An introduction to Herbart's Science and practice of education

Preface

In 1892 Mr. and Mrs. Felkin published a translation of Herbart's Science of Education and The ^Esthetic Revelation of the World, to which I contributed a preface. The book has been well received, and adopted as a text book by the University of Cambridge and other educational bodies. The same writers now increase the debt which is due to them from all advocates of scientific educational training by publishing the present Introduction to Herbart 1 s Science and Practice of Education. The object of the book is to answer a question which many students of education are now asking : Who is Herbart ? and what did he and his followers teach ? It answers this question better than any other account of the Herbartian method hitherto published in English. It is difficult to exhibit adequately the educational views of Herbart by merely translating his works. Herbart's use of philosophical phraseology is peculiar, an<J it is scarcely possible for any one to comprehend the full meaning of his pedagogical precepts who has not grasped the scope of his philosophy as a whole, an enterprise for which few students of education have either time or opportunity. Besides this, the doctrines of Herbart, like those of Pestalozzi and Froebel, have been developed by a school of Herbartians to conclusions of which, perhaps, Herbart would have approved, but which are not easily discoverable in the text of his writings. The Herbartian doctrine is not simply Herbart; it has been converted into a body of practice. So, while Mr. and Mrs. Felkin have devoted the first chapter of their work' to an account of Herbart's psychology and the second to an account of his ethics, they add to their admirable presentation of Herbart's own views on practical teaching a description of the methods of modern German teachers who call themselves " Herbartians." The book does not attempt more than this. It is an excellent descriptive account of one of the most important pedagogic schools which sprang out of the school of Pestalozzi. If some parts of this account are more satisfactory than others, it is not vi Preface

the fault of the authors. Herbart's own treatment of the questions of government and discipline is not very satisfactory, nor are the difficulties inherent in them cleared up by his successors. If Mr. and Mrs. Felkin fail in this department to carry conviction to English readers, it is because those who preceded them have failed also.

As it is no part of the province of this book to criticise the doctrines of which it gives an account, such a criticism cannot be expected from the writer of the Preface. He would, however, venture to say, as a practical schoolmaster of some experience, that the part of the Herbartian doctrine which carries least conviction to his mind is that of the concentration centres and the historical culture epochs. Any uniformity in curricula is, so far as it goes, a hindrance to good education. The faculties of the mind do not develop in the same order in different individuals. The mmd in the child and in the young man is always growing, and at a certain normal age it may be considered to be mature ; but some minds have developed quickly, Others tardily ; and, besides this general difference, the tastes for different pursuits at different ages are strongly marked. Curricula naturally take but little note of this divergence. They assume the existence of a normal growth, the same for all. Just in proportion as the curriculum to which the learner is subject is rigid and uniform, so would it fail to be applicable to a large number of students. An ideal education would be different for every child, because the growths of no two minds are the same. Circumstances may force us to compromise, but we should take care that our compromise gains as much for us and loses as little as possible.

In conclusion I may express my conviction that the present book will prove a most welcome addition to the comparatively small number of works on the scientific study of education which exist in the English language.

OSCAR BROWNING,

Director of the Cambridge University Day Training College and Secretary to the Teachers' Training Syndicate. King's College, Cambridge, May, 1895.

AUTHORS' PREFATORY NOTE

To Mr. Oscar Browning we and our readers are a second time indebted for a preface to a work on Herbart, and we gladly take this opportunity of cordially thanking him. Our sincere acknowledgments are also due to Prof. James Sully for his kindness in revising the passages on Herbart's use of the term " soul " ; to Miss K. M. Clarke for revision of part of the manuscript and for many valuable suggestions ; to Dr. Hermann Fehse, of the Real-Gymnasium, Chemnitz, for his careful revision of some of the proofs ; and to Herr Geheimerath Muller, the reviser of Hartenstein's edition of Herbart's works for the German press, for ready help and interest in the work.

Chemnitz, Saxony, April 17th, 1895.

