Outlines of Educational Doctrine
by Johann Friedrich Herbart · English · Gutenberg #44905 · 520,117 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Outlines of Educational Doctrine
Author: Johann Friedrich Herbart
Annotator: Charles De Garmo
Translator: Alexis Frederick Lange
Release date: February 14, 2014 [eBook #44905]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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[Transcriber’s Notes:
This e-text contains a translation of Herbart’s “Umriss pädagogischer
Vorlesungen”, the main text of which is divided into numbered
paragraphs. The numbers in the Index are references to these
paragraphs. De Garmo’s annotations are indented in this e-text by two
spaces. Herbart’s own annotations have the run-in heading “Note” and
are indented by four spaces.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and small-capped text by =equal
signs=.]
OUTLINES OF EDUCATIONAL DOCTRINE
[Illustration: Publisher’s logo]
OUTLINES OF EDUCATIONAL DOCTRINE
BY
JOHN FREDERICK HERBART
_TRANSLATED BY_
ALEXIS F. LANGE, =Ph.D.=
=Associate Professor of English and Scandinavian Philology, and
Dean of the Faculty of the College of Letters,
University of California=
_ANNOTATED BY_
CHARLES DE GARMO, =Ph.D.=
=Professor of the Science and Art of Education,
Cornell University=
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., =Ltd.=
1904
_All rights reserved_
=Copyright=, 1901,
=By= THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1901. Reprinted
June, 1904.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
PREFACE
The reasons for translating and annotating Herbart’s “Outlines” are,
first, to present to the English-speaking public Herbart’s latest, and
also his most complete, work on education; and, second, to note to some
extent at least the advances made in educational thought since Herbart
laid down his pen.
Herbart’s educational writings are distinguished by two marked
characteristics: 1, their helpfulness in actual teaching; and 2, their
systematic completeness. The thoughtful reader can see the bearing
of each part upon all the others; the purposes of education are so
completely correlated with the means, that, whether the topic under
discussion be apperception or interest or methods of teaching or school
government or moral training or the presentation of a particular study,
the reader is never at a loss to see the relation of this part to the
whole.
The eminent practicability of Herbart’s thought depends upon his
psychological point of view, which is always that of concrete
experience. The moment one tries to apply rational psychology to actual
teaching, one begins to rise into the clouds, to become vague or,
at least, general. The reason for this is that rational psychology
deals with unchangeable presuppositions of mind. We may conform our
work to these standards, but we cannot modify them, any more than we
can a law of nature. But when we have to deal with an apperceiving
content, we feel at home, for over this we have some control. We can
build up moral maxims, we can establish permanent interests, we can
reveal the unfolding of whole developments of thought and effort, we
can fix the time order of studies and parts of studies; in short, we
can apply our pedagogical insight with some degree of success to actual
school problems. Though empirical psychology has in the last fifty
years had as rapid a development as any other department of science,
it has never departed essentially from the direction fixed by Herbart.
New methods have indeed been applied, but the leading motive has
remained empirical; it has had small tendency to drift toward rational
psychology. This fact makes Herbart’s educational thought, so far as
psychological bearing is concerned, seem as fresh and modern as when it
was first recorded.
In one important respect, however, Herbart’s system needs modernizing.
It is in relating education to conditions of society as it now exists.
German society has never been that of English-speaking countries; much
less does German society of the early part of the nineteenth century
correspond to Anglo-Saxon society at the beginning of the twentieth.
Indeed, even had there been correspondence before, there would be
divergence now. It is one of the main purposes of the annotation,
therefore, to point out the social implications of various parts of the
“Outlines.”
The annotation has made no attempt to improve Herbart’s prophetic
vision concerning many important matters, or to elucidate self-evident
propositions, or to supplement observations already complete, true, and
apt.
Especial attention is called to the exactness and illuminating
character of Herbart’s diagnosis of mental weaknesses and disorders
in children, together with his suggestions as to proper treatment.
Students of child-study, moreover, will find in this work not only
encouragement in their work, but also assistance in determining what is
worth studying in the child. The reader is constantly reminded of the
fact that, when written by a master, no book is newer than an old one.
=Cornell University=,
January, 1901.
CONTENTS
PAGE
=Introduction= 1
PART I
_THE DOUBLE BASIS OF PEDAGOGICS_
CHAPTER
I. The Ethical Basis 7
II. The Psychological Basis 15
PART II
_OUTLINES OF GENERAL PEDAGOGICS_
SECTION I. GOVERNMENT OF CHILDREN
I. Theoretical Aspects 30
II. Practical Aspects 33
SECTION II. INSTRUCTION
I. The Relation of Instruction to Government and Training 39
II. The Aim of Instruction 44
III. The Conditions of Many-sidedness 51
IV. The Conditions Determining Interest 60
V. The Main Kinds of Interest 76
VI. The Material of Instruction from Different Points of View 93
VII. The Process of Instruction 105
VIII. Remarks on the Plan of Instruction as a Whole 134
SECTION III. TRAINING
I. The Relation of Training to Government and to Instruction 140
II. The Aim of Training 143
III. Differentiation of Character 146
IV. Differentiation of Morality 151
V. Helps in Training 154
VI. General Method of Training 160
SECTION IV. SYNOPSIS OF GENERAL PEDAGOGICS FROM THE POINT
OF VIEW OF AGE
I. The First Three Years 198
II. The Ages from Four to Eight 201
III. Boyhood 209
IV. Youth 216
PART III
_SPECIAL APPLICATIONS OF PEDAGOGICS_
SECTION I. REMARKS ON THE TEACHINGS OF PARTICULAR BRANCHES
OF STUDY
I. Religion 219
II. History 223
III. Mathematics and Nature Study 241
IV. Geography 263
V. The Mother-tongue 269
VI. Greek and Latin 275
VII. Further Specification of Didactics 289
SECTION II. THE FAULTS OF PUPILS AND THEIR TREATMENT
I. General Differentiation 292
II. The Sources of Moral Weakness 301
III. The Effects of Training 308
IV. Special Faults 312
SECTION III. REMARKS ON THE ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION
I. Home Education 317
II. Concerning Schools 321
OUTLINES OF EDUCATIONAL DOCTRINE
INTRODUCTION
1. The plasticity, or educability, of the pupil is the fundamental
postulate of pedagogics.
The concept plasticity, or capacity for being moulded, extends far
beyond the confines of pedagogics. It takes in even the primary
components of matter. It has been traced as far as the elementary
substances entering into the chemical changes of organic bodies. Signs
of plasticity of will are found in the souls of the higher animals.
Only man, however, exhibits plasticity of will in the direction of
moral conduct.
Had not the youthful mind the capacity to receive culture, education
would be impossible. This educability of the young has rarely if
ever been questioned in actual practice. Much philosophical strife,
however, has raged about the various conceptions of =WILL=, and
the consequent possibility of teaching virtue, or of training
the moral character. The extremes have been _fatalism_, or the
determination of conduct by means of forces lying entirely outside
the power of the individual; and _absolute caprice of will_, or the
determination of conduct entirely by the individual himself without
regard to outside influences. The doctrine of fatalism makes moral
education mechanical; that of volitional caprice makes it futile.
Educational theory must therefore assume a middle ground, in which
the self-activity of the individual and the moulding influence of
education are both recognized.
2. Pedagogics as a science is based on ethics and psychology. The
former points out the goal of education; the latter the way, the means,
and the obstacles.
This relationship involves the dependence of pedagogics on experience,
inasmuch as ethics includes application to experience, while psychology
has its starting-point, not in metaphysics alone, but in experience
correctly interpreted by metaphysics. But an exclusively empirical
knowledge of man will not suffice for pedagogics. It is the less
adequate in any age the greater the instability of morals, customs, and
opinions; for, as the new gains on the old, generalizations from former
observations cease to hold true.
In order to accept the statement that ethics points out the goal of
education, we must conceive of ethics in a broad way. At some periods
in the history of the world, the development of purely individual, or
subjective, character would have been thought a worthy and adequate
conception of the final purpose of education. Other-worldliness was
the ruling ideal. At present, however, we regard that man as most
fit for the world to come who best performs all his functions in the
world that now is. Ethics must therefore be conceived to embrace an
estimation of the value of a man’s conduct in every department of
life. Not only must it estimate the worth of pious feeling, but it
must embrace a consideration of every action in its relation to the
actor’s social, economic, and political environment. A man having
a praiseworthy character must be a good citizen of state, nation,
and community; he must be public-spirited, law-abiding, given to
honest dealing. Every child should be trained to be a useful member
of civilization as it now exists. Piety alone is insufficient; it
must be accompanied by honesty, industry, patriotism, public spirit.
Non-social, or purely individualistic, conceptions of character as
the goal of education must give way to those social ideals through
which alone the highest welfare of both individual and community
are to be conserved. Without such conceptions an industrial state,
such as now exists, becomes a human jungle in which men enter upon
a fiercer struggle than do the beasts of the real jungle. Social
coöperation is essential when we wish to transform a struggle of
mutual destruction into one of mutual helpfulness.
3. Philosophical systems, involving either fatalism or its opposite,
pure caprice of will, are logically shut out from pedagogics, because
the notion of plasticity, implying as it does a transition from the
indeterminate to the determinate, cannot by such systems be brought in
without inconsistency.
Common sense overcomes the logical difficulties of even the worst
systems. Herbart’s remark has, therefore, no practical significance.
The philosophy of Spinoza might easily be described by an opponent
as “fatalistic,” since it leaves no room for special providences in
the physical universe; yet Professor Paulsen, who holds substantially
to Spinoza’s view, is one of the most eminent promoters of the
theory of education in the university of Berlin. Herbart thought
Kant’s doctrine of transcendental will one of absolute volitional
caprice, yet the followers of Kant have been among the most energetic
promoters of mental and moral training. Herbart thinks he sees in
this remark a chance to put his philosophical opponents out of court,
to the benefit of his own system. If one philosopher develops a
system of “fatalism” and another one of “absolute free will,” the one
may be charged with making education impossible and the other with
making it futile. In either case, since we know that education is
neither impossible nor futile, the presumption is that both systems
are defective. This paragraph and others like it are mere indirect
methods of defending Herbart’s system of philosophy: they have no
real significance for the theory of education itself.
4. On the other hand, the assumption of unlimited plasticity is
equally inadmissible; it is for psychology to guard against this
error. The educability of the child is, to begin with, limited by his
individuality. Then, too, the possibility of determining and moulding
him at will through education is lessened by time and circumstances.
Lastly, the established character of the adult develops by an inner
process which in time passes beyond the reach of the educator.
5. Education seems thus to find a barrier, first, in the order of
nature, and later in the pupil’s own will. The difficulty is indeed
a real one, if the limitations of education are overlooked: hence
an apparent confirmation of fatalism as well as of the doctrine of
absolute free will.
Modern scientific evolutionary study of anthropology and history
tends to confirm the hasty thinker in the idea that the circumstances
of the environment completely determine the character and destiny
of men, since their debt to the moulding influences of society and
physical surroundings becomes more and more apparent; yet however
powerful the environment may prove to be in fixing the direction of
mental growth in the race, it cannot rightly be conceived as creating
the growing forces. All the sunshine and warmth in the world will
not cause a pebble to sprout; so no external influences whatever
can develop mind where there is none to develop. The exigencies
of Herbart’s metaphysics drove him into a crusade against Kant’s
doctrine of innate freedom, or transcendental will; all the freedom
that Herbart would admit was that psychological freedom which is
acquired through instruction and training. The quarrel belongs to
eighteenth-century metaphysics, not to modern psychology, nor to
education; for however potentially free an infant may be, nobody
thinks of making it responsible, except so far as growing experience
gives it insight and volitional strength.
=Note.=--Many thinkers fluctuate constantly between these two
erroneous extremes. When looking historically at mankind as
a whole, they arrive at fatalism, as does Gumplowicz in his
“Outlines of Sociology.” Teacher and pupil alike seem to them to
be in the current of a mighty stream, not swimming,--that is,
self-active,--which would be the correct view, but carried along
without wills of their own. They arrive, on the other hand, at the
idea of a perfectly free will, when they contemplate the individual
and see him resist external influences, the aims of the teacher
very often included. Here they fail to comprehend the nature of
will, and sacrifice the concept of natural law for that of will.
Young teachers can hardly avoid sharing this uncertainty, favored
as it is by the philosophies of the day; much is gained, however,
when they are able to observe fluctuations of their own views
without falling into either extreme.
6. The power of education must be neither over- nor under-estimated.
The educator should, indeed, try to see how much may be done; but
he must always expect that the outcome will warn him to confine his
attempts within reasonable bounds. In order not to neglect anything
essential, he needs to keep in view the practical bearings of the
whole theory of ideas; in order to understand and interpret correctly
the data furnished by observation of the child, the teacher must make
constant use of psychology.
7. In scientific study concepts are separated which in practice must
always be kept united. The work of education is continuous. With an
eye to every consideration at once, the educator must always endeavor
to connect what is to come with what has gone before. Hence a mode of
treatment which, following the several periods of school life, simply
enumerates the things to be done in sequence, is inadequate in a work
on pedagogics. In an appendix this method will serve to facilitate
a bird’s-eye view; the discussion of general principles, arranged
according to fundamental ideas, must needs precede. But our very first
task will necessarily consist in dealing, at least briefly, with the
ethical and the psychological basis of pedagogics.
PART I
_THE DOUBLE BASIS OF PEDAGOGICS_
CHAPTER I
=The Ethical Basis=
8. The term _virtue_ expresses the whole purpose of education. Virtue
is the idea of inner freedom which has developed into an abiding
actuality in an individual. Whence, as inner freedom is a relation
between insight and volition, a double task is at once set before the
teacher. It becomes his business to make actual each of these factors
separately, in order that later a permanent relationship may result.
Insight is conceived as the perception of what is right or wrong.
This perception is founded on the spontaneous, or intuitive, feeling
that arises in the mind when certain elementary will-relations are
presented to the intelligence. The unperverted mind has a natural
antipathy to strife, malevolence, injustice, selfishness; it has a
corresponding approval of harmony, good-will, justice, benevolence.
These feelings arise, naturally, only when the appropriate ideas are
present. Insight, therefore, is a state of feeling or disposition
arising from knowledge, or ideas.
When volition has come into permanent accord with educated insight,
virtue has been attained. Conscience approves every virtuous
act; it disapproves every deviation from virtue. Inner freedom,
therefore, is marked by approving conscience; lack of it, by accusing
conscience. The development of virtuous character is not so easy,
however, as might appear from these simple statements, for virtue
has a shifting, not to say a developing character. Elementary as the
fundamental ethical ideas may be when presented in the home or in
the kindergarten, they are not elementary when met with in modern
civilization. At times virtue has been of a military character, as
in Sparta and Rome; at other times it has been ecclesiastical, as in
the Middle Ages. At the present time, in addition to all that it has
ever been from a purely Christian character, it is civil, social,
industrial. Virtue in a modern city has a content quite different
from that in a pioneer mining camp. Furthermore, virtue is uneven in
its development. The race has, for instance, been trained long and
hard to respect unprotected property, so that we may fairly say such
respect has become instinctive; yet when unprotected property comes
into new relations to the individual, as in the case of borrowed
books, we may find only a rudimentary conscience. What scholar is not
a sufferer from this form of unripe virtue?
9. But even here at the outset we need to bear in mind the identity of
morality with the effort put forth to realize the permanent actuality
of the harmony between insight and volition. To induce the pupil to
make this effort is a difficult achievement; at all events, it becomes
possible only when the twofold training mentioned above is well
under way. It is easy enough, by a study of the example of others,
to cultivate theoretical acumen; the moral application to the pupil
himself, however, can be made, with hope of success, only in so far as
his inclinations and habits have taken a direction in keeping with his
insight. If such is not the case, there is danger lest the pupil, after
all, knowingly subordinate his correct theoretical judgment to mere
prudence. It is thus that evil in the strict sense originates.
It is helpful to give the pupil abundant opportunity to pass judgment
upon the moral quality of actions not his own. The best opportunities
are at first the most impersonal ones, for where the child himself is
immediately concerned, the quality of his judgment may be impaired
by intense personal feelings, such as fear of blame or punishment.
Literature furnishes the earliest and most copious examples; later,
history may be helpful, though there is great danger of taking
partial or mistaken views as to the moral quality of historical
deeds. A selection of literature is an artistic whole. All the
relations can be easily perceived, but any given historical event is
likely to be a small section of a whole too vast for the youthful
mind to comprehend. It is for this reason that caution is needed when
passing judgment upon historical facts.
To encourage the child to pass judgment in these impersonal cases
is to sharpen his natural perceptions of right and wrong, and
to influence his disposition favorably. One who has been led
to condemn cruelty to animals in this way is likely to be more
thoughtful himself, and less disposed wantonly to inflict pain. But
every resource of authority and persuasion, as well as appeal to
sensibility and conscience, must be employed to make virtuous action
habitual, and to prevent the generation of evil.
10. Of the remaining practical or ethical concepts, the idea of
perfection points to health of body and mind; it implies a high regard
for both, and their systematic cultivation.
Perfection here means _completeness of efficiency_, rather than
acquisition of holiness. An efficient will is strong, vigorous,
decided; it is self-consistent in the pursuit of leading purposes,
not vacillating or incoherent. Still, the idea of moral perfection is
not a remote one, for, in order to be thoroughly efficient, a will
must be in substantial accord with the ethical order of a rational
society. All its deviations from established law and custom will be
for their improvement, not for the destruction of what is good in
them.
