Outlines of Educational DoctrineHerbart, Johann Friedrich
Philosophy
Outlines of Educational Doctrine
Herbart, Johann Friedrich
Education -- Philosophy
31. The inner structure of groups of ideas becomes discernible in a
measure when thoughts are bodied forth in speech. Its most general
aspect is disclosed in the construction of a period. Conjunctions
particularly are important in that they, without denoting a content
of their own, serve as hints to the listener. They point out to him
the connection, the antitheses, the positiveness, or the uncertainty
of the speaker’s utterances; for the meanings of conjunctions can be
traced back to the series-form, to negation and certitude. It should
be noted that want and refusal are related to negation; expectation,
together with hope and fear, to uncertainty, so that the consideration
of thought masses must also include emotional states. Children possess
the structure of thought just as they experience the emotional states,
long before they know how to embody the same in words with the help
of conjunctions. Certain conjunctions, such as, to be sure, although,
on the contrary, either--or, neither--nor, etc., are not adopted by
children until late.
32. Of equal importance with the inner organization of the pupil’s
ideas are, for the teacher, the degree of ease or difficulty with which
a given mass of ideas is called into consciousness, and its relatively
long or brief persistence in consciousness. Here we are face to face
with the conditions of efficient instruction and training. The most
necessary statements relative to this subject will be made under the
head of interest and character-building.
33. The capacity for education, therefore, is determined not by the
relationship in which various originally distinct mental faculties
stand to one another, but by the relations of ideas already acquired to
one another, and to the physical organism. Every pupil must be studied
with reference to both.
=Note.=--In the minds of those whose early training has been in
the hands of several persons, whose early life has, perhaps, even
been spent in different households or has been tossed about by
changes of fortune, there are usually formed thought masses that
are heterogeneous and poorly correlated. Nor is it easy to win the
single-hearted devotion of such boys. They cherish secret wishes,
they feel contrasts, the nature of which it is difficult to get at,
and soon strike out in directions which education can frequently
not encourage. Far more susceptible of educative influences are
pupils that have been, for a long time, under the guidance of only
one person,--of the mother especially,--who has had their full
confidence. It now remains to base their further training on what
already exists and to refrain from demanding sudden leaps.
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