Contents

PAGE

Preface by Mr. Oscar Browning; v

Authors' Prefatory Note . . vii

Introduction

Aim of the work and reasons for undertaking it .... 1

Spread of Herbartian literature and principles of education . . 2 Difficulties in the adoption of his system by the elementary and

secondary schools of Germany 4

Herbart the first to base education directly on ethics and psychology :.-..■ • • 7

The three main divisions of the subject ...... 7

(1) Pedagogy, or the science and art of education.

(2) Ethics: its aim.

(3) Psychology : its means.

CHAPTEE I.— Psychology.

Education : its possibility, need, importance, justification, motive,

work, and aim 11

Herbart's use of the term " soul " 13

The human entity and its endowments, analyzed as an object of

education 15

Factors conditioning the teacher's power 17

The senses, the medium for education 17

The three activities of the soul: presentation; feeling; willing . 19 Presentations: their origin, classification, law r s, varieties, movements, reproduction, and interaction 19

Memory of three kinds: rational, ingenious, and mechanical . 30

Suppressed presentations ; abstract presentations .... 32

Psychical and logical concepts ........ 33

Importance of forming an interconnected circle of thought . . 34

The process of apperception defined 36

Involuntary apperceptive attention 38

Voluntary apperceptive attention . . . . . .39

Feelings and desires analyzed and classified as secondary states

of the soul 40

Herbart's distinction between sensations and feelings ... 43

Formal feelings ; expectation 45

Qualitative feelings ; sympathy . 47

Desire defined 48

„ dependent on the presentations 51

„ leading to will 51

„ differentiated from feeling 51

„ distinction between, and will 52

„ passing into will 52

Contents

CHAPTER II.— Ethics. PAGE

Herbart's definition of ethics 54

The good will 55

The formation of will by insight, the work of education . . 56

The circle of thought as the soui ce of will 57

Motives, the two classes of, which influence the will ... 58

Intuitive judgments 59

Ethical judgments developed by the relationships of the will , 61

The five practical (moral) ideas 62

Two wills in one person, objective and subjective .... 62

The first moral idea : inner freedom 63

„ second „ perfection 65

„ third „ benevolence 66

„ fourth „ right 70

„ fifth „ equity 72

The five ideas classified as formal or material 73

„ „ „ combined supply the concept morality ... 73

The five derived (sociological) ideas 74

Ethics in relation to religion 75

Religion needful to morality 75

„ Herbart's conception of 76

„ in its relation to the child .78

Section 1. — Theory ef Instruction. Formation of character the aim of education 80

Instruction and discipline as means of education .... 81

Educative instruction 81

Experience and intercourse as teaching the child before attending

school 82

The child's store of thought to be examined 82

The child's store of experience and intercourse arranged and

extended 83

Presentative instruction depends on apperception .... 84

Experience and intercourse to be used throughout instruction . 84

Instruction, the two lines of 85

analytic ; synthetic 85, 86

„ example of, based on experience 86

„ „ intercourse 88

The child's mind must be analyzed to itself 88

Instruction must supplement experience and intercourse . . 89

Significance of educative instruction 89

Nature of many-sided interest 90

Interest, receptive and apperceptive, compared 91

apperceptive, as influencing formation of character . . 93

Herbart's definition of .94

far-reaching . 94

immediate 94

many-sided 95

Contents xi

Many-sided interest arising from knowledge is —

(1) Empirical, with illustrations 96

(3) Esthetic „ 96

Many-sided interest arising from sympathy is —

(1) Sympathetic 97

(2) Social 97

(3) Eeligious . 97

Interest, illustrations to, arising from sympathy .... 97

„ an illustration to the six classes of 98

„ "balanced 100

„ the motive power in education 101

„ how created 102

Section 2.— Treatment of the Material of Instruction. Classification of the material of instruction 105

Theory of the formal steps ........ 105

Method units 106

„ the aim of . . 106

The five steps according to Herbart and Eein 107

First formal step : preparation 108

Second „ presentation Ill

Third „ association^ , .113

Fourth „ recapitulation 115

Fifth „ application ........ 116

Principle of the formal steps- not new 118

Example of a lesson according to the five formal steps . . . 118

Section 3. — Selection of the Material of Instruction ; Dual Theory of the Concentration Centres and Historical Culture Epochs.