11. The idea of good-will counsels the educator to ward off temptation
to ill-will as long as such temptation might prove dangerous. It is
essential, on the other hand, to imbue the pupil with a feeling of
respect for good-will.
Good-will is one of the three concrete virtues lying at the basis of
social order. It is both _passive_, as in _laissez faire_ attitudes
of mind, and _active_ as in thoroughgoing civic, business, and social
coöperation. School training must seek to impress the mind with
respect for the active rather than the passive type of good-will.
So, too, must it ward off the dangers both of passive and active
ill-will, as manifested, in covetousness, malice, malevolence, envy,
treachery, stinginess, cruelty, hard-heartedness. How these ends may
be attained, will be considered later.
12. The idea of justice demands that the pupil abstain from
contention. It demands, furthermore, reflection on strife, so that
respect for justice may strike deep root.
No idea appeals more strongly to the unperverted youthful mind than
that of justice or fair play; even the gentlest natures become
indignant at manifestations of injustice. The basis of the idea is,
in the thought of our author, our natural displeasure in contention
over that which, in the nature of the case, only one person can
have. Primarily, it concerns property rights, but secondarily it may
extend to other relations in which two or more wills are at issue.
Justice in the acquisition, possession, and disposition of wealth is
the theme of the greater part of every judicial system. The idea of
justice is the second of the three concrete moral virtues necessary
for civilized society.
13. The idea of equity is especially involved in cases where the pupil
has merited punishment as requital for the intentional infliction of
pain. Here the degree of punishment must be carefully ascertained and
acknowledged as just.
=Note.=--This kind of punishment should not be confounded with
educative punishment--so called, _i.e._, punishment through natural
consequences.
The third concrete moral idea is that of _equity_, or _requital_. It
arises when existing will-relations are altered either for good or
bad. The natural demand is that the requital shall be adequate to the
deed. Lack of requital for good deeds we call ingratitude, one of the
most hateful of human failings. In savagery and barbarism private
vengeance is the normal method of requiting injuries. Remnants of
this system still exist in the duel, and in the fierce vendettas of
some sparsely settled regions. Civilization demands that requital
for evil deeds shall be remanded to the executors of established
law. Only in this way is society saved from destructive broils. In
this respect, as in so many others, the school is the miniature of
the institutional world. The teacher is, to a considerable extent,
lawgiver, judge, and executive. Not a small part of his moral
influence upon his pupils depends upon the justice of his requitals
for violated law. Good-will, justice or rights, and requital are the
three fundamental concrete moral ideas upon which sound character,
both individual and national, is based. The remaining two are that
of inner freedom and that of efficiency. Though formal in character,
_i.e._, devoid of positive content, they are equally important with
the more concrete conceptions.
14. Where a number of pupils are assembled there arises, naturally,
on a small scale, a system of laws and rewards. This system, and the
demands which in the world at large spring from the same ideas, must be
brought into accord.
The school is a miniature world, to be regulated by the same system
of moral ideas as that which obtains in society. Compare 182, 310.
15. The concept of an administrative system has great significance for
pedagogics, since every pupil, whatever his rank or social status,
must be trained for coöperation in the social whole to fit him for
usefulness. This requirement may assume very many different forms.
16. Of the system of civilization only the aspect of general culture,
not that of special training, must be emphasized at this point.
=Note.=--The principles of practical philosophy which have just
been briefly indicated are at the same time the starting-points of
ethical insight for the pupils. If the resolve to direct the will
accordingly be added, and if the pupil obeys this resolve, such
obedience constitutes morality. Quite distinct from this is the
obedience yielded, be the motive fear or affection, to the person
of the teacher, so long as that higher obedience is not securely
established.
17. For the business of education, the idea of perfection, while it
does not rise into excessive prominence, stands out above all others
on account of its uninterrupted application. The teacher discovers in
the as yet undeveloped human being a force which requires his incessant
attention to intensify, to direct, and to concentrate.
=Note.=--The maxim _perfice te_ is neither so universal as Wolff
asserted, as though it were the sole fundamental principle
of ethics, nor so objectionable as Kant represents it to be.
Perfection, quantitatively regarded (_Vollkommenheit_--the state of
having _come_ to _fulness_), is the first urgent task wherever man
shows himself lower, smaller, weaker, more narrowly limited, than
he might be. Growth, in every sense of the word, is the natural
destiny of the child, and the primary condition of whatever else of
worth may be expected of him in later life. The principle _perfice
te_ was deprived of its true meaning by the attempt to define by
it the whole of virtue--a blunder, since no single practical idea
ever exhausts the contents of that term. Quite different is the
import of the next remark, which applies solely to the practice of
pedagogy.
18. The constant presence of the idea of perfection easily introduces
a false feature into moral education in the strict sense. The pupil
may get an erroneous impression as to the relative importance of the
lessons, practice, and performance demanded of him, and so be betrayed
into the belief that he is essentially perfect when these demands are
satisfied.
19. For this reason alone, if others were wanting, it is necessary to
combine moral education proper, which in everyday life lays stress
continually on correct self-determination, with religious training.
The notion that something really worthy has been achieved needs to be
tempered by humility. Conversely, religious education has need of the
moral also to forestall cant and hypocrisy, which are only too apt to
appear where morality has not already secured a firm foothold through
earnest self-questioning and self-criticism with a view to improvement.
Finally, inasmuch as moral training must be put off until after insight
and right habits have been acquired, religious education, too, should
not be begun too early; nor should it be needlessly delayed.
It is well known what obstacles confront the American teacher who
desires to give a religious basis to moral character. For a full
discussion of the subject viewed from numerous standpoints, the
reader is referred to “Principles of Religious Education,” Longmans,
Green & Co., New York, 1900. This book is a series of lectures by
prominent school men and others.
CHAPTER II
=The Psychological Basis=
20. It is an error, indeed, to look upon the human soul as an aggregate
of all sorts of faculties; but this error only becomes worse when, as
is usually done, the statement is added that faculties are after all
at bottom one and the same active principle. The traditional terms
should rather be employed to distinguish mental phenomena that present
themselves to experience as successively predominant. In this way we
get the leading features of soul-life, which reminds us sufficiently of
psychology for our immediate purpose.
21. The stage of predominant sense-activity is followed by that of
memory in the sense of exact reproduction of series of percepts
previously formed. Traces of higher activities are as yet absent. The
only thing to be noted is that the series, unless rendered long by
frequent repetition, are generally short; necessarily so, since while
forming they are exposed to continual disturbances caused by great
sensitiveness to new impressions.
22. Even very young children betray at play and in speech that form of
self-activity ascribed to imagination.
The most insignificant toys, provided they are movable, occasion
changes and combinations of percepts, attended even with strong
emotion, that astonish the mature observer, and perhaps excite anxiety
lest some of these motley fancies should become fixed ideas. No evil
after effects are to be feared, however, so long as the emotional
excitement does not threaten health, and passes over quickly. A strong
play impulse is, on the contrary, a promising sign, especially when it
manifests itself energetically, though late, in weak children.
23. Soon there follows a time when the observation of external objects
prompts the child to ask innumerable questions. Here that activity
which is called power of judgment begins to stir in conjunction
with reasoning. The child now strives to subsume what is new under
conceptions already in his mind, and to affix their symbols, the
familiar words. He is still far, withal, from being able to follow an
abstract train of thought, to employ periodic sentences, and to conduct
himself rationally throughout. The slightest occasions will prove him
a child still.
24. In the meantime, the child manifests, besides the physical feelings
of pleasure and pain, affection for one person and aversion to another;
furthermore, a seemingly strong will, together with a violent spirit
of contradiction, unless this is suppressed in time.
25. On the other hand, the ethical judgment as a rule shows itself at
first very seldom and transiently--a foreshadowing of the difficulty
of securing for it later, in spite of obstinacy and selfishness, the
function of control, on which control depend both morality and the
higher sense of art.
26. The boy asks fewer questions, but tries all the more to handle
and shape things. He is gaining knowledge by himself and acquiring
dexterity. Gradually his respect for his elders increases; he fears
their censure and stands in awe of their superiority. At the same time
he attaches himself more closely to other boys of the same age. From
now on it becomes more difficult to observe him. The teacher who has no
previous knowledge of boys who have reached this age, may long deceive
himself in regard to them and will seldom obtain complete frankness.
This reserve is indicative of more or less self-determination, which is
commonly attributed to pure reason.
27. The names for the mental faculties acquire renewed importance with
the beginning of systematic instruction. Their import, however, shows a
marked difference. Now memory is relied on for the acquisition, without
additions or omissions, of prescribed series, the order being fixed
or not, as the case may be; usually there is a slight connection with
older ideas. Imagination is called for to lay hold of the objects
of distant lands and ages. The understanding is expected to derive
general notions from a limited number of particulars, to name and to
connect them. The development of the ethical judgment teachers rarely
wait for; obedience to commands is demanded. Obedience of this kind
depends chiefly on the ease with which antecedent ideas are revived and
connected in response to, but not beyond, a given stimulus. In extreme
cases the fear of punishment effectively takes the place of all other
motives. But often not even the usual memory-work can be successfully
exacted through fear, much less obedience without oversight.
28. Many pupils reveal a curious contrast. In their own sphere they
display a good memory, a lively imagination, keen understanding; by the
teacher they are credited with little of all these. They rule perhaps
over their playmates because of their superior intelligence, or possess
at least the respect of the latter, while in their classes they show
only incapacity. Such experiences suggest the difficulty of making
instruction take proper hold of the inner growth of the pupil. It is
evident, at the same time, that what is customarily ascribed to the
action of the various mental faculties takes place in certain groups of
ideas.
29. The grown man has one group of ideas for his church, another for
his work at home, a third for society, and so on. These groups, though
partially interacting and mutually determinant, are far from being
connected at every point. This is true as early as boyhood. The boy
has one set of ideas for his school, another for the family circle,
still another for the playground, etc. This fact explains better than
intentional reserve the observation that a boy is one being at home or
at school and quite another among strangers.
30. Each body of ideas is made up of complications of ideas, which, if
the union is perfect, come and go in consciousness as undivided wholes,
and of series, together with their interlacings, whose members unfold
successively, one by one, provided they are not checked. The closer the
union of parts within these complications and series, the more absolute
the laws according to which ideas act in consciousness, the stronger
is the resistance against everything opposing their movement; hence
the difficulty of acting upon them through instruction. They admit,
however, of additions and recombinations, and so may in the course of
time undergo essential changes; up to a certain point they even change
of themselves if repeatedly called into consciousness by dissimilar
occasions, _e.g._, by the frequent delivery of the same lecture before
different audiences.
The general notions of things are complexes or complications of their
attributes. Other examples of complexes important to instruction are
furnished by logical concepts and words. But since words of several
languages may be perfectly complicated or bound together with the
same concept, without being just as intimately connected with one
another, it should be noted that when the object or concept comes up at
different times, it will be joined now with this and next with another
language. Yet the repeated perception of the object is not quite the
same perception as before, although earlier ideas mostly coalesce so
fully with later homogeneous ideas that the difference makes itself
felt but little.
31. The inner structure of groups of ideas becomes discernible in a
measure when thoughts are bodied forth in speech. Its most general
aspect is disclosed in the construction of a period. Conjunctions
particularly are important in that they, without denoting a content
of their own, serve as hints to the listener. They point out to him
the connection, the antitheses, the positiveness, or the uncertainty
of the speaker’s utterances; for the meanings of conjunctions can be
traced back to the series-form, to negation and certitude. It should
be noted that want and refusal are related to negation; expectation,
together with hope and fear, to uncertainty, so that the consideration
of thought masses must also include emotional states. Children possess
the structure of thought just as they experience the emotional states,
long before they know how to embody the same in words with the help
of conjunctions. Certain conjunctions, such as, to be sure, although,
on the contrary, either--or, neither--nor, etc., are not adopted by
children until late.
32. Of equal importance with the inner organization of the pupil’s
ideas are, for the teacher, the degree of ease or difficulty with which
a given mass of ideas is called into consciousness, and its relatively
long or brief persistence in consciousness. Here we are face to face
with the conditions of efficient instruction and training. The most
necessary statements relative to this subject will be made under the
head of interest and character-building.
33. The capacity for education, therefore, is determined not by the
relationship in which various originally distinct mental faculties
stand to one another, but by the relations of ideas already acquired to
one another, and to the physical organism. Every pupil must be studied
with reference to both.
=Note.=--In the minds of those whose early training has been in
the hands of several persons, whose early life has, perhaps, even
been spent in different households or has been tossed about by
changes of fortune, there are usually formed thought masses that
are heterogeneous and poorly correlated. Nor is it easy to win the
single-hearted devotion of such boys. They cherish secret wishes,
they feel contrasts, the nature of which it is difficult to get at,
and soon strike out in directions which education can frequently
not encourage. Far more susceptible of educative influences are
pupils that have been, for a long time, under the guidance of only
one person,--of the mother especially,--who has had their full
confidence. It now remains to base their further training on what
already exists and to refrain from demanding sudden leaps.
34. Now, in order to gain an adequate knowledge of each pupil’s
capacity for education, observation is necessary--observation both of
his thought masses and of his physical nature. The study of the latter
includes that of temperament, especially with reference to emotional
susceptibility. With some, fear is the first natural impulse, with
others, anger; some laugh and cry easily, others do not. In some cases
a very slight stimulus suffices to excite the vascular system. We need
to note furthermore:--
(1) The games of pupils. Do they in a thoroughly childlike manner still
play with any object that comes to hand? Do they intentionally change
their games to suit a varying preference? Can distinct objects of
persistent desire be discovered?
(2) Their mental capacity and processes as shown in their studies. Is
the pupil able to grasp long or only short series? Does he make many or
few slips in the recitation? Do his lessons find a spontaneous echo in
his play?
(3) Their depth and consistency. Are their utterances superficial, or
do they come from the depths of the soul? A comparative study of words
and actions will gradually answer this question.
Such observations will take account also of the rhythm of the pupil’s
mental life as well as of the character of his store of thoughts. The
insight thus obtained determines the matter and method of instruction.
The reader will not fail to notice that much of modern child study
is anticipated in the foregoing paragraphs. Further important
contributions to the same subject are made in paragraphs 294–329.
35. Instruction in the sense of mere information-giving contains no
guarantee whatever that it will materially counteract faults and
influence existing groups of ideas that are independent of the imparted
information. But it is these ideas that education must reach; for the
kind and extent of assistance that instruction may render to conduct
depend upon the hold it has upon them.
Facts, at least, must serve as material for methodical treatment,
otherwise they do not enlarge even the scope of mental activity. They
rise in value when they become instinct with life and acquire mobility
so as to enrich the imagination. But their ethical effect always
remains questionable so long as they do not help to correct or modify
the ethical judgment, or desire and action, or both.
This point calls for a few additional distinctions. Generally speaking,
rudeness decreases in proportion to the expansion of the mental horizon
by instruction. The mere diffusion of desires over the enlarged
thought area causes them to lose something of their one-sided energy.
Moreover, if instruction presents ethical subjects of some kind in
a comprehensible way, the pupil’s disposition undergoes a refining
process so that it at least approximates a correct estimate of the
will, that is, the creation of ethical ideas.
Such favorable results are, however, apt to be outweighed by the harm
done when mere knowledge becomes the chief aim of ambition.
36. In order that instruction may act on the pupil’s ideas and
disposition, every avenue of approach should be thrown open. The mere
fact that we can never know with certainty, beforehand, what will
influence the pupil most, warns us against one-sidedness of instruction.
Ideas spring from two main sources,--experience and social intercourse.
Knowledge of nature--incomplete and crude--is derived from the former;
the later furnishes the sentiments entertained toward our fellow-men,
which, far from being praiseworthy, are on the contrary often very
reprehensible. To improve these is the more urgent task; but neither
ought we to neglect the knowledge of nature. If we do, we may expect
error, fantastical notions, and eccentricities of every description.
37. Hence, we have two main branches of instruction,--the historical
and the scientific. The former embraces not only history proper, but
language study as well; the latter includes, besides natural science,
mathematics.
“Historical” must be interpreted to include all human sciences,
such as history, literature, languages, æsthetics, and political,
economic, and social science. “Scientific” may include applied
as well as pure science, and then we add all forms of industrial
training to the curriculum. Other divisions of the subject-matter
of instruction are often helpful. Thus one may speak of the human
sciences, the natural sciences, and the economic sciences. The
economic sciences include those activities where man and nature
interact. Dr. Wm. T. Harris speaks of five coördinate groups of
subjects, corresponding to what he calls the “five windows of the
soul.”
38. Other reasons aside, the need alone of counteracting selfishness
renders it necessary for every school that undertakes the education of
the whole man to place human conditions and relations in the foreground
of instruction. This humanistic aim should underlie the studies of the
historical subjects, and only with reference to this aim may they be
allowed to preponderate.
An interesting attempt to realize the aim here demanded is found in
Professor John Dewey’s “School and Society,”[1] which is in effect a
description of what he is working out in his practice or experimental
school in connection with his department in the University of Chicago.
