Outlines of Educational DoctrineHerbart, Johann Friedrich
Philosophy
Outlines of Educational Doctrine
Herbart, Johann Friedrich
Education -- Philosophy
Teachers of manual training everywhere testify to the quieting effect
of directed physical labor upon stormy spirits. Even a truant school
or a school for incorrigibles becomes an attractive place to the
inmates when adequate provision is made for the exercise of the motor
powers. Most children can be controlled through mental occupation,
but there are some to whom motor activity is indispensable. That a
judicious apportionment of sensory and motor activity would favorably
affect the development of all children is not to be questioned.
57. Instruction and training have this in common, that each makes for
education and hence for the future, while government provides for the
present. A distinction should, however, be made here. Instruction is
far from being always educative or pedagogical. Where acquisition of
wealth and external success or strong personal preference supply the
motives for study, no heed is paid to the question: What will be the
gain or loss to character? One actuated by such motives sets out, such
as he is, to learn one thing or another, no matter whether for good or
bad or for indifferent ends; to him the best teacher is he who imparts
_tuto, cito, jucunde_, the proficiency desired. Instruction of this
kind is excluded from our discussion; we are concerned here only with
instruction that educates in the moral sense of the term.
58. Man’s worth does not, it is true, lie in his knowing, but in his
willing. But there is no such thing as an independent faculty of
will. Volition has its roots in thought; not, indeed, in the details
one knows, but certainly in the combinations and total effect of
the acquired ideas. The same reason, therefore, which in psychology
accounts for considering the formation of ideas first, and then desire
and volition, necessitates a corresponding order in pedagogics: first
the theory of instruction, then that of training.
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