartens training mainly young girls in his method. The movement quickly spread to other countries and continents and was particularly well received in Great Britain.

Johann Friedrich Herbart

A more practical approach to pedagogy was formulated by Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841). After attending university, Herbart studied the works of Pestalozzi and developed an interest in the philosophy and science of education. From 1809, he was professor of Philosophy and Pedagogy at Konigsberg University and from 1833, at Gottingen. As an early psychologist, Herbart visualised three levels in the development of the mind: first, sensations and perceptions; second, imagination and memory; and third, conceptual thinking and judgement. One special mental function, called by Herbart 'apperception', the linking of new knowledge with previous teaching and similar ideas already experienced by the student, is a notion which is now an accepted part of classroom teaching.

Unhappy with what was being taught in schools, Herbart believed that the acquisition of knowledge could be better assimilated if it were learned with genuine interest. Stored knowledge was useless and therefore Herbart formulated a pedagogy which accorded with the human mind. Education for Herbart meant instruction. There were five steps, each indispensable, in every process of instruction for knowledge to become an instrument of the mind. These were set out in his Plan of Lectures on Pedagogy (1835):

  1. Preparation. Pupils' past ideas and memories relating to the topic being discussed in class are necessary for assimilation.
  2. Presentation. The ordering of lesson material so that the pupil fully understands it.
  3. Association. Comparison with ideas previously brought up in class to be thoroughly assimilated.
  4. Generalisation. An essential step in the development of the mind involving the analysis of sensory experiences.
  5. Application. The final stage in the acquisition of knowledge by using it in the interpretation of life.

Herbart's pedagogical and psychological theories are now out of date, formed as they were before the time of Darwin's work. Herbart's support of the doctrine of cultural stages in the development of the young and the somewhat mechanistic teaching approach which his system entailed are but two examples. On the positive side he demonstrated that faculty psychology was no longer valid, and his scientific and mathematical approach to education and his methodology in the training of teachers were of value for many decades. Herbart's practices were enthusiastically received in America and Britain and flourished in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Some of his basic principles have become educational commonplaces, such as using the child's interest, and the teacher's formulation of lesson plans.

Maria Montessori

Another educationist who attempted a scientific approach to pedagogy was Maria Montessori (1870-1952). Like Froebel before her, she was concerned with the education of the younger age group, having worked with handicapped and poor children in Rome. Arising from this, Montessori evolved a pedagogy which she was able to put into practice. Based on the aim 'to aid the spontaneous development of the mental, spiritual and physical personality' the Montessori method has three main features:

  1. Treat children as individuals. Pupils develop at different rates, so school work has to be adapted to the individuality of the child. The individual was important and he or she was encouraged to work at his or her own rate.
  2. Insistence upon freedom. The child, through work, must be guided to arrive at independence. The teacher should not dominate as the pupil's self-control was the ultimate goal.
  3. Training of the senses. Sensory education was the main distinguishing mark of the system. Montessori believed that there was a close relationship between the senses and the intellect. If sensory training was neglected the individual would be inadequate in later life.

It was the third aspect that gave rise to Montessori materials, specially designed didactic apparatus involving, for example, identification of materials by touch, apparatus with shapes and holes for matching, and frames for developing practical skills. The child proceeded at his or her own pace: this was made possible as the exercises are largely self-corrective.

The Montessorian system has been criticised as being too rigid, with an absence of social training or the development of aesthetic sensibilities, as well as little didactic instruction. One of the major objections to Montessori's pedagogical system was that it was based on a wrong notion of the mental characteristics of a young child.10 Like Herbart's work, many of Montessori's ideas have been absorbed into educational practice, particularly the encouragement of independent learning on the part of the child.

Herbert Spencer

In England in the nineteenth century, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), though not fully working out a theory of education, made a useful contribution towards formulating a rational pedagogy.11 In his book Education, IntellectualMoral and Physical (1861) Spencer included as a first chapter 'What knowledge is of most worth?' and in three following chapters on intellectual, moral and physical education, he examines the most appropriate methods for instruction for each of them, stemming from a scale of activities based on the evolution of man - from self-preservation to leisure and aesthetics.