“If the aim of historical instruction is to enable the child to
appreciate the values of social life, to see in imagination the
forces which favor and let men’s effective coöperations with one
another, to understand the sorts of character that help on and that
hold back, the essential thing in its presentation is to make it
moving, dynamic. History must be presented not as an accumulation
of results or effects, a mere statement of what has happened, but
as a forceful, acting thing. The motives, that is, the motors, must
stand out. To study history is not to amass information, but to use
information in constructing a vivid picture of how and why men did
thus and so: achieved their successes and came to their failures.”[2]
=Note.=--This view does not shut out the other held in regard to
Gymnasia, namely, that their business is to preserve and perpetuate
a knowledge of classical antiquity; the latter aim must be made
congruent with the former.
[1] Dewey, “The School and Society,” University of Chicago Press, 1899.
[2] Dewey, “The Aim of History in Elementary Education,” Elementary
School Record, No. 8, University of Chicago Press, 1900.
39. Mathematical studies, from elementary arithmetic to higher
mathematics, are to be linked to the pupil’s knowledge of nature,
and so to his experience, in order to gain admission into his sphere
of thought. Instruction in mathematics, however thorough, fails
pedagogically when the ideas generated form an isolated group. They are
usually soon forgotten, or, if retained, contribute but little toward
personal worth.
It may be added that the leading practical motive in the teaching of
arithmetic has been economic, the cost of things forming the chief
reliance for problems. Only those parts of nature study that involve
important quantitative relations are fitted for correlation with
mathematics. Biology, for instance, which is _qualitative_, since it
deals with life, is a poor support for mathematics; but physics is a
good one.
40. In general, it will always remain a matter of uncertainty whether
and how instruction will be received and mentally elaborated. To
diminish this uncertainty, if for no other reasons, there is need of
constant endeavor to put the pupil in a frame of mind suitable for
instruction. This task falls within the province of training.
41. But even apart from reference to instruction, training must seek
to ward off violent desires and to prevent the injurious outbursts of
emotion. We may grant that after the days of school life are over,
individual traits will always break forth again in this respect; but
experiences, too, follow, and in connection with these the after-effect
of education comes to light in proportion as education has been more
or less successful. It shows itself in the nature and the amount
of self-knowledge through which the adult strives to restrain his
native faults. Seeming exceptions are in most cases accounted for by
impressions produced in very early youth and long concealed.
As soon as a person attains freedom of action, he usually endeavors
to achieve the life which in his earlier years seemed most desirable.
Hence training and instruction have each to be directed against the
springing up of illusive longings and toward a true picture of the
blessings and burdens of various social classes and professions.
What modifications of individuality training may accomplish, is brought
about less by restrictions, which cannot be permanent, than by inducing
an early development of the higher impulses whereby they attain
predominance.
42. The larger portion of the restrictions necessary during the
period of education falls under another head, that of government. The
question of completeness of education aside, children no less than
adults need to experience the constraint imposed on every one by human
society: they, too, must be kept within bounds. This function the
state delegates to the family, to guardians, and to the schools. Now
the purpose of government refers to present order; that of training to
the future character of the adult. The underlying points of view are
accordingly so different that a distinction must necessarily be made in
a system of pedagogics between training and government.
43. In matters of government, too, much depends on how keenly its
disciplinary measures are felt. Only good training can insure the right
kind of sensibility. A gentle rebuke may prove more effective than
blows. The first thing to do, of course, when unruly children create
disorder, is to govern, to restore order; but government and training
should, if possible, go together. The distinction between these two
concepts serves to aid the reflection of the teacher, who ought to know
what he is about, rather than to suggest a perceptible separation in
practice.
44. In the following pages, general pedagogics, which is followed
necessarily by observations of a more special nature, will be
discussed under the three main heads,--government, instruction,
training. What needs to be said concerning government as the primary
condition of education will be disposed of first. Next comes the theory
of instruction and didactics. The last place is reserved for training;
for an enduring effect could not be expected from it, if it were
severed from instruction. For this reason the teacher must always keep
the latter in view when he fixes his attention on methods of training,
which in actual practice always work hand in hand with instruction. The
other customary form of treatment, that according to age, while not
adapted to the exposition of principles, finds its proper place in the
chapter leading over to the discussion of special topics.
PART II
_OUTLINES OF GENERAL PEDAGOGICS_
SECTION I
GOVERNMENT OF CHILDREN
CHAPTER I
=Theoretical Aspects=
45. We assume at the outset the existence of all the care and nurture
requisite for physical growth and well-being; a bringing up that shall
be as free from pampering as from dangerous hardening. There must be
no actual want to lead a child astray, nor undue indulgence to create
unnecessary demands. How much hardening it is safe to risk will depend
in each case on the child’s constitution.
46. The foundation of government consists in keeping children employed.
No account is taken as yet of the prospective gain to mental culture;
the time is to be fully occupied, at all events, even if the immediate
purpose be merely the avoidance of disorder. This purpose, however,
involves the requirement of ample provision, according to the ages of
pupils, for the need of physical activity, that the cause of natural
restlessness may be removed. This need is more urgent with some
than with others; there are children that seem ungovernable because
compelled to sit still.
47. Other things being equal, self-chosen occupations deserve the
preference; but it rarely happens that children know how to keep
themselves busy sufficiently and continuously. Specific tasks, not to
be abandoned until completed, assure order much better than random
playing, which is apt to end in ennui. It is desirable that adults
possessing the requisite patience assist children, if not always, at
least frequently, in their games; that they explain pictures, tell
stories, have them retold, etc. With advancing maturity, a steadily
increasing proportion of the occupations assumes the character of
instruction or of exercises growing out of it; this work should be
properly balanced by recreations.
48. Next in order comes supervision, and with it numerous commands and
prohibitions. Under this head several things must be considered.
In the first place this: Whether under certain circumstances one might
withdraw a command or permit what has once been forbidden. It is
ill-advised to give an order more sweeping than the execution is meant
to be; and it weakens government to yield to the entreaties, the tears,
or, worse still, the impetuous insistence of children.
Also this question: Whether it is possible to make sure of obedience.
Where children are not kept busy and are left without oversight, the
issue becomes doubtful.
The difficulty grows at a rapid rate with an increase in numbers. This
is true especially of larger educational institutions, but, on account
of the coming and going of pupils, applies in a measure also to common
day schools.
49. The usual solution is greater strictness of supervision. But this
involves the risk of utter failure to receive voluntary obedience, and
of inciting a match game in shrewdness.
As to voluntary obedience, much depends on the ratio of restraint to
the freedom that still remains. Ordinarily, youth submits readily
enough to many restrictions, provided such restrictions bear upon
specific fixed points, and leave elbow room for independent action.
In the work of supervision the teacher will find it hard to rely on
himself entirely, particularly if he has charge of classes only at
stated times. Others must assist him; he himself will have to resort
occasionally to surprises. Supervision is always an evil when coupled
with unnecessary distrust. It is essential, therefore, to make those
who do not merit distrust understand that the measures adopted are not
directed against them.
CHAPTER II
=Practical Aspects=
50. Since supervision is not to be vigorous to the point of ever felt
pressure, child government, to be effective, requires both gentle
and severe measures. In general, this effectiveness results from the
natural superiority of the adult, a fact of which teachers sometimes
need to be reminded. Whatever the plan of supervision, there must be
coupled with it an adequate mode of disciplinary procedure. A record
should be kept in schools, not for the law-abiding pupils, but for
those guilty of repeated acts of disobedience. These remarks do not
thus far include any reference to marks and records pertaining to
education proper; they are confined to what is popularly, but loosely,
called discipline, that is, the training of pupils to conform to the
system of order that obtains in the school.
Home training seldom requires such bookkeeping; but even here it may
at times be useful. Of course, the individual child knows in any case
that some one is keeping an eye on his actions, but the fact becomes
more deeply impressed upon his memory if the reproofs incurred by him
are recorded.
51. It would be in vain to attempt to banish entirely the corporal
punishments usually administered after fruitless reprimands; but use
should be made of them so sparingly that they be feared rather than
actually inflicted.
Recollection of the rod does not hurt a boy. Nor is there any harm in
his present conviction that a flogging is henceforth as much beyond
the range of possibility as his meriting such treatment. But it would,
no doubt, be injurious to actually violate his self-respect by a blow,
however little he might mind the physical pain. And pernicious in the
highest degree, although, nevertheless, not quite obsolete yet, is the
practice of continuing to beat children already hardened to blows.
Brutish insensibility is the consequence, and the hope is almost vain
that even a long period of now unavoidable indulgence will restore a
normal state of feeling.
There is less objection to making use, for a few hours, of hunger as
a corrective. Here only an act of deprivation takes place, not one
involving a direct insult.
Curtailment of freedom is the most commonly employed form of
punishment; justly so, provided it be properly adjusted to the offence.
Moreover, it admits of the most varied gradations from standing in a
corner to confinement in a dark room, perhaps even with hands tied
together behind the back. Only, for several serious reasons, this
punishment must not be of long duration. A whole hour is more than
enough unless there is careful supervision. Besides, the place must be
chosen judiciously.
Solitary confinement, especially in a dark room, is seldom if ever
resorted to in American public schools. For remarks upon the social
basis of modern school punishments, see 55.
52. Corrections of such severity, as removal from home or expulsion
from an institution, are to be administered only in extreme cases; for
what is to become of the expelled pupil? A burden to another school?
And in case the transfer implies the same freedom, the old disorderly
conduct will usually be resumed. Such pupils must, therefore, be placed
under very strict supervision and given new occupations. We must trust
to the new environment to obliterate gradually the old vitiated circle
of thought.
53. It is a well-known fact that authority and love are surer means
of securing order than harsh measures are. But authority cannot be
created by every one at will. It implies obvious superiority in mind,
in knowledge, in physique, in external circumstances. Love can, indeed,
be gained in the course of time by a complaisant manner--the love of
well-disposed pupils; but just where government becomes most necessary,
complaisance has to cease. Love must not be purchased at the expense
of weak indulgence; it is of value only when united with the necessary
severity.
54. In early childhood and with healthy children, government is, on
the whole, easy. It continues to be easy after they have once formed
habits of obedience. But it should not be interrupted. Even if children
have been left to themselves or in charge of strangers only a few days,
the change is noticeable. It requires an effort to tighten the reins
again--something not to be done too suddenly.
Where boys have been allowed to run wild, the attempt to bring them
back to orderly conduct reveals the differences of individuality. Some
are easily made to return to appropriate work by kindness combined with
a moderate measure of forbearance, others have sense enough to fear
threats and to avoid penalties; but we may unfortunately also expect to
find a few whose sole thought is to escape from supervision, however
unpleasant for them the consequences may be.
Where home ties are wanting, this spirit may develop even during
boyhood with ominous rapidity; during adolescence the difficulty of
checking it may grow to be insuperable.
55. As a rule, it is reasonable to assume that youth will try to break
through restraints as soon as these are felt. A sufficient amount of
satisfying activity, together with uniform firmness of the lines of
restraint, will, indeed, soon put an end to persistent attempts of
this kind; yet they will be repeated from time to time. As boys grow
older there is a change of pursuits; now the restraining boundaries
must gradually be enlarged. The question now is whether education has
progressed sufficiently far to make government less indispensable.
Moreover, the choice of work comes to be determined by the prospects
opening before the young man, according to his rank and means, together
with his native capabilities and acquired knowledge. To encourage
such pursuits as being appropriate for him, and, on the other hand,
to reduce mere hobbies and diversions to harmless proportions, still
remains the function of government. In any case government should not
be wholly surrendered too early, least of all when the environment is
such as to justify apprehension of temptation.
Though American teachers are perhaps not accustomed to emphasize the
distinction between government for order and training for character,
the difference, nevertheless, exists, often in an exaggerated form.
Just as fever is looked upon as the measure of functional disturbance
in the body, so disorder in the schoolroom is looked upon as the
measure of the teacher’s failure. As fever is the universal symptom
of disease, so disorder is the index of failure. The diagnosis may
err in either case as to what the seat of the difficulty really is,
but that something is wrong is plain to all. The fact that the public
usually gauge a teacher’s efficiency by the order he keeps has led
in the past to an exaggerated emphasis upon school discipline. The
means for securing good order have greatly changed since Herbart’s
time. A growing sense of social solidarity in the community, together
with the all but universal employment of women as teachers in the
elementary grades, has transferred the basis of discipline from
the teacher to the community. It is social pressure in and out of
the school that is the main reliance for regularity, punctuality,
and order. Herbart wonders what will become of the bad boy if he is
expelled. The modern answer is, he will be sent to the reform school
or to the truant school. The teacher still stands as of old at the
point of contact between the institution and the individual; nor can
he entirely escape the heat generated at times by such contact, but,
after all, it is society that now supplies the pressure formerly
exerted by will and birch. The teacher is now more of a mediator
between the pupil and the organized community, than an avenger of
broken law.
SECTION II
INSTRUCTION
CHAPTER I
=The Relation of Instruction to Government and Training=
56. Instruction furnishes a part of those occupations which lie at the
basis of government; how large a part depends on circumstances.
Children must be kept employed at all events, because idleness leads to
misbehavior and lawlessness. Now if the employment consists of useful
labor, say in the workshop or on the farm, so much the better. Better
still, if the work teaches the child something that will contribute
to his further education. But not all employment is instruction; and
in cases where the mere government of children is a difficult matter,
lessons are not always the most adequate employment. Many a growing boy
will be taught orderly conduct much sooner when placed with a mechanic
or merchant or farmer than in school. The scope of government is wider
than that of instruction.
Teachers of manual training everywhere testify to the quieting effect
of directed physical labor upon stormy spirits. Even a truant school
or a school for incorrigibles becomes an attractive place to the
inmates when adequate provision is made for the exercise of the motor
powers. Most children can be controlled through mental occupation,
but there are some to whom motor activity is indispensable. That a
judicious apportionment of sensory and motor activity would favorably
affect the development of all children is not to be questioned.
57. Instruction and training have this in common, that each makes for
education and hence for the future, while government provides for the
present. A distinction should, however, be made here. Instruction is
far from being always educative or pedagogical. Where acquisition of
wealth and external success or strong personal preference supply the
motives for study, no heed is paid to the question: What will be the
gain or loss to character? One actuated by such motives sets out, such
as he is, to learn one thing or another, no matter whether for good or
bad or for indifferent ends; to him the best teacher is he who imparts
_tuto, cito, jucunde_, the proficiency desired. Instruction of this
kind is excluded from our discussion; we are concerned here only with
instruction that educates in the moral sense of the term.
58. Man’s worth does not, it is true, lie in his knowing, but in his
willing. But there is no such thing as an independent faculty of
will. Volition has its roots in thought; not, indeed, in the details
one knows, but certainly in the combinations and total effect of
the acquired ideas. The same reason, therefore, which in psychology
accounts for considering the formation of ideas first, and then desire
and volition, necessitates a corresponding order in pedagogics: 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 which we act lie
quite outside of our personality, so that these ends would, on the
one hand, have to be _made_ interesting, or, on the other, struggled
for without regard to interest. This assumption is an error. The ends
for which we strive must be conceived as internal, our efforts being
regarded as attempts at self-realization in definite directions. The
purpose of our action is therefore an end desired. In this we have
an interest surely. As an educational doctrine, however, interest
concerns chiefly the means of reaching these ends. If interest in
the means is wanting, the child works with a _divided attention_. He
gives only so much to the means as he must; the remainder is devoted
to his own affairs,--the past or coming ball-game, the picnic, the
walk in the woods, the private enterprises of home or school. But if
a lively interest is felt in the means to the end, then the whole
self is actively employed for the time being in the accomplishment of
the purpose of the hour. The attention is no longer divided, it is
concentrated upon the matter in hand. This in the school is _work_.
When the attention is divided we have drudgery. This signifies that
the interest felt in the end, say a dollar, is not felt in the means
of attaining it, say a day’s labor. However inevitable drudgery may
be in life, it should have no place in the schoolroom. The teacher
must so present the studies that the pupil can perceive at least a
fraction of their bearing upon life. This awakens an interest in them
as ends. He must, then, by conformity to the psychological order of
learning, by enthusiasm and ingenuity, so teach the subjects that
the natural interest in the end will be constantly enhanced through
a lively interest in the daily lesson as the means of reaching it.
The result is unified attention, zeal in the pursuit of knowledge,
hospitality for ethical ideals.
[4] “Interest as Related to the Will,” second supplement to the Herbart
Year Book, revised and reprinted, Chicago University Press, 1899.
64. As regards the bearings of interest on virtue, we need to remember
that many-sidedness of interest alone, even of direct interest such as
instruction is to engender, is yet far from being identical with virtue
itself; also that, conversely, the weaker the original mental activity,
the less likelihood that virtue will be realized at all, not to speak
of the variety of manifestation possible in action. Imbeciles cannot be
virtuous. Virtue involves an awakening of mind.
The conception, that by awakening many-sided direct interest in the
studies we can powerfully affect character, is perhaps peculiar to
the thought of Herbart. Yet when we consider that the knowledge
taught in the school goes to the root of every vital human relation,
that, in other words, the studies may be made instruments for
progressively revealing to the child his place and function in the
world, it follows as a necessary consequence, that to interest the
pupil thoroughly in these branches of learning, is to work at the
foundation of his character, so far, at least, as insight into duty
and disposition to do it are concerned. Even if interest in ethical
things is not of itself virtue, it is an important means for securing
virtue. This idea adds to the teacher’s resources for the development
of character. It also opens up to him a new realm for research. All
literature, history, science, mathematics, geography, language, may
be examined from this new standpoint, both with respect to selection
and to methods of presentation. Select the portions that pertain
intimately to life; teach them so that their important bearing upon
it may be seen.
