Outlines of Educational DoctrineHerbart, Johann Friedrich
Philosophy
Outlines of Educational Doctrine
Herbart, Johann Friedrich
Education -- Philosophy
=Note.=--Formerly, strange to say, no distinction was made between
government and training, although it is obvious that the immediate
present demands attention more urgently than does the future.
Still less was instruction given its true place. The greater or
smaller amount of knowledge, regarded as a matter of secondary
importance in comparison with personal culture, was taken up last.
The treatment of education as the development of character preceded
that of instruction, just as though the former could be realized
without the latter. During the last decades, however, a demand
has arisen for greater activity on the part of schools, primarily
the higher schools. Humanistic studies are to bestow humanity, or
culture. It has come to be understood that the human being is more
easily approached from the side of knowledge than from the side of
moral sentiments and disposition. Furthermore, examinations might
be set on the former, but not on the latter. Now the time for
instruction was found to be too limited--a want that the old Latin
schools had felt but little. This led to discussions as to the
relative amount due each branch of study. We shall treat chiefly
of the correlation of studies, for whatever remains isolated is of
little significance.
59. In educative teaching, the mental activity incited by it is all
important. This activity instruction is to increase, not to lessen; to
ennoble, not to debase.
=Note.=--A diminution of mental activity ensues, when, because
of much study and of sitting--especially at all sorts of written
work, often useless--physical growth is interfered with in a way
sooner or later to the injury of health. Hence the encouragement
given in recent years to gymnastic exercises, which may, however,
become too violent. Deterioration sets in when knowledge is
made subservient to ostentation and external advantages--the
objectionable feature of many public examinations. Schools ought
not to be called upon to display all they accomplish. By such
methods instruction not only works against its own true end, but
also conflicts with training, whose aim for the whole future of the
pupil is--_mens sana in corpore sano_.
60. If all mental activity were of only one kind, the subject-matter
of instruction would be of no consequence. But we need not go beyond
experience to see that the opposite is true, that there is a great
diversity of intellectual endowment. Yet while instruction must thus be
differentiated, it should not be made so special as to cultivate only
the more prominent gifts; otherwise the pupil’s less vigorous mental
functions would be wholly neglected and perhaps suppressed. Instruction
must rather be manifold, and its manifoldness being the same for many
pupils in so far as it may help to correct inequalities in mental
tendencies.
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