Material, the selection of, discussed ....... 121

„ principle of its selection, as formulated by Ziller . . 122

The eight historical culture epochs 123

Instruction, humanistic and scientific, must be connected . . 123

Humanistic material to be made the concentration centres . . 124

Concentration material, principles for the selection of . 124

„ „ epic fairy tales for the first year . . 125

„ „ Robinson Crusoe for the second year . . 126

„ „ for the third and successive years . . 127

Parallel material from German history attached to the centres . 128

The dual theory, general remarks on . . . > . . . 129

„ „ a curriculum based on 130

„ „ difficulties in the practical working out of . 130 Eeligious material as concentration centres discussed in the light

of Herbart's ethical aim . 132

Section 1, — Government. PAGE

Insight alone insufficient to form the will 155

Discipline used for the direct formation of character . . . 156

Government, the aim of 156

„ measures employed by —

(1) Occupation 157

(2) Supervision 157

(3) Threatening 158

(4) Punishment 158

Reasoning with little children 159

Herbarfs view of corporal punishments 160

Authority and love to guide the measures of government . . 161

Section 2. — Discipline. Discipline, the aim of 162

„ and government, contrast between 162

„ must help to form a moral will 163

The principle of apperception applied to formation of will . . 163

Action of disparate presentations in the formation of will . . 165

Memory of the will : its conditions 166

Will apperception : its conditions and results 167

" Maxims," Herbart's use of the term 167

The subjective part of character the growth of later years . . 168

The objective „ „ „ earlier „ . . 168

Desires and their regulation by discipline 169

The personality of the teacher 172

Approbation and blame 172

The joint work of instruction and discipline on character . . 173

Discipline, relation of, to interest 174

„ measures of 174

CHAPTER VI. — Conclusion : Some Aspects of Herbart's Work

and Character 184

— Hebbart.

In 1892, with a view to making Herbart's principles better known in England and America, we published a translation into English of his Allgemeine Padagogik, or Science of Education, 1 and with it his short treatise on the JEsthetic Revelation of the World. From private communications and many reviews of this translation we gather that although it has been received with much interest and found many careful readers, some difficulty has been experienced by even thoughtful educationists in understanding various parts of Herbart's system, and at times in getting at his real meaning. This is not surprising. Even to German educationists Herbart is a difficult writer, requiring patience and study. The difficulty to an English reader arises from the fact that the whole tone of thought is new and strange, the terminology is unknown to him, and the knowledge assumed which forms the basis upon which the science is built up, is mostly wanting, or wanting in the form and connection required by Herbart. Ufer, an educationist himself and one of Herbart's best popular expositors, whose work Vorschule der Padagogik HerbarVs we shall make free use of in the following pages, refers in his introduction to this initial difficulty in the study of Herbart. " The reader," he says, " can easily imagine how I plagued myself uselessly when he remembers Herbart's peculiar use of language, and further considers that there are many parts of Herbart's pedagogy which cannot be understood by those who are not acquainted with the auxiliary sciences in Herbartian form which underlie it." It was this same difficulty which

1 Boston : D. C. Heath & Co.

led him to write his valuable little work for those beginning the study of Herbart.

In our introduction to the translation above mentioned, we gave a slight sketch of Herbart's uneventful life and important educational work, and attempted to supply the reader with some of this necessary preliminary knowledge as an aid to understanding the translation. But the space at our disposal was insufficient to give that fuller knowledge, especially of Herbart's psychology, which the reader requires to enter with interest and profit upon a study of his educational system. Our object, then, in the following pages, is to supply this preliminary need, to give the preparatory data sufficient to make the Science of Education comprehensible to a thoughtful reader or an intelligent teacher seeking help in his daily work. We shall not attempt to explain individually, or in the order in which they occur, the obscure passages and terms left undefined by Herbart ; our object will rather be to enable the student, after reading this preparatory sketch, to do so for himself. To this end we shall try to give an outline of Herbart's psychology, ethics, and pedagogy, supplying practical illustrations where such aid is necessary to render his meaning clearer.

A friend once remarked that he never understood a sermon of Dr. Martineau's till he had heard the last word. The reader will have to exercise similar patience with Herbart, and often wait for the last word to illuminate the whole chapter.