=Note.=--As has been stated already (17), the most immediate of
the practical ideas demanding recognition from the teacher is the
idea of perfection. Now, with reference to this idea, three factors
are to be considered: the intensity, the range, the unification of
intellectual effort. Intensity is implied in the word _interest_;
extension is connoted by many-sidedness; what is meant by
unification will be briefly indicated in the next paragraph.
65. Scattering no less than one-sidedness forms an antithesis to
many-sidedness. Many-sidedness is to be the basis of virtue; but
the latter is an attribute of personality, hence it is evident that
the unity of self-consciousness must not be impaired. The business
of instruction is to form the person on many sides, and accordingly
to avoid a distracting or dissipating effect. And instruction has
successfully avoided this in the case of one who with ease surveys his
well-arranged knowledge _in all of its unifying relations_ and holds it
together as _his very own_.
This section points to the correlation of studies, a subject to
be considered hereafter in detail. It also throws light upon the
modern system of elective courses or elective studies in secondary
and higher education. The teachable subjects have now become so
numerous that election is imperative unless what is to be taught is
determined arbitrarily without regard to the needs or inclinations of
students. Furthermore, election is made imperative by the fact that
the higher education is now open to all minds of all social classes,
and that differentiated industry calls for many kinds of education.
But the need for mental symmetry, no less imperative now than in the
past, is reinforced by the need for social symmetry. Education must
put the student into sympathetic touch with the whole of life, not
a mere segment of it. Since many-sidedness cannot be interpreted
to mean knowledge of all subjects, this being impossible, it must
be interpreted to mean knowledge of all departments of learning.
Election may be permitted to emphasize departments of study, but
not to ignore them entirely. There are four or more languages worth
teaching, many departments of history, numerous sciences, and various
branches of mathematics, not to speak of the economic, political,
and social sciences. Enough of each department being given to insure
intelligent sympathy with the aspect of civilization it presents,
the student may be allowed to place the emphasis upon such groups of
studies as best conserve his tastes, his ability, and his destination
in life.
CHAPTER III
=The Conditions of Many-sidedness=
66. It becomes obvious at once that a many-sided culture cannot be
brought about quickly. The requisite store of ideas is acquired only
by successive efforts; but unification, a view of the whole, and
assimilation are to be attained besides (65), whence an alternation, in
time, of absorption and reflection. The apprehension of the manifold is
of necessity a gradual process, and the same is true of the unification
of knowledge.
In _absorption_ the mind surrenders itself to the acquisition or
contemplation of facts. Thus a child will stand in open-eyed wonder
at beholding a novel spectacle, the scientist becomes absorbed in
watching the outcome of a new experiment, the philosopher loses
consciousness to all about him in the unfolding of some new train
of thought. Not only may absorption concern momentary experiences,
but it may in a broad way be said to cover considerable periods
of life, as, for instance, when a student becomes absorbed in the
mastery of foreign languages having no immediate relation to his
daily life. _Reflection_ is the assimilation of the knowledge gained
by absorption. The mind, recovering from its absorption in what
is external, relates its new-found experience to the sum of its
former experiences. New items of knowledge in this way find their
appropriate places in the organic structure of the mind. They are
apperceived. The many-sided thus comes to unity.
Rosenkranz calls absorption and reflection, _self-estrangement_ and
its _removal_. “All culture,” he says, “whatever may be its special
purport, must pass through these two stages,--of estrangement,
and its removal.” Again, he says, “The mind is (1) immediate (or
potential); but (2) it must estrange itself from itself, as it were,
so that it may place itself over against itself as a special object
of attention; (3) this estrangement is finally removed through a
further acquaintance with the object ... it feels itself at home in
that on which it looks, and returns again enriched to the form of
immediateness (to unity with itself). That which at first appeared
to be another than itself is now seen to be itself.”[5] This is an
abstract statement of the fact that (1) in learning the mind becomes
absorbed for a time in external objects, ignoring temporarily their
inner meaning and relation to self, and (2) this period of absorption
is succeeded by one of reflection, in which the mind perceives
the significance of what has been observed, noting the laws and
principles underlying the phenomena and thus assimilating them to
what it conceives to be rational.
Owing to the fact that absorption and reflection may refer to very
short and also to comparatively long periods, they may be studied
with respect to their bearing in conducting recitations, and to their
importance in fixing courses of study. The former aspect of the two
processes will in this connection chiefly occupy our attention.
[5] “Philosophy of Education,” pp. 27, 28, New York, D. Appleton & Co.
67. Some teachers lay great stress on the explication, step by step, of
the smaller and smallest components of the subject, and insist on a
similar reproduction on the part of the pupils. Others prefer to teach
by conversation, and allow themselves and their pupils great freedom of
expression. Others, again, call especially for the leading thoughts,
but demand that these be given with accuracy and precision, and in the
prescribed order. Others, finally, are not satisfied until their pupils
are self-actively exercising their minds in systematic thinking.
Various methods of teaching may thus arise; it is not necessary,
however, that one should be habitually employed to the exclusion of
the rest. We may ask rather whether each does not contribute its share
to a many-sided culture. In order that a multitude of facts may be
apprehended, explications or analyses are needed to prevent confusion;
but since a synthesis is equally essential, the latter process may
be started by conversation, continued by lifting into prominence the
cardinal thoughts, and completed by the methodical independent thinking
of the pupil: _clearness_, _association_, _system_, _method_.
In teaching we need to have (1) _clearness_ in the presentation
of specific facts, or the elements of what is to be mastered;
(2) _association_ of these facts with one another, and with other
related facts formerly acquired, in order that assimilation, or
apperception, may be adequately complete; (3) when sufficient facts
have been clearly presented and sufficiently assimilated, they must
be _systematically_ ordered, so that our knowledge will be more
perfectly unified than it could be did we stop short of thorough
classification, as in the study of botany, or of the perception of
rules and principles, as in mathematics and grammar; (4) finally the
facts, rules, principles, and classifications thus far assumed must
be secured for all time by their efficient _methodical_ application
in exercises that call forth the vigorous self-activity of the
pupil. These four stages of teaching may be considered fundamental,
though varying greatly according to the nature of the subject and
the ability of the pupil. It is good exercise for a pupil to take
long, rapid steps when able to do so; it is hopeless confusion to
undertake them when they are too great or too rapid for his capacity.
These four stages in methods of teaching conceived to be essential,
form the nucleus of an interesting development in the Herbartian
school, under the title of “The Formal [_i.e._ Essential] Steps
of Instruction.” The leading ideas will be further described in a
subsequent paragraph (70).
68. On closer inspection we find that instead of being mutually
exclusive, these various modes of instruction are requisite, one by
one, in the order given above, for every group, small or large, of
subjects to be taught.
For, first, the beginner is able to advance but slowly. For him the
shortest steps are the safest steps. He must stop at each point as
long as is necessary to make him apprehend distinctly each individual
fact. To this he must give his whole thought. During the initial stage,
the teacher’s art consists, therefore, preëminently in knowing how to
resolve his subject into very small parts. In this way he will avoid
taking sudden leaps without being aware that he is doing so.
Secondly, association cannot be effected solely by a systematic mode
of treatment, least of all at first. In the system each part has
its own fixed place. At this place it is connected directly with
the nearest other parts, but also separated from other more remote
parts by a definite distance, and connected with these only by way of
determinate intervening members, or links. Besides, the nature of this
connection is not the same everywhere. Furthermore, a system is not to
be learned merely. It is to be used, applied, and often needs to be
supplemented by additions inserted in appropriate places. To be able
to do this requires skill in diverting one’s thoughts from any given
starting-point to every other point, forward, backward, sideways. Hence
two things are requisite; preparation for the system, and application
of the system. Preparation is involved in association; exercise in
systematic thinking must follow.
69. During the first stage, when the clear apprehension of the
individual object or fact is the main thing, the shortest and most
familiar words and sentences are the most appropriate. The teacher will
often find it advisable also to have some, if not all, of the pupils
repeat them accurately after him. As is well known, even speaking in
concert has been tried in many schools not entirely without success,
and for young beginners this method may indeed at times answer very
well.
For association, the best mode of procedure is informal conversation,
because it gives the pupil an opportunity to test and to change the
accidental union of his thoughts, to multiply the links of connection,
and to assimilate, after his own fashion, what he has learned. It
enables him, besides, to do at least a part of all this in any way that
happens to be the easiest and most convenient. He will thus escape the
inflexibility of thought that results from a purely systematic learning.
System, on the other hand, calls for a more connected discourse,
and the period of presentation must be separated more sharply from
the period of repetition. By exhibiting and emphasizing the leading
principles, system impresses upon the minds of pupils the value of
organized knowledge; through its greater completeness it enriches their
store of information. But pupils are incapable of appreciating either
advantage when the systematic presentation is introduced too early.
Skill in systematic thinking the pupil will obtain through the solution
of assigned tasks, his own independent attempts, and their correction.
For such work will show whether he has fully grasped the general
principles, and whether he is able to recognize them in and apply them
to particulars.
70. These remarks on the initial analysis and the subsequent gradual
uniting of the matter taught, hold true, in general and in detail, of
the most diverse objects and branches of instruction. Much remains to
be added, however, to define with precision the application of these
principles to a given subject and to the age of the pupil. It will
suffice, for the present, if we remind ourselves that instruction
provides a portion of the occupations necessary to government (56).
Now, instruction produces fatigue in proportion to its duration; more
or less, of course, according to individual differences. But the more
fatiguing it is, the less it accomplishes as employment. This fact
alone shows clearly the necessity of intermissions and change of
work. If the pupil has become actually tired, that is, has not lost
merely inclination to work, this feeling must be allowed, as far as
is practicable, to pass away, at any rate to diminish, before the
same subject is resumed in a somewhat modified form. In order to have
time enough for this, the systematic presentation must in many cases
be postponed until long after the first lessons in the elements have
begun, and conversely, the rudiments of a subject frequently have to be
at least touched upon long before connected instruction can be thought
of. Many a principle needs to be approached from a great distance.
Herbart found his basis for the four steps of method, viz.
_clearness_, _association_, _system_, _method_, in the ideas of
absorption and reflection, the alternate pulsation of consciousness
in absorbing and assimilating knowledge. Others, adopting this
classification as essentially correct, have related these steps to
customary psychological analysis. Thus Dörpfeld and Wiget point
out that the mind goes through three well-marked processes when it
performs the complete act of learning, namely, _perception_ of new
facts; _thought_, or the bringing of ideas into logical relations;
and _application_, or the exercise of the motor activities of the
mind in putting knowledge into use. Perception gives the _percept_,
thought gives the _conception_ (or rule, principle, generalization),
and application gives _power_. In other words, the receptive and
reflective capacities of the mind come to their full fruition when
they result in adequate motor activities. With respect to perception
a good method will first _prepare_ the mind for facts and will then
_present_ them so that they may be apperceived. The first two steps
are therefore _preparation_ and _presentation_. The first step, as
Ziller pointed out, is essentially _analytic_ in character, since it
analyzes the present store of consciousness in order to bring facts
to the front that are closely related to those of the present lesson;
the second step, _i.e._, presentation, is essentially _synthetic_,
since its function is to add the matter of the new lesson to related
knowledge already in possession. Both together constitute the initial
stages of apperception.
_Thought_ consists of two processes that may also be termed steps,
and that are more or less observable in all good teaching; they are
(1) the _association_ of newly apperceived facts with one another and
with older and more firmly established ideas in order that rational
connection may be established in what one knows, and especially
in order that what is general and essential in given facts may be
grasped by the mind; and (2) the condensation of knowledge into a
_system_, such for instance as we see in the classifications of
botany and zoölogy, or in the interdependence of principles as in
arithmetic. Thought, in brief, involves the association of ideas and
the derivation of generalizations such as are appropriate to the
matter in hand and to the thought power of the pupils.
The third stage, that of _application_, is not subdivided. Most
other followers of Herbart, both German and American, though varying
in methods of approach, conform essentially to the results of this
analysis, distinguishing _five_ steps, as follows:--
1. Preparation--Analysis }
2. Presentation--Synthesis } Apperception of percepts.
3. Association } Thought. The derivation and arrangement
4. Systemization } of rule, principle, or class.
5. Application. From knowing to doing: use of motor powers.
The reader is referred to the following-named works for extended
discussion of this topic: McMurray, “General Method”; DeGarmo,
“Essentials of Method”; Lange, “Apperception,” pp. 200–245; Rein
(Van Liew’s translation), “Outlines of Pedagogy”; Herbart (Felkins’
translation), “Science of Education”; McMurray, C. A. & F. M., “The
Method of the Recitation.” A comparative view of the treatment of
the Steps of Instruction by various authors is found in Van Liew’s
translation of Rein’s “Outlines of Pedagogy,” p. 145.
CHAPTER IV
=The Conditions Determining Interest=
71. Interest means self-activity. The demand for a many-sided interest
is, therefore, a demand for many-sided self-activity. But not all
self-activity, only the right degree of the right kind, is desirable;
else lively children might very well be left to themselves. There would
be no need of educating or even of governing them. It is the purpose
of instruction to give the right _direction_ to their thoughts and
impulses, to incline these toward the morally good and true. Children
are thus in a measure passive. But this passivity should by no means
involve suppression of self-activity. It should, on the contrary, imply
a stimulation of all that is best in the child.
At this point a psychological distinction becomes necessary, namely,
that between designedly reproduced, or “given,” and spontaneous
representations. In recitations of what has been learned we have an
example of the former; the latter appear in the games and fancies of
children. A method of study that issues in mere reproduction leaves
children largely in a passive state, for it crowds out for the time
being the thoughts they would otherwise have had. In games, however,
and in the free play of fancy, and accordingly also in that kind of
instruction which finds an echo here, free activity predominates.
This distinction is not intended to affirm the existence of two
compartments in which the ideas, separated once for all, would, of
necessity, have to remain. Ideas that must by effort be raised into
consciousness because they do not rise spontaneously, may become
spontaneous by gradual strengthening. But this development we cannot
count on unless instruction, advancing step by step, bring it about.
Interest must be conceived as self-propulsive activity toward an
end. It is a part of the teacher’s function to assist the pupil in
making the appropriate ideas strong and spontaneous. Occasionally
a mere suggestion will change the whole mental attitude toward an
end and the means for reaching it. A student one day approached his
instructor with this query: “How can I get through this study with
the least expenditure of time and effort?” The desired answer was
first given. The instructor then remarked that there was another way
of viewing the matter, viz., that one might consider how to get the
_most_ rather than the _least_ out of the study. He then briefly
unfolded its nature and possibilities, whereupon the student became
one of the most interested members of the class. He had come with
only an indirect interest in the subject as an end; he regarded the
study as a required task and the means of passing upon it as so much
drudgery; but he so changed his attitude toward it, that the study
became an end personally desired, and the daily effort a pleasurable
exercise of his self-directed power of thought. The interest that
the instructor had aroused in the end was transferred to the means.
72. It is the teacher’s business, while giving instruction, to observe
whether the ideas of his pupils rise spontaneously or not. If they do,
the pupils are said to be attentive; the lesson has won their interest.
If not, attention is, indeed, not always wholly gone. It may, moreover,
be enforced for a time before actual fatigue sets in. But doubt arises
whether instruction can effect a future interest in the same subjects.
Attention is a factor of such importance to education as to call for a
more detailed treatment.
73. Attention may be broadly defined as an attitude of mind in which
there is readiness to form new ideas. Such readiness is either
voluntary or involuntary. If voluntary, it depends on a resolution;
the teacher frequently secures this through admonitions or threats.
Far more desirable and fruitful is involuntary attention. It is this
attention that the art of teaching must seek to induce. Herein lies the
kind of interest to be sought by the teacher.
_Forced_ and _spontaneous_ are more truly expressive terms than
_voluntary_ and _involuntary_ in this connection. It is not meant
that interested activity is _against_ the will, or even indifferent
to it. On the contrary, it is a form of activity that calls every
resource of the mind into full play. The will is never so promptly
active as when it is doing the things in which it is most interested;
it is, however, a _spontaneous_, not a _forced_ activity.
There is, as Dr. John Dewey points out,[6] a contradiction between
Herbart’s Pedagogy and his Psychology, as follows: the Pedagogy
regards interest as the lever of education, the means for securing
spontaneous activity of mind; the Psychology regards interest as a
feeling arising from the relation of ideas. Ideas must therefore be
_given_, in right relations, to arouse interest, while interest is in
turn conceived as the means of arousing them. This is reasoning in a
circle. The difficulty arises from asserting the primacy of ideas in
mental life, and then speaking of _self-activity_, which presupposes
the primacy of motor, or impulsive activities. The reader will avoid
all contradictions in educational theory by accepting the modern
view of the primacy, not of ideas, but of what may broadly be termed
_will_. The latter view is in accord with biological and historical
science. Ideas are a later production of mind; they serve to define
more clearly the ends for which we work, at the same time giving us
insight into the best means of attaining them. For an interesting
discussion of the primacy of the will, the reader is referred to
Professor Paulsen’s “Introduction to Philosophy,” pp. 111–122.[7]
[6] “Interest as Related to Will,” pp. 237–241, Second Supplement to
First Herbart Year Book.
[7] Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1895.
