The Elements of General Method, Based on the Principles of Herbart

by Charles A. McMurry

But, secondly, there are found still more immediate means of stimulating and strengthening the will, namely, in the feelings. The feelings are more closely related to will than knowledge, at least in the sense of cause and effect. There is a gradual transition from the feelings up to will, as follows: interest in an object, inclination, desire and purpose, or will to secure it. We might say that will is only the final link in the chain, and the feelings and desires lead up to and produce the act of willing. Even will itself has been called a feeling by some psychologists and classed with the feelings. But the thing in which we are now most concerned is how to reach and strengthen the will through the feelings. Some of the feelings which powerfully influence the will are desire of approbation, ambition, love of knowledge, appreciation of the beautiful and the good; or, on the other side, rivalry, envy, hate, and ill-will. Now, it is clear that a cultivation of the feelings and emotions is possible which may strongly influence the purposes and decisions of the will, either in the right or wrong direction. It is just at this point that education is capable of a vigorous influence in moulding the character of a child. The cultivation of the six interests already mentioned is little else than a cultivation of the great classes of feeling, for interest always contains a strong element of feeling. It is certain in any case that a child's, and eventually a man's will, is to be guided largely by his feelings. Whether any care is taken in education or not, feeling, good or bad, is destined to guide the will. Most people, as we know, are too much influenced by their feelings. This is apparent in the adage, "Think twice before you speak." Feelings of malice and ill-will, of revenge and envy, of dislike and jealously, get the control in many lives, because they have been permitted to grow and nothing better has been put in their place. The teacher by selecting the proper materials of study is able to cultivate and strengthen such feelings as sympathy and kindliness toward others; appreciation of brave, unselfish acts in others; the feeling of generosity, charity, and a forgiving spirit; a love for honesty and uprightness; a desire and ambition for knowledge in many directions. On the other hand, the teacher may gently instill a dislike for cowardice, meanness, selfishness, laziness, and envy, and bring the child to master and control these evil dispositions. Not only is it possible to cultivate those feelings which we may summarize as the love of the virtues and develop a dislike and turning away from vices, but this work of cultivating the feelings may be carried on so systematically that great habits of feeling are formed, and these habits become the very strongholds of character. They are the forces acting upon the will and guiding its choice.

It is freedom of the will to chose the best that we are after. We desire to limit the choice of the will if possible to good things. We desire to make the character so strong and so noble and consistent in its desires that it will not be strongly tempted by evil. The will in the end, while it controls all the life and action, is itself under the guidance of those habits of thought and feeling that have been gradually formed. Sully says, "Thus it is feeling that ultimately supplies the stimulus or force to volition and intellect which guides or illumines it."

A study of the will in its relation to knowledge and feeling reveals that the training and development of the will depend upon exercise and upon instruction. There are two ways of exercising will power. First, by requiring it to obey authority promptly and to control the body and the mind at the direction of another. The discipline of a school may exert a strong influence upon pupils in teaching them concentration and will power under the direction of another. Especially is this true in lower grades. Children in the first grade have but little power or habit of concentrating the attention. The will of the teacher, combined with her tact, must aid in developing the energies of the will in these little ones. The primary value of quick obedience in school, of exact discipline in marching, rising, etc., is twofold. It secures the necessary orderliness and it trains the will. Even in higher and normal schools such a perfect discipline has a great value in training to alertness and quickness of apprehension associated with action.

Secondly, by the training of the mind to freedom of action, to self-activity, to independence. As soon as children begin to develop the power of thought and action their self-activity should be encouraged. Even in the lowest grades the beginnings may be made. An aim may be set before them which they are to reach by their own efforts. For example, let a class in the first reader be asked to make a list of all the words in the last two lessons containing th, or oi, or some other combination. Activity rather than repose is the nature of children, and even in the kindergarten this activity is directed to the attainment of definite ends. With number work in the first grade the objects should be handled by the children, the letters made, rude drawings sketched, so as to give play to their active powers as well as to lead them on to confidence in doing, to an increase of self-activity. As children grow older, the problems set before them, the aims held out, should be more difficult. Of course they should be of interest to the child, so that it will have an impulse and desire of its own to reach them.

There are few things so valuable as setting up definite aims before children and then supplying them with incentives to reach them through their own efforts. It has been often supposed that the only way to do this is to use reference books, to study up the lesson or some topics of it outside of the regular order. But self-activity is by no means limited to such outside work. A child's self-activity may be often aroused by the manner of studying a simple lesson from a text-book. When a reading or geography lesson is so studied that the pupil thoroughly sifts the piece, hunts down the thought till he is certain of its meaning; when all the previous knowledge the pupil can command is brought to bear upon this, to throw light upon it; when the dictionary and any other books familiar to the child are studied for the sake of reference and explanation, self-activity is developed. Whenever the disposition can be stimulated to look at a fact or statement from more than one standpoint, to criticise it even, to see how true it is, or if there are exceptions, self-activity is cultivated.

The pursuit of definite aims always calls out the will and their satisfactory attainment strengthens one's confidence in his ability to succeed. Every step should be toward a clearly seen aim. At least this is our ideal in working with children. They should not be led on blindly from one point to another, but try to reach definite results.

There is a gradual transition in the course of a child's schooling from training of the will under guidance to its independent exercise. Throughout the school course there must be much obedience and will effort under the guidance of one in authority. But there should be a gradual increase of self-activity and self-determination. When the pupil leaves school he should be prepared to launch out and pursue his own aims with success.

Will effort, however, to be valuable, must have its roots in those moral convictions which it is the chief aim of the school to foster and strengthen. We have attempted to show in the preceding chapters how the central subject matter of the school could be chosen, and the other studies concentrated about it with a view to accomplishing this result. In concluding our discussion of general principles of education, and in summing up the results, basing our reasoning upon psychology, we are always forced to the conclusion that education aims at the will, and more particularly at the will as influenced and guided by moral ideas. This is the same as saying that we have completed the circle and come around to our starting point, that moral character is the chief aim of education.

Teachers who are interested in this phase of pedagogy will do well to study the science of ethics. Not that it will much aid them directly in school work, but it will at least give them a more comprehensive and definite notion of the field of morals and perhaps indicate more clearly where the materials of moral education are to be sought, and the leading ideas to be emphasized.

Herbart projected a system of ethics, based on psychology, with the intention of classifying the chief moral notions and of showing their relation to each other. He also developed a theory of the origin of moral ideas and their best means of cultivation, and then based his system of pedagogy upon it.