Outlines of Educational DoctrineHerbart, Johann Friedrich
Philosophy
Outlines of Educational Doctrine
Herbart, Johann Friedrich
Education -- Philosophy
85. As has already been suggested (37), these six kinds of interest
arise from two sources to which historical and nature studies
respectively correspond. With this the facts observed in classical
high schools (_Gymnasia_) coincide: pupils usually lean toward one
side or the other. It would be a serious blunder, however, to affirm,
on this account, an antithesis between the historical and the natural
science interest; or, worse still, to speak of a philological and a
mathematical interest instead--as is, indeed, not infrequently done.
Such confusion in ideas should not continue; it would lead to utterly
erroneous views of the whole management of instruction. The easiest
means to counteract the evil is a consideration of the multitude of
one-sided tendencies that occur even within the six kinds of interest;
we shall be able, at all events, to bring out still more clearly the
manifold phases of interest that must be taken into account. For the
possible cases of one-sidedness are differentiated far more minutely
than could be shown by the discrimination of only six kinds of interest.
“Is the ideal education classical or scientific?” This question,
which is still debated, really means, shall we cultivate chiefly the
_social_ or the _knowledge_ interests. The historical, or culture,
studies belong preëminently on the one side, the natural sciences
most largely on the other. Herbert Spencer in 1860 made a special
plea for science studies in his monograph, “Education,” claiming that
such studies are of chief worth both for knowledge and training. At
that time classical, or culture, studies had possession of almost
every institution for higher education, so that Spencer’s special
plea was justified. At present, however, science, which has developed
its own methods of instruction, holds an equal place with social
studies in the colleges and universities. When we are asked which
half of human interests we will choose, the knowledge or the social,
our reply can only be: We will abandon neither, but choose both. Both
are essential to human happiness; both are necessary for social and
material advance.
86. Empirical interest becomes one-sided in its way when it seizes upon
one kind of objects of experience to the neglect of the rest. When, for
instance, a person wants to be a botanist exclusively, a mineralogist,
a zoölogist; or when he likes languages only, perhaps only the ancient
or only the modern, or of all these only one; or when as a traveller
he wishes to see, like many so-called tourists, only the countries
that everybody talks about, in order to have seen them too; or when,
as a collector of curiosities, he confines himself to one or the other
fancy; or when, in the capacity of historian, he cares only about the
information bearing on one country, or one period, etc.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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