74. Involuntary [spontaneous] attention is subdivided into primitive
and apperceiving. The latter especially is of the greatest importance
in teaching, but it rests on the former, the conditions of which must
constantly be taken into account.
Apperception, or assimilation, takes place through the reproduction of
previously acquired ideas and their union with the new element, the
most energetic apperception, although not necessarily the best, being
effected by the ideas rising spontaneously. This topic will be treated
more fully below (77). Here it suffices to say that the apperceiving
attention obviously presupposes the primitive attention; otherwise
apperceiving ideas would never have been formed.
The psychological and educational importance of the idea of
apperception, or the assimilation of knowledge, has been much
emphasized in recent years. For a psychological interpretation of
the theory, the reader is referred to Wundt’s “Human and Animal
Psychology,”[8] pp. 235–251. The educational significance of the
doctrine has been well brought out by Dr. Karl Lange, in his able
monograph on “Apperception.”[9] The subject has been more popularly
treated in Dr. McMurray’s “General Method,”[10] and in the writer’s
“Essentials of Method”[11]; also in a number of other works.
[8] New York, Macmillan & Co., 1894.
[9] Boston, D. C. Heath & Co., 1894.
[10] Bloomington, Ill., Public School Pub. Co., 1894.
[11] Boston, D. C. Heath & Co., 1893.
75. The primitive or original attention depends primarily on the
strength of the sense-impression. Bright colors and loud speaking are
more easily noticed than dark colors and low tones. It would be an
error, however, to infer that the strongest sense-perceptions are at
the same time the most adequate. These quickly blunt the receptivity,
while weak sense-impressions may, in the course of time, engender
ideation as energetic as that produced by originally obtrusive
perceptions. For this reason, a middle course must be chosen from
the first. For children, however, the direct sense-perception, even
of a picture, if the object itself is not to be had, is altogether
preferable to mere description.
The presence in the minds of children of ideas--those supplied by
instruction itself not excepted--contrary to the new representations to
be mastered, acts as a hindrance or check. This very fact explains why
clearness of apprehension is not gained where instruction piles up one
thing upon another in too rapid succession. It is essential, therefore,
in the case of beginners, so to single out each fact, to separate
part from part, and to proceed step by step, that apprehension may be
rendered easy for them.
A second hindrance to attention is of a more temporary character, but
may nevertheless work much mischief. It makes a vast difference whether
the ideas aroused are in a state of equilibrium or not. Long sentences
in speech and in books are less easily apprehended than short ones.
They excite a movement of many albeit connected thoughts, which do not
at once subside into their proper places. Now, just as in reading and
writing pauses must be observed, which is done more easily in short
than in long sentences, instruction in general must have its chosen
stopping-places and resting-points at which the child may tarry as
long as may be necessary. Otherwise the accumulation of thoughts will
become excessive, crowding in upon what follows, and this upon the next
new element, until finally the pupils arrive at a state where they no
longer hear anything.
76. The four essentials then for primitive attention are: strength
of sense-impression, economy of receptivity, avoidance of harmful
antitheses to existing ideas, and delay until the aroused ideas have
recovered their equilibrium. But in actual teaching it will be found
difficult to do justice to all of these requirements simultaneously.
Sameness of presentation should not be carried too far lest the child’s
receptivity be taxed too heavily. Monotony produces weariness. But a
sudden change of subject frequently discloses the fact that the new is
too remote from what has preceded, and that the old thoughts refuse
to give way. If the change is delayed too long the lesson drags. Too
little variety causes ennui. The pupils begin to think of something
else, and with that their attention is gone completely.
The teacher should by all means study literary masterpieces for
the purpose of learning from great authors how they escaped these
difficulties. That he may strike the right chord in the earlier stages
of instruction, he should turn particularly to simple popular writers,
Homer, for example, whose story-telling is, on the other hand, too
general and _naïve_ for older pupils who have lost the power to put
themselves back into a past period of culture. Yet it is safe to
say in general, that classic writers seldom take sudden leaps and
never stand still entirely. Their method of unfolding consists in a
scarcely perceptible, at any rate an always easy, advance. They dwell,
indeed, long on the same thought, but nevertheless achieve, little
by little, most powerful contrasts. Poor writers, on the contrary,
pile up the most glaring antitheses without other than the natural
result--the antagonistic ideas expel each other and the mind is left
empty. The same result threatens the teacher who aims at brilliancy of
presentation.
77. The apperceiving, or assimilating, attention (74), though not the
first in time, is yet observed very early. It shows itself when little
children catch and repeat aloud single, familiar words of an otherwise
unintelligible conversation between adults; when a little later they
name, in their own way, the well-known objects that they come upon in
their picture-books; when later still, while learning to read, they
pick out from the book single names coinciding with their recollection;
and so on in innumerable other instances. From within ideas are
suddenly bursting forth to unite with whatever similar elements present
themselves. Now this apperceiving activity must be exercised constantly
in all instruction. For instruction is given in words only; the ideas
constituting their meaning must be supplied by the hearer. But words
are not meant to be understood merely; they are intended to elicit
interest. And this requires a higher grade and greater facility of
apperception.
Universally popular poems do not produce their pleasing effect by
teaching something new. They portray what is already known and utter
what every one feels. Ideas already possessed are aroused, expanded,
condensed, and consequently put in order and strengthened. On the other
hand, when defects are apperceived, _e.g._, misprints, grammatical
blunders, faulty drawings, false notes, etc., the successive unfolding
of the series of ideas is interrupted so that their interlacing cannot
take place properly. Here we see how instruction must proceed and what
it must avoid in order to secure interest.
=Note.=--The apperceiving attention is of so great importance in
instruction that a word or two more will be in place. The highest
stage of this kind of attention is indicated by the words--gaze,
scrutinize, listen, handle. The idea of the examined object is
already present in consciousness, as is likewise the idea of the
class of sense-perceptions looked for. The psychic result turns on
the ensuing sense-impressions, on their contrasts, combinations,
and reproductions. These are able to induce the corresponding
mental states unhindered, because disturbing foreign elements
have already been removed and remain excluded. Passing from this
highest grade to lower degrees of attention, we find that the idea
of the object is not yet--at least not prominently--present, that
this itself first needs to be reproduced and made more vivid. The
question arises whether this can be accomplished directly or only
indirectly. In the former case the idea must be in itself strong
enough; in the second it must be sufficiently united with other
ideas which it is possible to arouse directly. Moreover, the
obstacles to reproduction must be such that they can be overcome.
When the apperceiving attention is once under way, it should be
utilized and not disturbed. The teaching must take the promised
direction until it has satisfied expectation. The solutions must
correspond clearly to the problems. Everything must be connected.
The attention is disturbed by untimely pauses and the presence of
extraneous matter. It is also disturbed by apperceptions that bring
into light that which should remain in shadow. This is true of
words and phrases too often repeated, of mannerisms of speech--of
everything that gives prominence to the language at the expense
of the subject-matter, even rhymes, verse-forms, and rhetorical
adornment when used in the wrong place.
But that which is too simple must be avoided also. In this case the
apperception is soon completed; it does not give enough to do. The
fullest unit possible is to be sought.
A rule of vital importance is that, before setting his pupils at
work, the teacher should take them into the field of ideas wherein
their work is to be done. He can accomplish this at the beginning
of a recitation hour by means of a brief outline view of the ground
to be covered in the lesson or lecture.
78. Instruction is to supplement that which has been gained already by
experience and by intercourse with others (36); these foundations must
exist when instruction begins. If they are wanting, they must be firmly
established first. Any deficiency here means a loss to instruction,
because the pupils lack the thoughts which they need in order to
interpret the words of the teacher.
In the same way, knowledge derived from earlier lessons must be
extended and deepened by subsequent instruction. This presupposes such
an organization of the whole work of instruction that that which comes
later shall always find present the earlier knowledge with which it is
to be united.
79. Ordinarily, because their eyes are fixed solely on the facts to
be learned, teachers concern themselves little with the ideas already
possessed by the pupils. Consequently they make an effort in behalf
of the necessary attention only when it is failing and progress is
checked. Now they have recourse to voluntary attention (73), and to
obtain this rely on inducements, or, more often, on reprimands and
penalties. Indirect interest is thus substituted for direct interest,
with the result that the resolution of the pupil to be attentive fails
to effect energetic apprehension and realizes but little coherence. It
wavers constantly, and often enough gives way to disgust.
In the most favorable case, if instruction is thorough, _i.e._,
scientific, a foundation of elementary knowledge is gradually laid
sufficiently solid for later years to build on; in other words, out
of the elementary knowledge an apperceiving mass is created in the
mind of the pupil which will aid him in his future studies. There may
be several of such masses; but each constitutes by itself its own
kind of one-sided learning, and it is after all doubtful whether even
here direct interest is implied. For there is small hope that this
interest will be aroused in the youth when the years of boyhood have
been devoted merely to the mastering of preliminary knowledge. The
prospects of future station and calling are opening before him and the
examinations are at hand.
80. The fact should not be overlooked, however, that even the
best method cannot secure an adequate degree of apperceiving
attention (75–78) from every pupil; recourse must accordingly be had to
the voluntary attention, _i.e._, the pupil’s resolution. But for the
necessary measures the teacher must depend, not merely on rewards and
punishments, but chiefly on habit and custom. Instruction unites at
this point with government and training. In all cases where the pupil
begins his work not entirely without compulsion, it is particularly
important that he should soon become aware of his own progress. The
several steps must be distinctly and suitably pointed out to him; they
must at the same time be easy of execution and succeed each other
slowly. The instruction should be given with accuracy, even strictness,
seriousness, and patience.
81. The voluntary attention is most frequently demanded for memorizing,
for which, apart from all else, the presence of interest is not always
a perfectly favorable condition. This is true even of spontaneous
interest, for the ideas that rise spontaneously have a movement of
their own, which by deviating from the given sequence may lead to
surreptitious substitutions. Like observation, intentional memorizing
presupposes a certain amount of self-control. At this point a question
arises as to the proper place of learning by heart.
Committing to memory is very necessary; use is made of it in every
department of knowledge. But memorizing should never be the first thing
except when it is done without effort. For if the memorizing of new
matter, which the pupil cannot as yet have associated incorrectly,
costs him an effort, it is plain that the single presentations
encounter some opposition or other by which they are repelled too
quickly for their mutual association to take place. The teacher must
in this case talk the subject over first, set the pupil to work upon
it, make him more familiar with it, and must sometimes even wait for a
more opportune moment. Where clearness in single perceptions and their
association (67 _et seq._) are still deficient, these must be attended
to first of all. After the ideas have been strengthened in this way,
memorizing will be accomplished more easily.
The assigned series should not be too long. Three foreign words
are often more than enough. Many pupils have to be shown how to
memorize. Left to themselves they will begin over and over again,
then halt, and try in vain to go on. A fundamental rule is that the
starting-point be shifted. If, for example, the name Methuselah
is to be learned, the teacher would, perhaps, say successively:
lah,--selah,--thuselah,--Methuselah.
Some have to be warned against trying to get through quickly. We have
to do here with a physical mechanism which requires time and whose
operation the pupil himself as little as the teacher should endeavor to
over-accelerate. Slow at first, then faster.
It is not always advisable to put a stop to all bodily movements. Many
memorize by way of speaking aloud, others through copying, some through
drawing. Reciting in concert also may prove feasible at times.
Incorrect associations are very much to be feared; they are tenacious.
A great deal, to be sure, may be accomplished through severity; but
when interest in the subject-matter is wholly lacking, the pupil begins
by memorizing incorrectly, then ceases to memorize at all, and simply
wastes time.
The absolute failure of some pupils in memory work may perhaps be
partly owing to unknown physical peculiarities. Very often, however,
the cause of the evil lies in the state of false tension into which
such pupils put themselves while attempting with reluctance what they
regard as an almost impossible task. A teacher’s injudicious attitude
during the first period, his remarks, for instance, about learning
by heart as a thing of toil and trouble, may lead to this state of
mind, for which perhaps awkward first steps in learning to read have
prepared the way. It is foolish to look for means of lightening still
more the exercises of children that retain and recite with facility;
but, on the other hand, great caution is necessary because there are
also others who may be rendered unfit for memorizing by the first
attempt of the teacher to make them recite, or even only to repeat
after him, a certain series of words. In attempting, by such early
tests, to find out whether children retain and reproduce easily, it is
essential that the teacher put them in good humor, that he select his
matter with this end in view, and that he go on only so long as they
feel they can do what is asked of them. The results of his observations
must determine the further mode of procedure.
82. However carefully the process of memorizing may have been
performed, the question remains: How long will the memorized matter be
retained? On this point teachers deceive themselves time and again, in
spite of universally common experiences.
Now, in the first place, not everything that is learned by heart needs
to be retained. Many an exercise serves its purpose when it prepares
the way for the next, and renders further development possible. In
this way a short poem is sometimes learned as a temporary means for an
exercise in declamation; or chapters from Latin authors are committed
to memory in order to speed the writing and speaking of Latin. In many
cases it is sufficient for later years if the pupil knows how to look
for literary helps, and how to make use of them.
But if, secondly, that which has been memorized is to remain impressed
on the memory for a long time, forever if possible, it is only a
questionable expedient to reassign the same thing as often as it is
forgotten. The feeling of weary disgust may more than offset the
possible gain. There is only one efficient method--practice; practice
consisting in the constant application of that which is to be retained
to that which actually interests the pupils, in other words, that which
continually engages the ideas rising spontaneously.
Here we find the principle that governs the choice of material for
successful memorizing. And as to the amount--so much as is needed
for the immediate future; for excessive quantity promotes an early
forgetting. Besides, in instruction, as in experience, there is a great
deal that may not be accurately remembered, but nevertheless renders
abundant service by stimulating the mind and qualifying it for further
work.
CHAPTER V
=The Main Kinds of Interest=
83. Instruction is to be linked to the knowledge that experience
provides, and to the ethical sentiments that arise from social
intercourse (36). Empirical interest relates directly to experience;
sympathetic interest to human association. Discursive reflection on the
objects of experience involves the development of speculative interest,
reflection on the wider relations of society that of social interest.
With these we group, on the one hand æsthetic, on the other religious
interest, both of which have their origin not so much in discursive
thought as in a non-progressing contemplation of things and of human
destiny.
The classification of interests into two groups, namely, (a) those
which arise from knowledge, and (b) those which arise from
association with others, and the subdivision of each of these
into three groups, making six in all, is one not of necessity,
but of convenience. The knowledge interests are, (a) empirical,
(b) speculative, (c) æsthetic; the interests arising from association
are, (a) sympathetic, (b) social, (c) religious. This classification
is adopted without criticism by most Herbartian writers. That the
classification is made simply for convenience may be seen from such
considerations as the following:--
1. Strictly speaking, _all_ interests arise from _experience_, the
social no less than the speculative; hence experience is not a basis
for classification at all.
2. Æsthetic interests, resting upon contemplation, need not be put
into a group with those that rest upon the perception of cause and
effect, or other relations perceived by discursive reflection.
3. The same is true for those empirical interests that are supposed
to rest upon immediate sense apprehension, such as the interest in
color, shape, sound, taste, odor.
4. If perception, reasoning, and sensibility are made bases for the
classification of interests, why should not the active volitional
powers of the mind become a basis likewise? Some claim that pleasure
and pain rest primarily upon the _motor_ side of our activity, rather
than upon the sensory. Our interest in _doing_ is antecedent to our
interest in knowing or feeling. This fact is fully recognized by all
Herbartians in the theory of methods, though it finds no recognition
in their classification of interests.
It must be granted, however, that Herbart’s classification is
convenient, even if not especially scientific.
The empirical interest is the mental eagerness aroused by direct
appeal to the senses, as by novel shapes, colors, sounds, odors,
and the like. Its first stage is wonder, admiration, fear, awe. The
child that drops his picture-book to chase a butterfly abandons one
empirical interest for a stronger one. This form of interest is
usually transient; unless it develops into a new kind of interest, it
is soon abandoned for some other attraction. A primary teacher may
catch but cannot hold the attention of a child by sensuous devices
leading to nothing beyond themselves.
The speculative interest is more permanent than the empirical. It
rests primarily on the perception of the relations of cause and
effect; it seeks to know the reasons of things. On this account
it is a higher form of apperception, or mental assimilation. The
most fundamental idea in the speculative interest is that of
purpose. We want to know the _purpose of things_, the function they
are to perform, the end they are expected to reach. Thus a child
has a key to the understanding of even so complicated a machine
as a self-binder, or a printing press, provided he sees clearly
the purpose of each. Until this is perceived the facts are an
unintelligible jumble of particulars. A crude form of the speculative
interest is seen very early in the child, when he demands a reason
for everything. It always remains the mainspring of intellectual
life; when it ceases to be a motive power to thinking, thought is
dead.
The æsthetic interest rests upon the enjoyment of contemplation, when
an _ideal_, sometimes distinct, sometimes vague, can be perceived
through a _sense medium_. In the Greek statue of _Apollo Belvidere_,
a divinity is represented in marble. In the painting, _Breaking
Home Ties_, the feelings of a lad and his mother upon parting are
portrayed upon canvas. In music the ideal is usually vague, in
poetry it is clear and distinct. The æsthetic value of the latter
is enhanced by good oral recitation, both because appeal is made to
an additional sense, and because the ears of men were attuned to
beautiful poetry long before the eye learned to apprehend it.