It is in the second chapter, Intellectual Education, that Spencer draws up a list of necessary studies in a hierarchy, with science as the most important subject in the curriculum, which he saw as developing intellectual qualities, and with literary studies at the bottom. Spencer criticised the Pestalozzian system, believing it to be too sophisticated to operate. 'Knowing so little as we yet do of psychology, and ignorant as our teachers are of that little, what chance has a system which requires psychology for its basis?'.12 Educational methods need to harmonise with mental faculties 'before we can be said to possess that science on which the art of education must be based'.13

In the meantime, Spencer put forward five maxims, in logical order, as a basis for method: (1) proceed from the simple to the complex; (2) proceed from the indefinite to the definite; (3) the education of the child ' must accord both in mode and arrangement, with the education of mankind, considered historically. In other words the genesis of knowledge in the individual must follow the same course as the genesis of knowledge in the race'; (4) proceed from the empirical to the rational; and (5) encouragement should be given to the process of self-development.

Criticisms of Spencer's principles are not too difficult to find. He can be accused of vagueness in not spelling out precise pedagogical procedures, for example, how to proceed from the simple to the complex without taking into account the age, abilities and outlook of the child. Again, the ordering in importance of subjects adopts a viewpoint of what may be valuable in later adult life rather than forming the basis of a school curriculum. However, his emphasis on the importance of science was welcomed at a time when such teaching was largely absent in schools. Perhaps the main value of Spencer's reflections on education was his advocacy a more scientific approach to it.

Alexander Bain

The call for a more scientific approach led in 1875 to one educationist, C.H. Lake, proposing a 'Society for the development of a knowledge of the Science of Education'. After its establishment it provided a useful forum for educationists interested in this topic.14 One of the group, Alexander Bain (1818-1903), professor of Logic at Aberdeen University, wrote a book entitled Education as a Science (1879) pointing out that previous writers had been overambitious in their search for a unitary theory of education. Bain wrote:

I thus propose to remove from the Science of Education matters belonging to much wider departments of human conduct, and to concentrate the view upon what exclusively pertains to Education, the means of building up the acquired powers of human beings.15

The main value of Bain's work lay in the study of the relationship between psychology and physiology, and brain functioning and subjects, that is, how the child acquires capacities and functions. Bain's book became the leading manual used in teacher training colleges for students who were involved in studying theories of education and educational practice. In a series of lectures on the theory and practice of education, James Ward, professor of mental philosophy at Cambridge University, and an exact contemporary of Bain, noted that on the Continent, Paedagogik was usually one of the subjects pertaining to a philosophic chair, claiming that 'it is not hard to shew in a general way that a science of education is theoretically possible, and that such a science must be based on psychology and the cognate sciences'.16

Later Developments

Some interesting work was carried out in Britain in the later nineteenth century, especially in the area of science teaching. The prime mover in this field was H.E. Armstrong (1848-1937), professor of Chemistry at the London Institute. Armstrong was a firm believer in making scientific knowledge better known to the public. From the 1890s, he became involved in curriculum development in his subject, based on heurism. This led to the mounting of courses for elementary school teachers in his method.17 Armstrong was also the author of an article in the Board of Education Special Report on Educational Subjects entitled 'The Heuristic Method of Teaching, or the Art of Making Children Discover Things for Themselves' (1898).

Unfortunately not all pedagogic advances were correctly interpreted. Herbartianism, which stressed the importance of the learner and the role of instruction in planning a curriculum, was popular in England in the last decade of the nineteenth century. This could lead to rigidity as in the following example from a text book of the time:

Aim. How were the objects, which made Columbus decide there was land to the West, carried to the Eastern Atlantic?

Preparation. Why did Columbus sail West? He hoped to find land. Why did he think there was land westward? Various objects had been found in the Eastern Atlantic which he thought had drifted from the West. Mention the objects, (a) Pieces of carved wood were found by a Portuguese pilot in the seas west of Portugal, (b) Reeds and trees were cast up on the western shores of the Azores, (c) The bodies of two men of an unknown race drifted on to the island of Flores.

