Outlines of Educational Doctrine. Johann Friedrich Herbart

first the theory of instruction, then that of training.

      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.

      Not only is subject-matter to be varied on account of mental diversity, but also for social reasons as well. For an enlargement of this theme, see the annotation to paragraph 65.

      61. What is to be taught and learned is, accordingly, not left for caprice and conventionality to decide. In this respect instruction differs in a striking manner from government, for which, if only idleness is prevented, it hardly matters what work children are given to do.

      Note.—Children are sent to school from many homes simply because they are in the way and their parents do not wish them to be idle. The school is regarded as an institution whose chief function is to govern, but which incidentally also imparts useful knowledge. Here there is a lack of insight into the nature of true mental culture; teachers, on the contrary, sometimes forget that they are giving pupils work, and that work should not exceed reasonable limits.

      CHAPTER II

       The Aim of Instruction

      62. The ultimate purpose of instruction is contained in the notion, virtue. But in order to realize the final aim, another and nearer one must be set up. We may term it, many-sidedness of interest. The word interest stands in general for that kind of mental activity which it is the business of instruction to incite. Mere information does not suffice; for this we think of as a supply or store of facts, which a person might possess or lack, and still remain the same being. But he who lays hold of his information and reaches out for more, takes an interest in it. Since, however, this mental activity, is varied (60), we need to add the further determination supplied by the term many-sidedness.

It has been pointed out[3] what the content of the word virtue must be, if this word is to be an adequate expression for the ultimate purpose of instruction. Virtue must embrace not only what is purely individual, or subjective, such as piety and humaneness of disposition, but it must likewise include what is objective, or social, in conduct. This fact lends a new significance to the doctrine of interest, for though a normal child is not naturally interested in introspective analysis of his feelings, he is spontaneously interested in what is objective and within the range of his experience. The enterprises of his mates, the regulations of his school or home, the erection of houses, the introduction of new machinery, the social doings of the neighborhood, the havoc created by the elements, the prominent features of the changing year—all these claim his closest attention. The common school studies deal with these very things. Literature (reading) and history reveal to him the conduct of men; the one considering it ideally, the other historically. Mathematics teaches the mastery of material when considered quantitatively, whether in trade or manufacture or construction. Nature studies bring the child into intimate touch with the significant in his natural environment. Geography shows him the most obvious features of the industrial activity about him. It shows him the chief conditions of production in crops and manufactures; it also gives him hints of the great business of commerce. In all these studies, the natural inclinations of the mind are directly appealed to. Not a little of the importance of the doctrine of interest in instruction depends upon these facts; for both the insight and the disposition that instruction is capable of imparting to the pupil relates specifically to the objective side of his character, the one most in need of development and most susceptible of it.

[3] Paragraphs 8–15.

      63. We may speak also of indirect as distinguished from direct interest. But a predominance of indirect interest tends to one-sidedness, if not to selfishness. The interest of the selfish man in anything extends only so far as he can see advantages or disadvantages to himself. In this respect the one-sided man approximates the selfish man, although the fact may escape his own observation; since he relates everything to the narrow sphere for which he lives and thinks. Here lies his intellectual power, and whatever does not interest him as means to his limited ends, becomes an impediment.

It is important for the teacher to see the full scope of the doctrine of interest in its relation to effort. In Herbart’s psychology it assumes a most important place, since the primacy of mental life is, in this system, ascribed to ideas. In other systems, notably those of Kant, Schopenhauer, Von Hartmann, Paulsen, primacy is ascribed to the will, first in unconscious or subconscious striving, later in conscious volition. This fundamental difference in standpoint will account for the emphasis laid now upon interest, now upon effort. Herbart conceives that conscious feelings, desires, motives, and the like have their source in ideas, and that volition in turn arises from the various emotional states aroused by the ideas. Interest with him thus becomes a permanent or ever renewed, ever changing, ever growing desire for the accomplishment of certain ends. It is, consequently, a direct, necessary stimulus to the will. Systems, however, that regard the will as the primary factor in mental life, conceiving of ideas only as a means for revealing more clearly the ends of volition, together with the best methods of reaching them, are naturally prone to place the emphasis upon effort, leaving to interest but a secondary or quite incidental function. Dr. John Dewey has attempted to reconcile these two views.[4] Interest and effort are complementary, not opposing ideas. To emphasize one at the expense of the other, is to assume that the ends for