All of these interests, the empirical, the speculative, and the
æsthetic, may be classed as _individual_, since they rest upon
purely subjective grounds. They might belong to any Robinson Crusoe
who became isolated from his fellows. But the remaining groups, the
sympathetic, the social, and the religious, rest upon the idea of
intercourse with others. They are, therefore, of supreme importance
for civilized life. Without the sympathetic coöperation of men
civilization would become impossible. Mephistopheles in “Faust”
defines himself as “the Spirit that ever denies.”[12] Consequently
any man who becomes so absorbed in his individual concerns as to deny
all social duties and renounce all social benefits becomes thereby
a kind of civic devil. The cynics of old repudiated all social
obligations, thus making themselves bitter civic devils, while the
Cyrenaics, choosing self-indulgence, but denying likewise social
duties, transformed themselves into sensualistic civic devils.
It is an imperative duty of the teacher, therefore, to arouse the
social and civic interests of the children, since upon these as
active forces the welfare and possibly the stability of society rest.
The school is the place, the studies and daily intercourse the means,
whereby this class of interests may be aroused. Pupils brought up
in isolation by private tutors are likely to become non-social in
their disposition. Idiosyncrasies are fostered, there being little
or no development of ideals of social coöperation. The kindergarten,
however, when rightly conducted, is nearly always able to foster the
social instincts so powerfully that even the lack of later education
is not able to obliterate them. When this training is reinforced by
the well-governed school, a solid foundation for civic character is
likely to be laid. The studies most important for the fostering of
social and civic interests are literature, history, civil government,
and geography, though others have a more or less intimate relation to
them.
[12] “Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint.”
84. We cannot expect to see all of these interests unfold equally in
every individual; but among a number of pupils we may confidently
look for them all. The demand for many-sidedness will accordingly
be satisfied the better, the nearer the single individual likewise
approaches a state of mental culture in which all these kinds of
interest are active with equal energy.
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.
Speculative interest becomes one-sided by confining itself to logic
or to mathematics, mathematics perhaps only as treated by the old
geometricians; or to metaphysics restricted possibly to one system; or
to physics narrowed down perhaps to one hypothesis; or to pragmatic
history.
Æsthetic interest in one case is concentrated exclusively on painting
and sculpture; in another on poetry, perhaps only on lyric or dramatic
poetry; in still another on music, or perhaps only on a certain species
of music, etc.
Sympathetic interest is one-sided when a man is willing to live only
with his social peers, or only with fellow-countrymen, or only with
members of his own family; while a fellow-feeling for all others is
wanting.
Social interest grows one-sided if one gives himself up wholly to one
political party, and measures weal or woe only by party success or
failure.
Religious interest becomes one-sided according to differences of creed
and sect, to one of which allegiance is given, while those who hold a
different view are regarded as unworthy of esteem.
Much of this one-sidedness is brought about in later life by one’s
vocation. But a man’s vocation must not isolate him. Yet this would
happen if such narrowness should make headway in youth.
87. A still more detailed analysis of the varieties of one-sidedness
would be possible; it is not needed, however, for ascertaining the
position of the above-mentioned high school studies among the subjects
of instruction calculated to stimulate interest. Languages, to begin
with, form a part of the curriculum; but why among so many languages
is the preference given to Latin and Greek? Obviously because of the
literature and history opened through them. Literature with its poets
and orators falls under æsthetic interest; history awakens sympathy
with distinguished men and the weal and woe of society, indirectly
contributing in either case even to religious interest. No better focus
for so many different stimuli can be found. Even speculative interest
is not slighted if inquiries into the grammatical structure of these
languages are added. Moreover, the study of history does not stop with
the ancients; the knowledge of literature also is widened that the
various interests may be developed still more completely. History,
if taught pragmatically, assists speculative interest from another
direction. In this respect, however, mathematics has precedence; only,
in order to effect a sure entrance and abiding results, it must unite
with the natural sciences, which appeal at once to the empirical and
the speculative interest.
If now these studies coöperate properly, a great deal will be done, in
conjunction with religious instruction, toward turning the youthful
mind in the directions that answer to a many-sided interest. But if,
on the contrary, the languages and mathematics were allowed to fall
apart, if the connecting links were removed, and every pupil were
permitted to choose one or the other branch of study, according to
his preferences, mere bald one-sidedness of the kind sufficiently
characterized above would be the outcome.
88. It is admitted now that not only classical but also public high
schools in general should provide for this same many-sided culture,
that is, should take account of the same main classes of interests. The
only difference lies in the fact that for the pupils of the classical
high schools the practice of a vocation is not so near at hand;
whereas, in the public high schools, there is a certain preponderance
of modern literature and history, together with inability to equip
completely with the helps to a manifold mental activity those who
purpose to go on. Much the same is true of all the lower schools whose
aim is to educate. It is different with trade schools and polytechnic
institutes; in short, with those schools which presuppose a completed
education--completed to the extent permitted by circumstances.
If, then, the programme of a public high school is of the right sort,
it will show as well as the curriculum of a classical preparatory
school does, that an attempt is being made to guard against such
one-sidedness as would be the outcome if one of the six main classes of
interest were slighted.
How one-sidedness under an elective system may be avoided is
discussed in a previous section (65).
89. But no instruction is able to prevent the special varieties of
one-sidedness that may develop within the limits of each main group.
When observation, reflection, the sense of beauty, sympathy, public
spirit, and religious aspiration have once been awakened, although
perhaps only within a small range of objects, the farther extension
over a greater number and variety of objects must be left largely to
the individual and to opportunity. To pupils of talent, above all
of genius, instruction may give the necessary outlook by enabling
them to see what talent and genius achieve elsewhere; but their own
distinguishing traits they must themselves answer for and retain.
Moreover, the above-mentioned forms of one-sidedness are not all
equally detrimental, because they do not assert themselves with the
same degree of exclusiveness. Each may, indeed, lead to self-conceit;
but this tendency does not attach to all in the same measure.
Holding to the idea of many-sided interest, what justification is
there for elective studies? To this, the reply must be made that in
elementary and in a part of secondary education the principle of
indiscriminate election must be rejected. The only rational election
in secondary education, as already explained (65), is election among
the various members of a group of similar studies. In this way
the destination and ability of the pupil may be regarded, without
sacrificing the needed many-sidedness. The case is different in
higher education, however, for election and many-sidedness are here
quite reconcilable. Higher education is the _comparative study_ of
a few branches. Thus, for example, on the social side, the whole
civilization of Greece is focussed now in her political history,
now in her art, now in her language, now in her education, now in
her philosophy. The student who studies any one of these subjects
thoroughly gets a comparative view of the whole of Greek life. It is
not necessary for him to study them all. The same is true of each
important country or epoch. Every culture study is an eminence from
which the whole is seen.
Likewise in science, to study a typical form of life exhaustively by
the comparative method gives one an insight into all related life, as
well as many glimpses into physical and chemical science. In a large
sense, therefore, we study all nature, whether we elect biology,
physics, or chemistry, provided we use the comparative method of
higher education. In the college or university, therefore, a large
amount of election is justifiable. That would be a one-sided course
which neglected entirely all social or all science studies.
90. Under favorable circumstances of time and opportunity, such as
obtain in classical and other high schools, effort, as we know, is
not restricted to the initial stimulation. Hence the question arises:
In what sequence shall the aroused interests be further developed? Of
instruction-material there is no lack; we must select and arrange,
guided in the main by what was said on the conditions of many-sidedness
and of interest. Thus to recapitulate: there must be progress from the
simple to the more complex, and solicitous endeavor to make spontaneous
interest possible. But in applying these principles we must not shut
our eyes to the particular requirements and the difficulties in our way.
91. The empirical material of languages, history, geography, etc.,
calls for specific complications and series of ideas, together with
the network of their interrelations. As to language, even words are
complex wholes, made up of stems plus whatever elements enter into
inflection and derivation, and further resolvable into single speech
sounds. History has its time-series, geography its network of spatial
relations. The psychological laws of reproduction determine the
processes of memorizing and of retaining.
The mother-tongue serves as a medium through which foreign languages
become intelligible, but at the same time offers resistance to the
foreign sounds and constructions. Furthermore, it takes a young boy
a long time to get familiar with the thought that far away in time
and in space there have been and are human beings who spoke and
speak languages other than his own, and about whom he need concern
himself at all. Teachers, moreover, very commonly proceed on the
fallacious and very mischievous assumption that, because their mode of
expression is clear, it will, of course, be understood by the pupil.
The resources of child-language increase but slowly. Such impediments
as these must be removed. Geography extends the knowledge of spatial
distances, but the inhabitant of a flat country lacks the sense-images
of mountain ranges; one who grows up in a valley is without the
sense-perception of a plain; the majority of pupils lack the concrete
idea of an ocean. That the earth is a sphere revolving about its own
axis and about the sun, for a long time sounds to children more like
a fairy-tale than like a statement of fact; and even educated young
men sometimes hesitate to accept the theory of the planetary system
because they are unable to comprehend how it is possible to know such
things. Difficulties of this kind must be met and not massed together
unnecessarily.--For history, old ruins might serve as starting-points
if only the material they furnish do not prove altogether too scanty
and is not too recent, when the object is to take pupils at an early
age into the times and places of Jewish, Greek, and Roman antiquity.
Here the only satisfactory helps are stories that excite a very lively
interest; these establish points of support for the realization in
thought of a time long vanished. There is still lacking, however, a
correct estimate of chronological distances down to our own time. This
is attained only very gradually through the insertion of intermediate
data.
92. Material for the exercise of reflection, and so for the excitation
of speculative interest, is supplied by whatever in nature, in human
affairs, in the structure of languages, and in religion, permits us
to discover, or even merely to surmise, a connection according to
general laws. But everywhere--the most common school studies, such as
elementary arithmetic and grammar not excepted--the pupil encounters
concepts, judgments, and inferences. But he clings to the particular,
to the familiar, to the sensuous. The abstract is foreign to his mind;
even the geometrical figures traced for the eye are to him particular
things whose general significance he finds it hard to grasp. The
general is to displace individual peculiarities in his thoughts; but
in his habitual thought-series the well-known concrete crowds to the
front. Of the general there remains in his mind almost nothing beyond
the words used to designate it. Called upon to draw an inference, he
loses one premise while pondering the next; the teacher is obliged to
go back to the beginning again and again, to give examples, and from
them lead up to generalizations; to separate and to connect concepts,
and by degrees to bring the propositions closer to one another. When
the middle terms and extremes have been successfully fused in the
premises, they are still only loosely connected at first. The same
propositions are repeatedly forgotten, and yet must not be reviewed too
many times for fear of killing instead of quickening interest.
Since forgetting cannot be prevented, it is wise to abandon for a time
a large portion of that into which pupils have gained an insight,
but later on to go back to the essentials by other paths. The first
preliminary exercises serve their purpose if the particulars are
made to reveal the general before generalizations become the material
for technical propositions, and before propositions are combined into
inference-series. The processes of association (69) must not be omitted
between the first pointing out of common features and the systematic
teaching of their rational connections.
93. Æsthetic contemplation may, indeed, receive its impulse from many
interests other than the æsthetic, as also from aroused emotions. Art
itself, however, is possible only in a state of mind sufficiently
tranquil to permit an accurate and coherent apprehension of the
simultaneously beautiful, and to experience the mental activity
corresponding to the successively beautiful. Æsthetic objects adapted
to the pupil’s power of appreciation must be provided; but the teacher
should refrain from forcing contemplation. He may, of course, repress
unseemly manifestations, above all the damaging of objects possessing
æsthetic value and entitled to respectful treatment. Frequently
imitative attempts--although very crude at first--in drawing, singing,
reading aloud, and, at a later period, in translating, are indications
of æsthetic attention. Such efforts may be encouraged, but should not
be praised. The genuine warmth of emotion, which in æsthetic culture
kindles of itself, is easily vitiated by intensifying artifices. Excess
of quantity is injurious. Works of art appealing to a higher state of
culture must not be brought down to a lower plane. Art judgments and
criticisms should not be obtruded.
94. The sympathetic interests depend still more on social intercourse
and family life than the foregoing classes of interests do on
experience in the world of sense. If the social environment changes
frequently, children cannot become deeply attached anywhere. The mere
change of teachers and of schools is fraught with harm. Pupils make
comparisons in their own way; authority that is not permanent has
little weight with them, whereas the impulse to throw off restraint
gains in strength. Instruction is powerless to obviate such evils,
especially since instruction itself must often change its form,
thereby giving the impression of a real difference in teachers. This
fact makes it all the more necessary that the instruction in history
impart to pupils the glow of sympathy due to historical characters and
events. For this reason--a reason of momentous significance to the
whole process of education--history should not be made to present to
pupils the appearance of a chronological skeleton. This rule should be
observed with special care during the earlier lessons in history, since
on these depends largely what sort of impression the whole subject will
produce at a future time.
Of religious instruction, needless to say, we demand that it shall
bring home to pupils the dependent condition of man, and we confidently
expect that it will not leave their hearts cold. But historical
instruction must coöperate with religious instruction, otherwise the
truths of religion stand isolated, and there is ground for fearing
that they will fail to enter as potent factors into the teaching and
learning of the remaining subjects.
CHAPTER VI
=The Material of Instruction from Different Points of View=
95. Differences in point of view give rise to conflicting opinions
concerning not only the treatment, but also the choice of
subject-matter for instruction. If, now, first one opinion then another
wins predominance over the rest, the harmony of the purposes underlying
both learning and teaching is wanting. Not only that, but the pupils
suffer also directly through the lack of consistency where work is
begun on one plan and continued on another.
96. The teacher in charge of a given branch of study only too often
lays out his work without taking account of pedagogical considerations.
His specialty, he thinks, suffices to suggest a plan; the successive
steps in its organized content will, of course, be the proper sequence
for instruction to follow. In teaching a language, he insists that
pupils must master declensions and conjunctions in order that he
may read an author with them later. He expects them to understand
ordinary prose before he passes on to elucidate the finished style
of a poet, etc. In mathematics, he demands that pupils bring to the
subject perfect facility in common arithmetic; at a more advanced
stage they must be able to handle logarithms with ease before formulæ
requiring their use are reached, etc. In history, the first thing for
him to do is to erect a solid chronological framework to hold the
historical facts to be inserted afterward. For ancient history, he
presupposes a knowledge of ancient geography, etc. This same view which
derives the principle determining the sequence of studies from the
instruction-material itself, as though it had been unconditionally and
finally settled that such and such things _must_ be taught, asserts
itself on a larger scale in requirements for admission to higher
grades or schools. Children are to be able to read, write, and cipher
well before being allowed to enter the grammar school; promotions to
higher grades are to take place only when the goal set for the grade
immediately preceding has been reached. The good pupil, accordingly,
is one who fits into and willingly submits to these arrangements. The
natural consequence of all this is, that little heed is paid to the
condition of attention, namely, the gradual progress of interest.
97. But still another consequence ensues, occasioning a different
point of view. Pupils are commiserated on the ground that they are
overburdened. All sorts of doubts spring up as to the wisdom of
teaching the branches causing the trouble. Their future utility is
called in question. A host of instances is adduced of adults neglecting
and forgetting--forgetting without appreciable loss--that which it cost
them so much toil to learn. Of course, examples showing the opposite
to be true may also be cited, but that does not settle the question.
It cannot be denied that there are many, even among the educated, who
aspire to nothing higher than freedom from care by means of a lucrative
calling, or a life of social enjoyment, and who, accordingly, estimate
the value of their knowledge by this standard. Such a state of things
is not mended by a kind of instruction that awakens little interest,
and that in after years constitutes the dark side of reminiscences
connected with early youth.
98. What is urged in reply is, generally speaking, true: youth must be
kept busy; we cannot let children grow up wild. And their occupation
has to be serious and severe, for government (45–55) must not be weak.
But now, more than ever, doubt fastens on the choice of studies. Might
not more useful things be offered for employment?
If, by way of rejoinder, the ancient languages are commended as being
preëminently suited to give pupils diversity of work, this fact is
accounted for by the faulty methods pursued in teaching the other
subjects. With the proper method the same many-sided activity would
be called forth. For the modern languages especially, the claim is
made that they, too, are language studies involving reading, writing,
translating, and training in the forms of thought. To this argument
the unfortunate answer should not be returned, that the classical high
schools must retain their Latin and Greek because they are educating
future officials to whom the ancient languages are just as useful, nay,
indispensable, as the modern languages to other classes. For, if the
classical studies have once been degraded to the level of the useful
and necessary, the door is thrown open to those who go a step farther
still and demand to know of what use Hebrew is to the country parson,
and Greek to the practising jurist or physician.
99. Controversies like these have often been conducted as if the
_humaniora_ or humanistic studies were radically opposed to the
_realia_ and could not admit them to partnership. In reality, the
latter are at least as much a legitimate part of a complete education
as the former. The whole matter has been made worse by the practice
of some of the older generation of teachers who, in order to make the
prescribed studies more palatable, descended to all kinds of amusement
and play, instead of laying stress on abiding and growing interest. A
view that regards the end as a necessary evil to be rendered endurable
by means of sweetmeats, implies an utter confusion of ideas; and if
pupils are not given serious tasks to perform, they will not find out
what they are able to do.