The materials have been partly gathered from the two works Herbart wrote as supplementary to the Padagogik, the one Umriss padagogischer Vorlesungen, published in 1835, the other Umriss der Allgemeinen Padagogik, which appeared four years later. For a few of the practical illustrations, for the general idea of the book, and for some of its material we are indebted to Ufer's work above mentioned. 1

It is now more than half a century since Herbart's death, and the seed he spent his life in sowing is bearing fruit. His influence in Germany has rapidly extended during the last

1 Charles Ufer, formerly teacher at Elberfeld and since 1886 teacher in the Higher Girls' School at Altenburg, in Saxony, where the instruction given is ba-s d .on Herbart's the ry.

thirty years, and has spread into other countries. In Germany societies have been formed for promoting education on the lines of his educational principles, as well as for discussion and mutual help. The first of these, representing the Rhine districts and Westphalia, comprised over 400 members. Later on meetings were held in East Germany, and then in Bavaria and Wurtemberg, for extending the work of the societies. Afterwards an important society was formed for Thuringia, and lastly another for Saxony. The Thuringian society has its headquarters at Jena, to whose university a school is attached, wherein Herbart's principles, as elaborated by Ziller and the modern school, are practically applied. . Prof. Rein, Lecturer on Pedagogy at the university, is president of this society and the acknowledged present leader of the modern Herbartian movement. The formation of this society for Middle Germany, with many affiliated sub-societies, which send delegates to the annual meeting, is a new proof of the rapidly increasing influence of Herbart's principles. It holds its annual conference at Erfurt, and the first meeting in 1892 was attended by over 2,000 educationists, when Prof. Rein was elected president of the council for three years. It has been stated by a competent authority that more than half the teachers in Germany, especially those in the secondary schools, such as the Gymnasien, Real, higher mercantile, etc., are disciples of Herbart.

In Austria, Hungary, the Balkan States, Armenia, his followers are to be found, and attempts are being made to introduce his works into Italy and France by means of translations. Ufer mentions especially Edouard Roehrich's Theorie de VEducation aVapr&s les Principcs de Herbart} as a good work. In Holland De Raaf has translated Dorpfeld's book Tiber Denizen und Gedachtniss, besides writing a popular introduction to Herbart's Psychology. In the United States, where Prof, de Garmo is his most enthusiastic advocate, he is widely known. Prof, de Garmo has founded a Herbart society in Saratoga, besides having translated several works of the Herbartian school, such as Lange On Apperception, and pub-

1 Paris, 1884: Delegrave.

lished various treatises and articles. The educational press in the States has been favourable to the Herbartian movement, and some of the reviews closely follow its development in Germany. This work has steadily progressed owing to the continued efforts of the Herbartian school, represented by such men as Ziller (now dead), Dorpfeld, Rein, Lange, Drubal, Lindner, Wolkmann, Ballauf, Kern, Willman, Pickel, Scheller, and others, whose works, elucidating, developing, and practically applying Herbart's ideas, are studied by a large number of German teachers. Their efforts have been mainly devoted on the one hand, to working out into a complete system Herbart's science of education on its theoretical side, and on the other to developing it into a practical method or art. Herbart originally applied his system to secondary education only ; his followers' strenuous work has been to remould all education, elementary and secondary, according to that system. In doing this they have undoubtedly gone beyond Herbart in some of their developments, and it would be an interesting study to trace out, by comparison with Herbart's original principles, how far they have remained true to them. We shall attempt to do this later on in regard to the dual theory of the historical cu 1 ' grades and concentration centres. The great initial diffir lay in the want of suitable manuals, but this has been r overcome by the publication of a number of practical wor^ especially during the last sixteen years, handbooks for teaching, chiefly in elementary schools, various subjects on strictly Herbartian principles. 1

Ufer attributes much of the rapid spread of Herbart's influence to the publication of these practical works. Although, as we have seen, Herbart's principles have exerted a powerful influence on German education, it must not be supposed that his system as such, has been adopted to any great extent in

