The History of Education / Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

II. NEW IDEAS FROM HERBARTIAN SOURCES

THE WORK OF HERBART. Taking up the problem as Pestalozzi left it, a German by the name of Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) carried it forward by organizing a truer psychology for the whole educational process, by erecting a new social aim for instruction, by formulating new steps in method, and by showing the place and the importance of properly organized instruction in history and literature in the education of the child. Though the two men were entirely different in type, and worked along entirely different lines, the connection between Herbart and Pestalozzi was, nevertheless, close. [12]

The two men, however, approached the educational problem from entirely different angles. Pestalozzi gave nearly all his long life to teaching and human service, while Herbart taught only as a traveling private tutor for three years, and later a class of twenty children in his university practice school. Pestalozzi was a social reformer, a visionary, and an impractical enthusiast, but was possessed of a remarkable intuitive insight into child nature. Herbart, on the other hand, was a well-trained scholarly thinker, who spent the most of his life in the peaceful occupation of a professor of philosophy in a German university. [13] It was while at Königsberg, between 1810 and 1832, and as an appendix to his work as professor of philosophy, that he organized a small practice school, conducted a Pedagogical Seminar, and worked out his educational theory and method. His work was a careful, scholarly attempt at the organization of education as a science, carried out amid the peace and quiet which a university atmosphere almost alone affords. He addressed himself chiefly to three things: (1) the aim, (2) the content, and (3) the method of instruction.

THE AIM AND THE CONTENT OF EDUCATION. Locke had set up as the aim of education the ideal of a physically sound gentleman. Rousseau had declared his aim to be to prepare his boy for life by developing naturally his inborn capacities. Pestalozzi had sought to regenerate society by means of education, and to prepare children for society by a "harmonious training" of their "faculties." Herbart rejected alike the conventional-social education of Locke, the natural and unsocial education of Rousseau, and the "faculty-psychology" conception of education of Pestalozzi. Instead he conceived of the mind as a unity, instead of being divided into "faculties," and the aim of education as broadly social rather than personal. The purpose of education, he said, was to prepare men to live properly in organized society, and hence the chief aim in education was not conventional fitness, natural development, mere knowledge, nor personal mental power, but personal character and social morality. This being the case, the educator should analyze the interests and occupations and social responsibilities of men as they are grouped in organized society, and, from such analyses, deduce the means and the method of instruction. Man's interests, he said, come from two main sources—his contact with the things in his environment (real things, sense- impressions), and from his relations with human beings (social intercourse). His social responsibilities and duties are determined by the nature of the social organization of which he forms a part.

Pestalozzi had provided fairly well for the first group of contacts, through his instruction in objects, home geography, numbers, and geometric form. For the second group of contacts Pestalozzi had developed only oral language, and to this Herbart now added the two important studies of literature and history, and history with the emphasis on the social rather than the political side. Two new elementary-school subjects were thus developed, each important in revealing to man his place in the social whole. History in particular Herbart conceived to be a study of the first importance for revealing proper human relationships, and leading men to social and national "good-will."

The chief purpose of education Herbart held to be to develop personal character and to prepare for social usefulness (R. 355). These virtues, he held, proceeded from enough of the right kind of knowledge, properly interpreted to the pupil so that clear ideas as to relationships might be formed. To impart this knowledge interest must be awakened, and to arouse interest in the many kinds of knowledge needed, a "many-sided" development must take place. From full knowledge, and with proper instruction by the teacher, clear ideas or concepts might be formed, and clear ideas ought to lead to right action, and right action to personal character—the aim of all instruction. Herbart was the first writer on education to place the great emphasis on proper instruction, and to exalt teaching and proper teaching-procedure instead of mere knowledge or intellectual discipline. He thus conceived of the educational process as a science in itself, having a definite content and method, and worthy of special study by those who desire to teach.

HERBARTIAN METHOD. With these ideas as to the aim and content of instruction, Herbart worked out a theory of the instructional process and a method of instruction (R. 356). Interest he held to be of first importance as a prerequisite to good instruction. If given spontaneously, well and good; but, if necessary, forced interest must be resorted to. Skill in instruction is in part to be determined by the ability of the teacher to secure interest without resorting to force on the one hand or sugar-coating of the subject on the other. Taking Pestalozzi's idea that the purpose of the teacher was to give pupils new experiences through contacts with real things, without assuming that the pupils already had such, Herbart elaborated the process by which new knowledge is assimilated in terms of what one already knows, and from his elaboration of this principle the doctrine of apperception—that is, the apperceiving or comprehending of new knowledge in terms of the old—has been fixed as an important principle in educational psychology. Good instruction, then, involves first putting the child into a proper frame of mind to apperceive the new knowledge, and hence this becomes a corner-stone of all good teaching method.