We must, however, note in this connection that there are legitimate
occasions even for the sweetening of study, just as in medicine there
is a place for palliatives, notwithstanding the firm conviction
of the physician that remedies promising a radical cure deserve
the preference. Harmful and reprehensible as habitual playing with
a subject is when it usurps the place of serious and thorough
instruction, in cases where a task is not difficult, but seems so to
the pupil, it often becomes necessary to start him by a dexterous,
cheerful, almost playlike presentation of that which he is to imitate.
Superfluous prolixity and clumsiness, through the ennui alone that
they produce, cause failure in the easiest things. All this applies
especially to the teaching of younger children and to the first lessons
in a new subject, _e.g._, learning to read Greek, the beginning of
algebra, etc.
100. If, among the conflicting opinions referred to, there is any
vital point of controversy, it lies in the _a priori_ assumption that
certain subjects must be taught (96). Such an assumption educative
instruction cannot allow to be severed from the end aimed at: the
intellectual self-activity of the pupil. This, and not mere knowledge,
any more than utility, determines the point of view with regard to
the instruction-material. Experience and social intercourse are the
primary sources of the pupil’s ideas. It is with reference to these two
factors that we estimate strength or weakness in the ideas, and decide
what instruction may accomplish with comparative ease or difficulty,
at an earlier or at a later period. Good child literature turns to
these sources even while children are only just learning to read, and
gradually enlarges their range of thoughts. Not until this has been
done can the question of instruction in one or the other department of
knowledge claim consideration.
The term _educative instruction_ frequently occurs. It means,
primarily, instruction that has, in the broad sense, an ethical
bearing, or an influence upon character. It is based on the idea
that, not school discipline alone, but also school instruction in
the common branches should be of service to the child in moral and
especially in social growth. The studies help to reveal to him his
place and function in the world, they form his disposition toward men
and things, they give him insight into ethical relations. Instruction
that contains this element of moral training is therefore called
_educative instruction_ (_Erziehender Unterricht_).
101. The _realia_--natural history, geography, history--possess this
one unquestionable advantage, viz., easy association with experience
and intercourse. Partially, at least, the pupil’s spontaneous
ideas (71) may go out toward them. Properly used, collections of
plants, picture-books, maps, will contribute their share. In history,
the fondness of youth for stories is utilized. The fact that these
stories are partly taken from old books written in foreign languages,
and that these languages were once actually spoken, has often to be
mentioned in passing, before the study of these languages themselves is
taken up, nay, even after they have been begun.
It is useless to undertake a demonstration of the utility of the
_realia_. The young do not act for the sake of the more remote
ends. Pupils work when they feel they can do something; and this
consciousness of power to do must be created.
The remark that it is useless to undertake to demonstrate to the
young the ultimate utility of natural science studies leads naturally
to a distinction between interest in the studies as ultimate ends
and as immediate ends. It is suggested in this paragraph that pupils
are interested in showing their capacity to accomplish results.
It is very evident that one of the teacher’s chief anxieties must
be to awaken an interest in the studies as ends, not perhaps in
their final utility in life, but as fields in which useful work
can be done even in the immediate present. The chief category by
which to measure the pupil’s interest in the various activities
of the schoolroom is the quality of work that he can be taught to
accomplish. One need not go far to learn that children like those
studies best in which they can do the best work. This is true in
several respects. They are interested in the artistic perfection
of what they can accomplish, as in drawing, painting, writing, the
arrangement of arithmetical problems, so that the page presents a
neat appearance, and so that all the processes are plainly revealed
to the eye. They are interested in reading when they can call the
words with facility, with neatness, without stumbling, mispronouncing
or miscalling--when the tones of the voice are agreeable. The quality
of the work, however, which appeals perhaps most powerfully to the
children, is that of intellectual comprehension. In the reading class
it is a constant delight to discover the finer shades of meaning, to
express them with the voice, to detect in others any deviation from
the true thought. Reading in English is particularly susceptible
to this kind of treatment. For the English language being largely
devoid of inflections does not show through the form of the words
the finer distinctions of thought, but the mind must perceive these
from a text largely devoid of grammatical inflections. It is quite
possible, therefore, to read in such a manner as to miss all but the
most salient points of the matter presented. There is in reading an
intensive and an extensive magnitude. Our older method of teaching
reading was to devote the time to a few extracts from literary
masterpieces, which were exhausted by minute study. The more recent
tendency in elementary education is to neglect this side of reading
and to devote the time to the cursory reading, not of extracts, but
of whole masterpieces of literature. The danger of such a proceeding
is that the finer qualities of reading will be neglected for the
sake of quantitative mastery of a large amount of reading matter. A
middle course between the two would doubtless bring better results.
It would, on the one hand, secure an interest that attaches to
masterpieces as wholes, and, on the other, the literary appreciation
that comes from minute analysis both in thought and expression of the
finer distinctions of thought. In mathematical studies, the æsthetic
interest of form, or the active interest of actual performance of
problems, is not the sole or even the chief interest that should
be appealed to. But the pupil should feel that he is making a
progressive mastery of the principles of number. It is a pleasure to
apply a rule, to solve a problem neatly; but it is a still greater
pleasure to comprehend thoroughly the meaning of the rule, to grasp
and to feel its universality, so that although it is not worth while,
as Herbart suggests, to urge the ultimate function of mathematics
in the life of the world, it is quite worth while to set up those
immediate ends of interest such as appear in the activity of solving
problems, in the æsthetic appearance of the work upon paper or board
or slate, and in the comprehension of mathematical principles. These
ends are near at hand; they can be made to appeal to the pupil
through the quality of the work that the teacher demands of him.
The same is true in the natural sciences. Even though the ultimate
function of biology is an idea too remote or too complex for the
child to grasp with enthusiasm, the immediate mastery of a principle
in physics, or the discovery of a law of plant life, or of a fact in
chemistry, may be an end in which the pupil’s most intense interest
can be excited.
102. Geometry has other advantages of association, advantages we have
begun only recently to turn to account in earnest. Figures made of
wood or pasteboard, drawings, pegs, bars, flexible wires, strings, the
use of the ruler, of compasses, of the square, counted coins arranged
in long or short, in parallel or diverging series,--all these may be
offered to the eye _ad libitum_ and connected with other concrete
objects. They may be made the basis of systematic employment and
exercises, and this will be done more and more when the fact is once
grasped that concrete ideas possessing the _proper degree of strength_
constitute the surest foundation of a branch of instruction whose
success depends on the manner in which the pupil forms in his mind the
ideas of spatial relations. This is not grasped, of course, by those
who regard space once for all as a form of sense-perception common
to all minds alike. A careful study of the data of experience will
convince the practical educator that the opposite is true; for in this
respect individual differences are very marked. Pupils rarely hit upon
geometrical constructions unaided; the aptitude for drawing, that is,
for imitating the objects seen, is met with more often.
It is easy by abstraction to form arithmetical concepts out of the
apprehension of geometrical relations. To do so should not be regarded
as superfluous, not even when the pupil has already fully entered upon
his work in arithmetic.
103. To Germans the two ancient classical languages do not offer the
advantages of easy transition. On the other hand, the study of Latin,
even if only moderately advanced, prepares the soil for the most
indispensable modern foreign languages. Herein lies an argument against
beginning with French, as was often done formerly. The linking of
Latin to French will, moreover, hardly win the approval of students of
languages, since, not to mention other reasons, Gallicisms are a source
of no little danger to Latinity.
The ancient languages require long-continued labor. This fact alone
renders it advisable to begin them early. The strangeness of Latin for
Germans should not lead to the conclusion that the study of Latin
should be commenced late, but rather that during the earlier years of
boyhood it should be carried on slowly. The sounds of foreign languages
must be heard early, in order that the strangeness may wear off. Single
Latin words will be easily mastered even by a child. These may soon
be followed by short sentences consisting of two or three words. No
matter if they are forgotten again for a time. That which is said to
be forgotten is not on that account lost. The real difficulty lies in
the multitude of strange elements that accumulate in relatively long
sentences; it lies also in the many ways of connecting subordinate
clauses, in the qualifying insertions, in the order of words, and in
the structure of the period. Furthermore, we must not overlook the fact
that children are very slow to acquire the use of dependent clauses,
even in German; their speech for a long time consists merely of a
stringing together of the simplest sentences. The attempt to advance
them more rapidly in the syntactical forms of Latin than is possible in
their mother-tongue is a waste of time; and, besides, their inclination
to study is put to a very severe test.
Perhaps the most serious defect of secondary education in the United
States is its brevity. Languages are not begun until the pupil is
well on to fifteen years old. A reform most urgently needed in this
country is the extension of high school influence to the two grades
of the grammar school lying immediately below the high school. This
would enable pupils to begin foreign languages at about the age of
twelve, or two years later than they are now begun in Germany.
104. The foregoing remarks show plainly enough that in educative
instruction some subjects will be found a comparatively easy and sure
means of awakening intellectual activity, while others involve a more
strenuous effort, which, under certain circumstances, may end in
failure. The concrete studies are nearest to the pupil; mathematics
requires some apparatus to render it tangible and vivid; to get pupils
started properly in modern languages can be but a slow process. But
this difference is, after all, not fundamental enough, nor does it
affect the whole course of instruction sufficiently, to constitute a
serious pedagogical objection to the study of foreign languages, so
long as there is time to teach them. Their fruits mature later.
CHAPTER VII
=The Process of Instruction=
105. Whether or not instruction will begin well and go on properly
depends on a combination of three factors,--the teacher, the pupil,
and the subject taught. Failure of the subject-matter to excite the
pupil’s interest is followed by evil consequences moving in a circle.
The pupil seeks to avoid the task set for him; he remains silent
or returns wrong answers; the teacher insists on getting a correct
answer; the lesson is at a standstill; the pupil’s dislike grows more
intense. To conquer dislike and indolence, the teacher now refuses
altogether the assistance he could give; as best he may, he compels
the pupil to collect his thoughts, to work by himself, to prepare his
lesson, to memorize, even to apply in written exercises what he knows
but imperfectly, etc. The presentation proper has come to an end; at
all events it has ceased to be consecutive. Now the right kind of an
example is wanting, which the teacher should set--one of reading,
thinking, writing, that implies complete absorption in the subject.
And yet it is this example concretely illustrating how to take hold of
the subject, how to present it, and how to associate it with related
subjects, which effects the best results in good instruction. The
teacher must set such an example, the pupil must imitate it as well as
he can; the teacher must render him active assistance.
106. Instruction is either synthetic or analytic. In general, the term
_synthetic_ may be applied wherever the teacher himself determines
directly the sequence and grouping of the parts of the lesson; the term
_analytic_, wherever the pupil’s own thoughts are expressed first, and
these thoughts, such as they chance to be, are then, with the teacher’s
help, analyzed, corrected, and supplemented. But there are many things
under this head that need to be defined and discriminated more sharply.
There are analyses of experience, of facts learned in school, and of
opinions. There is one kind of synthesis which imitates experience;
there is another kind which consists in constructing designedly a whole
whose component parts have been presented one by one previously.
Here, again, many differences arise, owing to diversities inherent in
the subject-matter.
107. Since instruction builds on the pupil’s experience, we shall deal
first with that form of synthesis which imitates, or copies experience.
We may name it _purely presentative instruction_. The term _synthetic_,
on the other hand, will henceforth be reserved for that form of
instruction which reveals clearly the process of building up a whole
out of parts presented singly beforehand.
The purely presentative method of instruction, although practicable
only to a limited extent, is nevertheless so effectual as to entitle it
to separate treatment, so effectual that the teacher--and this is the
main thing--will do well to train himself carefully in its use. Skill
in this direction is the surest means of securing interest.
It is customary to demand that the pupil acquire facility in narration
and description, but we ought not to forget that here above all the
teacher must lead the way by setting a good example. To be sure, there
is an abundance of printed narrative and description, but reading does
not produce the effect that hearing does. _Viva vox docet._ As a rule,
we cannot take for granted that a boy has even the skill and patience
required for reading; and if perfect facility has been attained, the
reading is done too rapidly. There is too much hurry to get to the
end, or too much delay over the wrong passages, so that the connection
is lost. At the most, we may let the pupils that read exceptionally
well read aloud to the class. By far the surer means to the end in
view is the oral presentation by the teacher. But in order that such
presentation may produce its effect undisturbed, it needs to be
perfectly free and untrammelled.
108. The first requisite for free oral presentation is a cultivated
style of speaking. Many teachers need to be warned against the use
of set phrases, against mere expletives, faulty enunciation, pauses
filled in with inarticulate sounds, against fragments of sentences,
clumsy parentheses, etc.
In the second place, adaptation of the vocabulary employed, both to the
subject-matter and to the intelligence of the pupils, and adjustment of
phraseology to the pupil’s stage of culture are essential.
Lastly, careful memorizing. At first this should be done almost
verbatim. At all events, the teacher must prepare his lesson as though
he had his pupils before him and were talking to them. Later on he
must memorize at least the facts and turning-points of the subject to
be presented, in order that he may not be compelled to consult books
or look at notes. A few remarks on some particular points will be made
farther on.
109. The effect of the teacher’s narrative and description should be to
make the pupil realize events and objects as vividly as if they were
actually present to his eye and ear. The pupil must, therefore, have
actually heard and seen much previously. This recalls to our minds the
necessity, pointed out before, of first enlarging the young pupil’s
range of experience, when found too limited, through excursions and
the exhibition of objects. Again, this form of instruction is adapted
only to things that might be heard or seen. We must therefore avail
ourselves of all the help pictures can give.
If the presentation has been a success, the reproduction by the pupils
will show that they recall, not merely the main facts, but largely even
the teacher’s language. They have retained more exactly than they have
been asked to do. Besides, the teacher who narrates and describes well
gains a strong hold on the affections of his pupils; he will find them
more obedient in matters pertaining to discipline.
The foregoing paragraphs on presentative instruction may seem strange
to the American teacher. We must remember, however, that they were
written before the modern era of text-books, when, in point of fact,
the teacher was practically the sole reliance for the facts that the
children were to learn. It is the custom, even to the present, in
the lower schools of Germany, to rely very largely upon the teacher
for the information which the children are to acquire. In American
schools, this method is not followed, for so enormous has been the
development of text-book industry, that in every field of education
the richest material is offered to the schools in the form of
text-books. There is, however, still a legitimate field for purely
presentative instruction in the earlier grades of the elementary
school, especially in literature and in the beginnings of history.
The most primitive method of instruction, as we see clearly in the
earlier periods of Grecian education, was the narrative. The children
of those days received their instruction in history, mythology,
literature, geography, by listening to the tales of heroes and
heroic deeds narrated by their parents, by wandering minstrels and
rhapsodists. To this day, the teacher who can narrate biographical
or literary matter in an attractive manner is sure to awaken intense
interest in the children under her control. Perhaps one facility
which the modern teacher needs to acquire more than any other is
the capacity of happy, vivacious, interesting narrative cast, at
the same time, into simple yet excellent literary form. Such a
teacher is an undoubted treasure in the primary school. There is
occasion, moreover, in nearly all school study for the presentation
of supplementary material in almost every school study. This is true
especially in literature and history. It is also true in geography
and in mathematics, as where, for instance, the teacher narrates the
methods of the ancient Egyptians in the development of geometrical
ideas, or those of the Greeks. If one is teaching a foreign language,
one may always find happy opportunities for introducing bits of
history, biography, or other illuminating material. In the sciences
nothing is more interesting to children, more stimulative of renewed
effort, than narratives concerning our great scientists, their desire
for education, their struggle to attain knowledge, their misfortunes,
and their triumphs. Every aspect of instruction may be supplemented
and illumined by instruction given in the purely presentative form of
narration.
110. While skilful presentation produces results akin to an extension
of the pupil’s range of actual experience, analysis helps to make
experience more instructive. For, left to itself, experience is not a
teacher whose instruction is systematic. It does not obey the law of
actual progress from the simple to the complex. Things and events crowd
in upon the mind in masses; the result is often chaotic apprehension.
Inasmuch, then, as experience presents aggregates before it gives the
component particulars, it becomes the task of instruction to reverse
this order and to adjust the facts of experience to the sequence
demanded in teaching. Experience, it is true, associates its content;
but if this earlier association is to have the share in the work of the
school that it should have, that which has been experienced and that
which has been learned must be made to harmonize. With this end in view
we need to supplement experience. The facts it has furnished have to
be made clearer and more definite than they are, and must be given an
appropriate embodiment in language.
111. Let us consider first the earliest stage of analytic instruction.
In order to understand the significance of this method of teaching, we
must examine the nature of a child’s experience. Children are indeed
in the habit of familiarizing themselves with their surroundings; but
the strongest impressions predominate. Objects in motion have greater
attraction for them than objects at rest. They tear up and destroy
without troubling themselves much about the real connection between
the parts of a whole. In spite of their many why’s and what for’s,
they make use of every tool or utensil without regard for its purpose;
they are satisfied if it serves the impulse of the moment. Their eyes
are keen, but they rarely observe; the real character of things does
not deter them from making a plaything of everything, as their fancy
may direct, and from making one thing stand for every other thing.
They receive total impressions of similar objects, but do not derive
concepts; the abstract does not enter their minds of itself.
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.
On this point Niemeyer says, “The teacher should begin by talking with
his pupils about those objects which are, at the time, affecting their
senses directly. Pointing to these objects, he asks the pupils to name
them. He then passes on to things that are not present, but that the
children have seen or felt before. At the same time he exercises their
powers of imagination and expression by making them enumerate what they
are able to recall. Suitable material: everything in the schoolroom;
the human body; everything pertaining to food, dress, comfort; things
found in the fields, in the garden, in the yard; animals and plants so
far as they are known by the children.”