1 Eberhardt: Poetry in the Elementary Schools (Langensalza : Beyer); Staude : Preparations for Histories of the Old and New Testaments (Dresden : Bleyl) ; Thrandorf : Religious Instruction in the Higher Classes of Elementary Schools (Dresden : Bleyl) ; Staude and Goppert : Preparations for German History (Dresden : Bleyl) ; Fritzsche : German History in the Peopled Schools (Modern) (Altenburg : Pierer) ; Matzat : Method of Geographical Instruction (Berlin: Parey).

either the secondary or elementary schools in Germany. These being for the most part communal, municipal, and state schools, a considerable unanimity of opinion is required before changes can be made in their curricula and methods of teaching. Though Herbart's wide spread influence on teachers must necessarily permeate the schools, and some of his principles are carried out in certain branches of instruction, his system has by no means found such unanimous acceptance as to make more direct and radical changes possible. Perhaps one chief reason for this is, that all elementary schools in Germany, except the purely technical ones, are denominational — either Lutheran or Catholic — and the position which religious instruction occupies in Herbart's system can only with difficulty be accommodated to such conditions. The building up of a firmly established self-contained moral character through the operation of the enlightened will was, as the reader will perceive for himself, the goal of all Herbart's educational efforts. Prom the beginning of his career to its close, this was kept clearly in view, and it determined the whole course of his educational thought, work, and investigations. Knowledge, while always subordinate to this main aim, and indeed only valuable in so far it furthers it, was an indispensable condition to its attaints for with Herbart ignorance and morality could not exist -her. " Stupid people," he says, " cannot be virtuous " \Stumpfsinnige konnen niclit tugendhaft sein 1 ). The school then was to do its part by training the disposition and storing the mind with knowledge. It was to supply its share of the material which must be present for the will to act upon, and in the active manipulation of which that will, with such aid as the teacher could give, must gradually work out its own enlightenment. This work in the school was to be carried on in a religious atmosphere and warmed by religious feeling. But the direct teaching of religion as such, at least in early years, was to be left to the Church, and still more to the home. Even there, to judge from Herbart's words hereafter quoted, 3 it was principally to take forms other than those of dogmas or

1 Umriss pcldagogischer Vorlemngen, p. 64. 2 Ibid., p. 92.

confessions of faith, forms compatible with his theory of morality — a theory based on the mind's intuitive judgments, 1 and not on religion in the common acceptation of that term. The more modern Herbartian school, on the contrary, instead of making the formation of a moral character the great end of education, has set up in its place the formation of a sound Lutheran Christian, and makes formal religious instruction the starting-point from which all other instruction, even of the natural sciences, proceeds. It uses, as we shall hereafter describe, the religious material for the " concentration centres " and " historical culture grades," as the backbone of the whole system of instruction. It is open to grave doubt whether such a use is a true outcome of Herbart's principles, whether it is not rather the result of an effort on the part of his followers to limit the principles which Herbart held to be of universal application by local conditions of thought and faith.

Education being, in Herbart's words, " a vast whole of ceaseless labour, which exacts true proportion from beginning to end," obviously needs a plan or system. To influence the soul 2 aright, a knowledge of its laws is absolutely needful ; hence the teacher requires to be acquainted with the science of psychology.

1 Intuitive judgments form the basis of Herbart's system of ethics- They are to him an ultimate fact of consciousness, independent of the will, standing, as it were, opposite to it, and estimating the value of its acts. The essence of these judgments is the perception, present says Herbart, in every human soul, that to it individually, right and wrong are inconvertible terms; and their universal expression is consciousness pronouncing to itself the distinction for it between right and wrong. The standard by which the intuitive judgments estimate the will's acts changes with the changing states of human thought ; but the judge (the intuitive judgment), which, whatever the standard may be, pronounces to the individual whether he and his fellow-creatures attain in their separate acts of will to the standard or fall short of it, is a constant power in every human soul. Since the intuitive judgments are involuntary and absolute, springing up whenever the question of moral worth or worthlessness has to be determined, and are utterly without proof, since none is possible, they are analogous in nature with the judgments which we pass without any logical evidence on musical harmonies and dis cords on hearing them. On the strength of this analogy, bast d on the involuntary origin and certainty without proof, between the judgments of will and those "of art, Herbart extends the term aesthetic judgments to the intuitive judgments as well as to those passed on art proper.

