Outlines of Educational DoctrineHerbart, Johann Friedrich
Philosophy
Outlines of Educational Doctrine
Herbart, Johann Friedrich
Education -- Philosophy
These and similar observations, however, apply by no means equally to
every child. On the contrary, children differ greatly from one another;
and, with the child’s individuality, his one-sidedness already begins.
112. It follows at once that the first thing to be done, in a school
where many children are to be taught together, is to make the children
more alike in their knowledge. To this end the store of experiences
which they bring with them must be worked over. But the homogeneity of
pupils, desirable as it is, is not the sole aim. We must take care also
that the whole of instruction acts upon the particular stock of ideas
of each pupil taken individually. We must seek those points of contact
and departure to which attention has repeatedly been called above, and
hence cannot leave the pupil’s mass of ideas in its original crude
state. Thoughtful teachers have long since testified to the necessity
of this requirement, which mere scholars in their zeal for learning
fail again and again to appreciate.
Niemeyer, in his widely read work, opens his treatment of the
particular laws of instruction with a chapter entitled: “The First
Steps in awakening Attention and Reflection through Instruction,
or Exercises in Thinking.” These exercises are no other than the
elementary processes of analytic instruction. He says: “When the age,
the health, and the strength of children have made instruction proper
seem expedient, the first lesson should be one of the kind described
in the chapter heading. Such exercises might be profitably continued
in some form or other until the ninth or tenth year, and probably even
later. The fact that it is not easy to describe them in a word very
likely explains why we fail to find them in most programmes of private
and public schools. That at last some attention is being given even
in the common schools to this matter is one of the venerable Canon
Rochow’s imperishable services to education.”
Pestalozzi, in his book for mothers, strikes out in the same direction.
It will not serve the purpose, to be sure, to confine oneself, as he
does, to a single object; still, the kind of exercises is indicated
very definitely by him; indeed, more definitely, in some ways, than by
Niemeyer.
113. The notions of pupils about surrounding objects, that is, notions
in which the strongest impressions predominate (111), must be made to
approach uniformity first. This is accomplished by uniform reproduction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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