114. The next step consists in pointing out the main facts of a given
whole, the relative position of these parts, their connection, and
their movability, if they can be moved without damage. To this are
properly linked the simplest facts concerning the uses of things. At
the same time children are taught how they must _not_ use things, and
how, instead of ruining them, they ought to look after them and use
them with care. The abundance and number of things, their size, form,
and weight, should likewise be referred to as early as this stage, and
should furnish occasion for comparisons.
But something more is needed to give distinctness to the ideas of
pupils, and to prepare the way for future abstract thinking. Beginning
first with the objects, we derive from them the predicates by searching
out the attributes; this done, we must in turn make the predicates
our starting-point, and classify the objects under the heads thus
obtained. This distinction has been made before by Pestalozzi; it is
one of fundamental importance in the preparation for generalization.
While engaged in such work pupils will of themselves learn to compare,
to discriminate, and, in some instances, to observe more accurately:
erroneous notions due to an active imagination will be corrected by the
appeal to experience as the source of knowledge.
115. Of what remains to be done, the most important task consists in
securing a comprehensive view of a somewhat extended time-series, of
which objects, together with their natural or artificial origins,
are members. An elementary knowledge will thus be gained, especially
of the simplest facts about manufacturing processes, and about
intercourse among human beings, which facts will serve subsequently as
the groundwork for instruction in natural history and geography. But
for history also the way must be prepared by referring, although only
in the most general way, to times when the utensils and tools of the
present had not yet been invented, when the arts of to-day were as yet
unknown, and when people were still without those materials that are
now imported from foreign countries.
116. It does not follow, because no definite periods are set apart
for the instruction described, that it is not being given at all. We
may find it incorporated, to a large extent, with something else,
particularly with the interpretation of elementary reading matter,
which forms part of the first work in the mother-tongue. Nevertheless,
a subject that is taught only incidentally is always liable to suffer,
if not from indifference, at least from inadequate treatment.
On the other hand, we cannot fail to recognize that the appointment
of separate periods for analytic instruction may prove difficult,
owing to the fact that the rate of progress depends so largely on
the stock of ideas pupils bring with them, and on their readiness to
utter what they think and feel. Besides, while Niemeyer expressly
says, “Children taught in this manner know nothing of tedium,” he also
hastens to add, “but it is easy to spoil them by too rapid changes
of subject.” The same, or similar bad consequences, may result from
other school exercises where the teacher himself supplies a profusion
of instruction-material, and so relieves his pupils of the trouble of
gathering such material from their own recollections. On the whole,
therefore, it will be well enough to set apart but few hours, or weeks,
for the first attempts; and these can be made a part of the lessons in
the mother-tongue.
In private instruction the difficulty spoken of is not encountered.
Besides, the ample opportunities afforded for observing the pupil’s
store of ideas make it easy to devise a suitable plan for the earliest
analytic teaching.
In the foregoing paragraphs on analytical instruction, the question
naturally arises, “Is such instruction to be regarded as an end
in itself, or as a means for preparing the mind for more perfect
assimilation of the subject-matter to be presented from day to day in
the various studies?” Since the time these paragraphs were written,
not only Germany herself, but also America has gone through a varied
experience with respect to what we call object teaching. It was at
one time conceived that a specific hour should be set apart each day
for instructing the children in the observation of objects. In other
words, object lessons were a distinct part of the programme. It was
supposed that in this way the children could be made conscious of the
significance of their environment, and that it was highly desirable
that such an end should be brought about. In Germany the same effort
was undertaken under the name of _Anschauungsunterricht_, but since
the multiplication of text-books, and the increased pressure upon
the schools brought about through the introduction of new subjects
of study, it has been found inadvisable to devote a specific period
of the day to isolated analytic instruction upon objects. Such
instruction, however, has by no means passed from the field of
usefulness, even in our very best schools. The necessity of appealing
powerfully to previous experience, in and out of the schoolroom, as a
basis for understanding a matter presented in the daily lessons, is
everywhere recognized. From being an end of school work, therefore,
analytic instruction has passed to the realm of a useful means for
arousing the mental activity of the children concerning the regular
lessons of the schoolroom. It is, in modern terms, an apperceptive
basis for all instruction.
117. At a later time analytic instruction reappears in other forms,
those of review and the correction of written exercises. The teacher
has presented a body of facts; he has furnished the helps necessary for
the solution of certain problems. What he has given, the pupils are
expected to produce again in their review exercises and essays. Where
necessary, their work is analyzed and corrected.
In conducting reviews a pedagogical blunder is apt to be made--a
blunder that brings on the evils specified in a former paragraph (105);
review is confounded with examination. The two are radically different.
If the teacher could be sure of both perfect attention and full
comprehension, he himself would go over the ground covered by his first
talk once more for the purpose of assisting the memory; the pupils
would not be called upon to take part. In this case, we should have
neither analytic instruction nor anything resembling an examination.
As a matter of fact, however, pupils are usually asked to reproduce
what and as much as they remember. This is easily taken to mean that
they should have retained everything, which, strictly speaking, is
not expected even in an examination. The purpose of an examination is
to ascertain the actual state of knowledge, whatever it may prove to
be; reviews are conducted for the purpose of increasing and deepening
knowledge. If an examination is followed by praise or censure, well and
good; a review has nothing to do with either.
Since reviewing and drilling, which resembles the former, claim the
larger portion of the time devoted to school work, it will be worth
while to examine the subject somewhat more closely.
118. Repetition of several ideas intensifies those ideas. It does
more than that. If they are of opposed nature, the reciprocal arrest
that ensues resists their fusion less during the reproduction than
it did in the original act of apprehension. The fusion increases in
completeness, and, besides, becomes more uniform, _i.e._, the weaker
ideas hold their own better alongside of the stronger. Again, if a
series of successive ideas is repeated, the first members of the series
of themselves tend to reproduce those that follow before the latter are
repeated--a tendency gathering energy in proportion to the frequency of
repetition. This fact underlies the increase in rapidity which comes
with growing skill. Extraneous thoughts, however, very easily interrupt
the psychical process of reproduction.
Let us assume that the teacher’s presentation has been an adequate one
and has lasted no longer than the capacity of the pupils permitted,
only a few minutes, perhaps. He himself might now repeat; but asks
his pupils to do so, lest their thoughts begin to wander from the
subject in hand. He comes to their aid and repeats only when their own
attempts have failed. But very often they have retained some things and
forgotten others. In this case it becomes his business to reinforce
the ideas striving to rise into consciousness, but without disturbing
their movement. In other words, he should prompt neither more nor less,
should lend aid neither sooner nor later, than will serve to make the
pupil’s train of thought coincide as nearly as possible with that of
the presentation properly given. Unless this is done, the reproduction
fails to effect the required association and facility. The same ground
is gone over again and again in vain; fatigue sets in, and the wrong
association takes place--a matter for grave apprehension. If the pupils
are in an unresponsive mood, the teacher must go slow, for the time
being; if interest is lacking, he cannot incite the proper movement of
ideas. If the teacher is not conducting the repetition with skill, the
fragmentary answers of the pupils indicate well enough after a time
that the desired current of thought has not been generated.
119. We have taken it for granted that the presentation was an adequate
one--one that might serve as a model (105). Where this adjustment of
means and ends extends, as it may, even to the language, the latter
should be closely followed in the repetition, but without pedantic
insistence on unimportant details. But very frequently the essential
feature of the presentation is found in the sequence of thought. In
that case expression will vary, and the teacher is satisfied at first
if, in repeating, the pupils furnish evidence that they understand; he
allows them to use their own words, though less appropriate. He must,
still, however, look carefully after the given sequence, which the
repetition is to reproduce with the greatest possible coherence.
120. The case is different when later on larger sections of a course
of successful instruction are to be repeated. During all the earlier
stage particular facts were moved far apart (68) for the sake of
clearness; by means of conversation, or of incidental mention in other
recitations, or through experience itself (110), provision was made
also for association of various kinds. Now it becomes the business of
repetition in the first place to gather together into a smaller compass
what has been expanded; next it subserves the purpose of systematic
arrangement, and lastly, is often of use for making the instruction
more complete and for adding the difficult to the comparatively easy.
Here the mode of presentation itself changes to meet the requirements
of a more advanced grade of work. But repetition immediately after
the presentation, or, perhaps, during the next hour, will, as a rule,
remain necessary even at this higher stage.
121. Here, where compression and insertions are to modify the material
of instruction, we need to inquire into the forms of connection
peculiar to the objects, together with those essential for use, and to
determine accordingly the series and web of ideas to be formed in the
mind of the pupil. For such organization of ideas, repetition is, at
all events, far better adapted than presentation, which can traverse
only one of several series at a time, and which passes into repetition
the moment an effort is made to bring the other series forward also.
In natural history, for example, various classifications occur, in
history the ethnographic divisions are crossed by the synchronistic,
while the history of culture demands yet another basis of association;
in geography each noted city is to be a landmark, enabling the pupil
to take his bearings in every direction, but cities on rivers suggest
river basins and mountain ranges; in mathematics each theorem is to
be kept ready for separate application, but it has also its special
place in the chain of demonstrations; grammatical rules, too, should be
available when called for, but it is very necessary at the same time
that the pupil become perfectly at home in his grammar and know where
to look for information.
The teacher who, by skilful repetition, does justice to these multiform
associations, is not always the one who shows most skill in systematic
presentation, and who knows best how to make prominent the main
thoughts, and to link to them those that are subordinate.
122. The impulse to repeat must, as a rule, come from points with
which pupils are familiar. It is further requisite that the teacher,
in conducting the repetition, adapt himself to their train of thought;
he must not adhere strictly to an inflexible plan. The necessary
corrections require delay here and there; the corrected statements
often constitute new points from which to take bearings. At times
the pupils themselves should feel free to indicate which topics it
seems most necessary to repeat. By so doing they assume a certain
responsibility as to the rest, and are made to realize all the more
their obligation to make up deficiencies.
123. The correction of written work likewise falls under the head of
analytic instruction, but the toil exceeds the profit if written work
is demanded too early. While writing the pupil consolidates his ideas.
Now if he does so incorrectly, the effect is mischievous, his mistakes
cling to him. Moreover, the teacher has to be on his guard lest, while
orally correcting and reading over the composition, he overestimate
the pupil’s attention. When many slips occur, when a whole forest of
mistakes is found to have sprung up, the pupil becomes indifferent
to them all; they make humble, but they also dishearten. Such tasks
should, therefore, be very brief, if the pupil is weak; nay, it is
preferable to have none at all, as long as progress is being made more
surely by a different kind of exercises.
The teacher who assigns home work with a view to saving labor in school
miscalculates utterly; his work will soon have become all the harder.
To many it seems that the exercises they assign should be very
easy, rather than short; and to make them easy, outlines, turns of
expression, everything, is indicated as definitely as possible. This
is a delusion. If composition has any purpose, it consists in making
the pupil try to see what he can do without the teacher. Now if the
pupil actually gets started on the exercise, the teacher ought not to
step in his way with all sorts of prescriptions. If the pupil fails to
make headway, the attempt was premature. We must either wait or else
shorten the task, no matter if it should shrink to no more than three
lines. Three lines of the pupil’s own work are better than three pages
written by direction. It may take years before the self-deception due
to leading-string methods is superseded by a true estimate of the
pupil’s actual power.
124. The case is quite different if, before writing, the pupil has been
assisted orally in developing his thoughts. This kind of analysis is of
special importance in later boyhood; but the teacher should see to it
that the pupil gives free expression to his own opinion. If he does,
a theme has been furnished for discussion during which the teacher
will avoid harsh dissent in proportion to his eagerness to accomplish
something with his pupil. To rebuke presuming boldness or impudence is
a different matter, of course.
Self-chosen themes are preferable by far to those that are assigned,
only they cannot be expected of the majority of pupils. But when they
do turn up, the character of the choice alone, but still more the
execution, will throw light on the opinions current among the pupils,
and on the impressions which not only the school, but experience and
society as well, have been constantly at work to produce. The writer’s
individuality reveals itself even more distinctly. Every teacher must
be prepared to come upon these individual traits, however much he
might prefer to have his pupils reflect himself. It would be futile if
he attempted to correct their essays by interpolating his own view;
he would not by that means make the latter their own. The mode of
treatment can be corrected; but other opportunities will have to serve
for the rectification of opinions--provided this can ever be undertaken
successfully.
125. With regard to synthetic instruction, we assume at the outset
that it will be supported during the whole course of training by the
merely presentative and the analytic methods of teaching, wherever
these are in place. Otherwise the ultimate result will always remain
problematical, particularly the union of learning and life.
Synthetic instruction brings in much that is new and strange; and
we must take advantage of the universal charm of novelty. It must
coöperate with acquired habits of application, and with the interest
peculiar to each subject taught. The affairs, not of Italy alone, but
also those of Greece and the Orient, have become a matter of everyday
discussion. There has been a general diffusion of knowledge about the
facts and laws of nature. Hence even younger children cannot help but
pick up many things now that will tend to forestall the indifference or
aversion with which school studies were regarded not longer than fifty
years ago. They seemed to be something foreign to life. At present, it
cannot prove difficult to turn curiosity in the direction of distant
lands, and of past ages even, especially where collections of rare
articles and antiquities are accessible. This stimulation would not
persist long, however, in the face of the labor of learning, if there
did not exist at the same time a widespread conviction of the necessity
of study, a conviction reinforced by the legal requirements of schools,
particularly of the gymnasia. Accordingly, families exert a good
influence with respect to the industry of children; and with the right
sort of government and training in school, willingness to learn is
easily secured. Less easy is it to incite a genuinely scientific desire
to know, one that will endure beyond examinations. This brings us back
to many-sidedness of interest (83–94). If interest were not already the
end of instruction, we should have to look upon it as the only means
whereby the results of teaching can be given permanence.
Interest depends partly, it is true, on native capacity, which the
school cannot create; but it depends also on the subject-matter of
instruction.
126. Synthetic instruction must offer subjects capable of arousing
lasting and spontaneously radiating interest. That which affords only
temporary pleasure or light entertainment is of too little consequence
to determine the plan of operation. Nor can the choice of such studies
be recommended as stand isolated, as do not lead to continued effort;
for, other reasons aside, we are unable to decide beforehand to
which of the main classes of interest (83–94) the individual pupil
will especially incline. The first place belongs rather to those
studies which appeal to the mind in a variety of ways and are capable
of stimulating each pupil according to his individuality. For such
subjects ample time must be allowed; they must be made the object
of prolonged, diligent effort. We may then hope that they will take
hold in some way, and we shall be in a position to know what kind of
interest they have inspired in one pupil or another. Where, on the
contrary, the end of the thread of work is soon reached, it remains
questionable whether any effort at all will be produced, let alone a
lasting impression.
127. The subject-matter having been chosen, the treatment must be
adjusted to it in such a way as to bring it within reach of the pupils.
For the exercises growing out of such treatment, the well-known
rule holds in general: the easy before the difficult, or, more
specifically, that which prepares the way before that which cannot
be firmly grasped without preliminary knowledge. To insist, however,
on perfect mastery in this respect, is often equivalent to scaring
away interest. Absolute proficiency in preliminary knowledge is a
late achievement, nor is it attained without fatigue. The teacher has
to be satisfied if the mastery acquired is such that what is lacking
can, without serious delay, be added by him in practice. To make the
road so level as to do away entirely with the necessity for occasional
leaps (96), means to provide for the convenience of the teacher rather
than for that of the pupils. The young love to climb and jump; they
do not take kindly to an absolutely level path. But they are afraid
in the dark. There must be light enough for them to see by; in other
words, the subject must lie spread out before their eyes with such
distinctness that each step is seen to be a step forward, which brings
them perceptibly nearer to a distant goal.
128. With regard to the sequence of studies we need to distinguish
first of all between preparatory knowledge and ability to do. As is
well known, the latter, even when it has been fully attained, can
be secured against loss only by long-continued practice. Hence the
practice of the pupil’s skill must go on constantly from the time
when he first learns to apply what he knows. But merely preliminary
knowledge, which produced fatigue before it was mastered, may be
allowed to drop out of the memory. Enough remains to make it easier
to resume the subject at a later time (92, 103). Accordingly, not the
preliminary knowledge just referred to, but the pupil’s facility in
doing, supplies the principle determining sequence. In the case of all
essential elementary information--knowledge of rudiments of grammar,
arithmetic, and geometry--it will be found expedient to begin with
the simplest elements long before any practical application is made.
In such first lessons individual facts only are presented. These are
made clear to the pupils (68, 69); here and there they are associated.
Fatigue is avoided if possible. Even if the earliest attempts at
memorizing should prove successful, it will be safer, instead of
relying on this fact, to postpone the whole matter for a time. At a
later period the same subject is resumed from the beginning without
any demand on the teacher’s part that some things should have been
retained. This time, however, it will be possible to introduce a
somewhat larger quantity of the instruction-material, and it will not
be too early to make pupils perceive the connection between individual
facts. If pupils experience difficulty in comprehending, we should
be careful not to advance too rapidly; the greater the difficulty,
the greater the need for caution. When the time comes for practical
application, an earnest, diligent effort must be insisted on, but only
for tasks of moderate length, and without exacting too much by harsh
means. Not
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