2 For Herbart's use of the term soul, see p. 18.

It is the handmaid of pedagogy. Herbart says of it, " Psychology is the primary auxiliary science of the teacher; we must have it before we can say of a single lesson what has been taught rightly and what wrongly."

But this large and complicated task has an aim, viz., to build up a moral character. The teacher has to lead the child to the knowledge of good and evil, to train his will to choose the good, and to enable him of himself to keep thereto and continue to make it the law of his life. For active perception of this aim in general, as well as in individual parts, a knowledge of ethics or practical philosophy 1 is needful, and it is thus the second assistant science of pedagogy.

Herbart was the first to base pedagogy, the science of education, directly on ethics and psychology, and this is his great work for, and service to mankind. From ethics he derived the end and aim of all teaching : virtue ; from psychology, the means whereby it is compassed. He is the founder of modern educational psychology ; he made the implicit psychology latent in the best of teaching before his time explicit. As mathematics are the basis of astronomy, so is psychology the only trustworthy basis for any true science of educatiou, and only by the application of that science to the art of education can any certitude be obtained as to its methods and results. Education has hitherto been, and even now is, one of the most uncertain and unsatisfactory of all arts, for it is one in which the practical worker is least certain of his results. Herbart's ideal was a science of education which, translated into practice, must compass its aim. That aim, again — virtue — if the possibility of its universal attainment were to be proved, also needed a firm and universal foundation, and this Herbart" found in the intuitive judgments of the mind. 2 In the mind then he sought and found solid rock, the certitude for both his aim and his means.

We have thus three main divisions of our subject : (1)

1 Practical philosophy is the doctrine of what ought to be as distinguished from general philosophy, or the doctrine of what "is." Whenever practical philosophy is mentioned, morality, or the science of it — ethics— is intended. 2 See note, p. 6.

pedagogy, or the science of education ; (2) ethics, whence we derive its aim ; (3) psychology, whence we derive its means. Herbart, as a practical teacher, began with pedagogy; this led him to study psychology, and later on ethics in relation to formation of character. Then all three combined, and developed in his mind for the remainder of his life, each forming and being formed by the others. His psychological and ethical studies were always carried on and utilized with a view to the work he had set himself to accomplish, viz., the establishment of education on a scientific foundation. The results of his experience and labours were given to the public from time to time in many volumes, of which the Science of Education was one of the earlier, and was written before his Psychology. This inversion of scientific sequence is one of the main causes of the difficulty many readers have found in understanding the Science of Education.

The student therefore who begins the study of it expecting to find it a compact and complete science of psychology will be disappointed. Scattered throughout the book are numerous pregnant psychological statements, and, it must be confessed, side by side with them many dark sayings, the terminology of which alone must leave the reader who is ignorant of Herbart's later psychological works in doubt as to their meaning. The cause of this has already been indicated. The Science, of Education was the outcome of Herbart's practical work as a teacher, while the greater part of its theoretical groundwork lay in his mind unformulated at the time it was written. The formulation of the pyschological basis of the theory of education was, as he says in the introduction to the Science of Education^ at that time only " a pious wish." It is true that he begau his study of psychology during his teacher years in Berne with an attempt to calculate and express the working of elementary psychologic laws in terms of mathematics. But Herbart's own words, as well as the internal evidence of the Science of Education, prove that no system of psychology was formulated by him till long after its appearance in 1806. In a letter of 1831 to his friend Schmidt on " The Application of Psychology to Education," he writes, " The Science of Education is incomplete, for although, as the title says, it is deduced from the aim of education, the psychology, which I was at that time only beginning to search for, is deficient." Again, in his announcement of the Outlines of Educational Lectures in 1835 he writes, " The psychology of the author was worked out and written down during many years of educational activity, and rose in great part out of the experiences acquired thereby."

Something of the same difficulty, though arising from a different cause, will be felt by the reader in understanding the ethical element in the Science of Education. Many of the terms found there — for instance, the idea of benevolence, the idea of perfection, the objective and subjective sides of character — are used by Herbart in a sense peculiarly his own, and they therefore only receive their explanation and significance when the connotation he gives them is fully understood.