Herbart did not always rely on such methods, holding that the "committing to memory" of certain necessary facts often was necessary, but he held that the mere memorizing of isolated facts, which had characterized school instruction for ages, had little value for either educational or moral ends. The teaching of mere facts often was very necessary, but such instruction called for a methodical organization of the facts by the teacher, so as to make their learning contribute to some definite purpose. This called for a purpose in instruction; the organization of the facts necessary to be taught so as to select the most useful ones; the connection of these so as to establish the principle which was the purpose of the instruction; and training in systematic thinking by applying the principle to new problems of the type being studied. The carrying-out of such ideas meant the careful organization of the teaching process and teaching method, to secure certain predetermined ends in child development, instead of mere miscellaneous memorizing and school-keeping.

THE HERBARTIAN MOVEMENT IN GERMANY. Herbart died in 1841, without having awakened any general interest in his ideas, and they remained virtually unnoticed until 1865. In that year a professor at Leipzig, Tuiskon Ziller (1817-1883), published a book setting forth Herbart's idea of instruction as a moral force. This attracted much attention, and led to the formation (1868) of a scientific society for the study of Herbart's ideas. Ziller and his followers now elaborated Herbart's ideas, advanced the theory of culture-epochs in child development, the theory of concentration in studies, and elaborated the four steps in the process of instruction, as described by Herbart, into the five formal steps of the modern Herbartian school.

In 1874 a pedagogical seminary and practice school was organized at the University of Jena, and in 1885 this came under the direction of Professor William Rein, a pupil of Ziller's, who developed the practice school according to the ideas of Ziller. A detailed course of study for this school, filling two large volumes, was worked out, and the practice lessons given were thoroughly planned beforehand and the methods employed were subjected to a searching analysis after the lesson had been given.

HERBARTIAN IDEAS IN THE UNITED STATES. For a time, under the inspiration of Ziller and Rein, Jena became an educational center to which students went from many lands. From the work at Jena Herbartian ideas have spread which have modified elementary educational procedure generally. In particular did the work at Jena make a deep impression in the United States. Between 1885 and 1890 a number of Americans studied at Jena and, returning, brought back to the United States this Ziller-Rein-Jena brand of Herbartian ideas and practices. [14] From the first the new ideas met with enthusiastic approval.

[Illustration: PLATE 18. TWO LEADERS IN THE REORGANIZATION OF EDUCATIONAL
THEORY

JOHANN FRIEDRICH HERBART (1776-1841)
Organizer of the Psychology of Instruction

FRIEDRICH WILHELM TROEBEL (1782-1852)
Founder of the Kindergarten]

New methods of instruction in history and literature, and a new psychology, were now added to the normal-school professional instruction. Though this psychology has since been outgrown (R. 357), it has been very useful in shaping pedagogical thought. New courses of study for the training-schools were now worked out in which the elementary-school subjects were divided into drill subjects, content subjects, and motor- activity subjects. [15]

Apperception, interest, correlation, social purpose, moral education, citizenship training, and recitation methods became new terms to conjure with. From the normal schools these ideas spread rapidly to the better city school systems of the time, and soon found their way into courses of study everywhere. Practice schools and the model lessons in dozens of normal schools were remodeled after the pattern of those at Jena, and for a decade Herbartian ideas and the new child study vied with one another for the place of first importance in educational thinking. The Herbartian wave of the nineties resembled the Pestalozzian enthusiasm of the sixties. Each for a time furnished the new ideas in education, each introduced elements of importance into the elementary-school instruction, each deeply influenced the training of teachers in normal schools by giving a new turn to the instruction there, and each gradually settled down into its proper place in educational practice and history.

THE HERBARTIAN CONTRIBUTION. To the Herbartians we are indebted in particular for important new conceptions as to the teaching of history and literature, which have modified all our subsequent procedure; for the introduction of history teaching in some form into all the elementary- school grades; for the emphasis on a new social point of view in the teaching of history and geography; for the new emphasis on the moral aim in instruction; for a new and a truer educational psychology; and for a better organization of the technique of classroom instruction. In particular Herbart gave emphasis to that part of educational development which comes from without—environment acting upon the child—as contrasted with the emphasis Pestalozzi had placed on mental development from within and according to organic law. With the introduction of normal child activities, which came from another source about this same time, the elementary-school curriculum as we now have it was practically complete, and the elementary school of 1850 was completely made over to form the elementary school of the beginning of the twentieth century.