Require the pupils to quote from their literature Tennyson's Columbus, lines indicating the approach of land:

Still westward, and the weedy seas - at length

The landbird, and the branch with berries on it,

The carven staff.

Had Columbus any other reason for thinking there was land westward?

He had read accounts of it in old books.

Recapitulation of Preparation.18

It has been suggested by Brian Simon that it was only at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth that secondary education was involved in pedagogic approaches. Educational psychology associated with Cyril Burt and others looked to simple mental footrules and in the field of educational theory, mental testing, with its stress on individualism became dominant.19 The advance towards a working pedagogy, it has been claimed, in primary schools, received a setback in 1967 with publication of the Plowden Report on Children and their Primary Schools which stressed the individual needs of children rather than identifying the needs and characteristics of children in general.20

John Dewey

In the United States of America, the psychologist and philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952), saw the need to attempt to match theory and practice in the quest for an efficient pedagogy. In 1896, like Basedow before him, he opened the School Laboratory at the University of Chicago, where 'theories and ideas might be demonstrated, tested, criticized, explored and the evolution of new truths discovered', In his book My Pedagogic Creed (1897), Dewey wrote that education was not a preparation for future living but a 'continuing reconstruction of experience'. The School Laboratory was a community engaged in a social process of enriching the child's own activities: with well-disciplined thinking and co-operative behaviour, education was 'the fundamental method of social progress and reform'. The book opens with the words 'the only true education comes through the stimulation of a child's powers by the demands of the social situation in which he finds himself'. Dewey's ideas were more fully worked out in two further books How We Think and Democracy and Education. As he wrote in the latter, 'nothing has brought pedagogical theory into greater disrepute than the belief that it is identified with handing out to teachers recipes and models to be followed in teaching'.21

The teaching at the Laboratory School, a research centre where theories could be tried out, was a mixture of empiricism and inspiration. The emphasis was on co-operation, co-ordination, sharing and social responsibility. The other main characteristic of the school was its interest in activity: the child was placed in the centre of educational problems and situations were planned where children would have to deliberate in order to solve them. The pupils built up their own understanding through meaningful activities. The curriculum was based on social occupations, classified under four headings: the social, constructive, investigative and expressive impulses or interest. Studies were divided into three groups, science and mathematics, communication and expressive skills and social studies. Each activity involved three types of work, motor, intellectual and co-operative planning.22

The experiment which lasted for eight years was not independently evaluated and its success was not easy to judge. The work provided a vehicle for Dewey's theories to be put into action in an attempt to formulate a suitable pedagogy which would achieve satisfactory educational ends. Some of the more important gains were the confirmation of the importance of the doctrine of interest and socialisation, and the need for co-operative planning, all of which helped to bring about new thinking in the organisation of primary education in the twentieth century.

Conclusion

The Cyclopaedia of Education published in 1907 has an entry on pedagogy which mentions that 'the educational theorist has been too little in touch with the practical education. Without something like scientific discussion on educational subjects, without pedagogy, we shall never obtain a body of organised opinion on education'.23 In the same year, a leading British teacher trainer commented on the current divorce of theory from practice:

The reader is disappointed by the leanness of the land he has explored at considerable pains; and he passes with relief to the part labelled 'practice', which is often full of excellent empirical precepts which appear, however, to be strangely independent of the preceding 'theory'.24

In recent years there has been a world-wide revival of interest in pedagogy. For example, the advent of the national curriculum in Britain following the 1988 Education Reform Act attempted to define common objectives for all pupils in the main subjects, a first necessary condition for identifying effective pedagogical means.25 Jerome Bruner has recently identified four dominant models of learners' minds: seeing children as imitative learners, as learning from didactic exposure, as thinkers, and as knowledgeable individuals, together with the implications of each of these models for pedagogy.26

There is an increasing research literature on pedagogy which focuses on different types of teachers, the context of teaching, and on teaching and learning, from which a suitable complex model of pedagogy is emerging.27 Politicians and policy makers are also taking an increasing interest in pedagogy. It is salutary to conclude with a statement made by an educationist over a century ago:

