Outlines of Educational DoctrineHerbart, Johann Friedrich
Philosophy
Outlines of Educational Doctrine
Herbart, Johann Friedrich
Education -- Philosophy
28. Many pupils reveal a curious contrast. In their own sphere they
display a good memory, a lively imagination, keen understanding; by the
teacher they are credited with little of all these. They rule perhaps
over their playmates because of their superior intelligence, or possess
at least the respect of the latter, while in their classes they show
only incapacity. Such experiences suggest the difficulty of making
instruction take proper hold of the inner growth of the pupil. It is
evident, at the same time, that what is customarily ascribed to the
action of the various mental faculties takes place in certain groups of
ideas.
29. The grown man has one group of ideas for his church, another for
his work at home, a third for society, and so on. These groups, though
partially interacting and mutually determinant, are far from being
connected at every point. This is true as early as boyhood. The boy
has one set of ideas for his school, another for the family circle,
still another for the playground, etc. This fact explains better than
intentional reserve the observation that a boy is one being at home or
at school and quite another among strangers.
30. Each body of ideas is made up of complications of ideas, which, if
the union is perfect, come and go in consciousness as undivided wholes,
and of series, together with their interlacings, whose members unfold
successively, one by one, provided they are not checked. The closer the
union of parts within these complications and series, the more absolute
the laws according to which ideas act in consciousness, the stronger
is the resistance against everything opposing their movement; hence
the difficulty of acting upon them through instruction. They admit,
however, of additions and recombinations, and so may in the course of
time undergo essential changes; up to a certain point they even change
of themselves if repeatedly called into consciousness by dissimilar
occasions, _e.g._, by the frequent delivery of the same lecture before
different audiences.
The general notions of things are complexes or complications of their
attributes. Other examples of complexes important to instruction are
furnished by logical concepts and words. But since words of several
languages may be perfectly complicated or bound together with the
same concept, without being just as intimately connected with one
another, it should be noted that when the object or concept comes up at
different times, it will be joined now with this and next with another
language. Yet the repeated perception of the object is not quite the
same perception as before, although earlier ideas mostly coalesce so
fully with later homogeneous ideas that the difference makes itself
felt but little.
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