We may admit that a science of education can never do the half of what educational theorizers have supposed, can never be comparable for exactness and distinctiveness to, say, the theory of navigation or the theory of structures; and yet have reason to believe that such a science will be as valuable to the practical teacher as the theories just mentioned are to the navigator and the engineer.28

References

1. L. Cole, A History of Education. Socrates to Montessori (Holt Reinhart & Winston, New York, 1964), p. 337.

2. F. Eby, The Development of Modern Education (Prentice Hall, New York, 1952), p. 199.

3. J. Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (C. Daniel (ed.)) (National Society's Depository, 1693, 1880 edn ), pp. 143—4.

4. Ibid., p. 363.

5 Ibid., p. 344.

6. R.H. Quick, Essays on Educational Reformers (Longmans. Green, 1895), p. 156.

7. K. von Raumer, German Pedagogy. Education. The School and the Teacher (Brown and Gross, Hartford, CN, 2nd edn. 1876), p. 26.

8. J. Bowen, A History of Western Education, vol. 3. The Modern West:Europe and the New World (Methuen, 1981), p. 339.

9. E. Laurence (ed.), Freidrich Froehel and English Education (Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1952, 1969 edn), p. 22.

10. W. Boyd, From Locke to Montessori (Harrop, 1914), p. 237.

11. G. Compayré, The History of Pedagogy, trans. W.H. Payne (Swann. Sonnenschein, 1905), p. 539.

12. H. Spencer, Education. Intellectual, MoraI and Physical (Williams and Norgate, 1861, 1878 edn), p. 63.

13. Ibid., p. 64.

14. R.J.W. Selleck, The New Education. The English Background, 1870-1914 (Pitman, 1968), p. 274.

15. A. Bain, Education as a Science (Kegan, Paul, Trench, Triibner, 1879, 1892 edn), p. 9.

16. J. Ward, Psychology Applied to Education, G. Davies Hicks (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 1926), p. 1.

17. E.W. Jenkins and B.J. Swinnerton, Junior School Science Education in England and Wales since 1900 (Woburn Press, 1998), p. 9.

18. C.I. Dodd, Introduction to the Herbartian Principles of Teaching (Swann, Sonnenschein, 1898), p. 160.

19. B. Simon, 'Why No Pedagogy in England?' in B. Simon and W. Taylor (eds), Education in the Eighties (Batsford, 1981), p. 133.

20. Ibid., p. 141.

21. J. Dewey, Democracy and Education (Collier Macmillan, 1916), p. 170.

22. W.F. Connell, A History of Education in the Twentieth Century World (Curriculum Development Centre, Canberra, 1980), pp. 74-80.

23. A.E. Fletcher (ed.), Sonnenschein's Cyclopaedia of Education (Allen and Unwin. 1907), p. 258.

24. T. Raymont, The Principles of Education (Longmans, Green, 1907), p. 23.

25. B. Simon, 'Some Problems of Pedagogy, Revisited', in The State and Educational Change: Essays in the History of Education and Pedagogy (Lawrence & Wishart, 1994), p. 153.

26. J. Bruner, 'Folk Pedagogies', in The Culture of Education (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996), pp. 53-61.

27. C. Watkins and P. Mortimore, 'Pedagogy: What Do We Know', in P. Mortimer (ed.), Understanding Pedagogy and Its Impact on Learning (Paul Chapman, 1999), pp. 3-8.

28. Ward, op. cit., pp. 2-3.

Further Reading

Adamson, J.W., Pioneers of Modem Education 1600-1700 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1905).

Browning, O. (Butler, N.M.) (ed.) Aspects of Education: A Study in the History of Pedagogy (Industrial Education Society, New York, 1888).

Giroux, H.A., Schooling for Democarcv: Critical Pedagogy in the Modern Age (Routledge, 1988).

Millett, A., Pedagogy - The Last Corner of the Secret Garden (King's College School of Education, 1996).

Open University, Schooling and Capitalism E202, Block 1 (Open University Press, 1977).

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