I cannot resist presenting the Herbartian Psychology in the dry light of Scottish humour.[21]
“We have failed to explain ideas by the mind, how about explaining the mind by ideas? You are not to suppose that this is exactly how Herbart puts it, Herbart is a philosopher, a German philosopher. It is true that he starts with the mind or, as he prefers to call it, a soul: but do not fear that the sport of the hunt is to be spoiled for that ... the ‘given’ soul is no more a real soul than it is a real crater of a volcano. It has absolutely no content: it is not even an idea trap. Ideas can slip in and out of it as they please, or, rather, as other ideas please but the soul has no power either to call, make, keep, or recall, an idea. The ideas arrange all these matters among themselves. The mind can make no objection.”
“‘The soul has no capacity nor faculty whatever either to receive or produce anything: it is therefore no tabula rasa in the sense that impressions, foreign to its nature, may be made on it. Also it is no substance in Leibnitz’s sense, which includes original self-activity. It has originally neither ideas, nor feelings, nor desires. Further, within it lie no forms of intuition and thought, no laws of willing and acting, nor any sort of predisposition however remote towards these. The simple nature of the soul is totally unknown and for ever remains so. It is as little a subject for speculative as for empirical psychology.’ (Lehrbuch zur Psychologie, by Herbart: Part III: pp. 152, 153.) Thus, a vigorous vis inertiæ is the only power of the mind. Still it is subject to the action of certain forces. Nothing but ideas (Vorstellung) can attack the soul so that the ideas really make up the mind.”
We are familiar with the struggle of ideas on the threshold, with the good luck of those that get in and especially of those that get in first and mount to high places; with the behaviour of ideas, very much like that of persons who fall into groups in an anarchical state. This behaviour is described as the formation of ‘apperception masses’ and the mass that is sufficiently strong has it all its own way and dominates the mind. Our business is not to examine the psychology of Herbart, a very serious and suggestive contribution to our knowledge of educational principles, but rather to consider how it works out practically in education. But before we examine how Herbartian psychology bears this test of experiment, let us consider what Professor William James has to say of psychology in general.
“When we talk of psychology as a natural science,” he tells us, “we must not assume that that means a sort of psychology that stands at last on solid ground. It means just the reverse. It means a psychology particularly fragile and into which the waters of metaphysical criticism leak at every joint, a psychology all of whose elementary assumptions and data must be reconsidered in wider connections and translated into other terms. It is, in short, a phrase of diffidence and not of arrogance; and it is indeed strange to hear people talk triumphantly of the ‘New Psychology’ and write Histories of Psychology when into the real elements and forces which the word covers not the first glimpse of clear insight exists. A string of raw facts, a little gossip and wrangle about opinions, a little classification and generalisation on the mere descriptive level ... but not a single law ... not a single proposition from which any consequence can casually be deduced.”
But Professor James went on and wrote his extraordinarily interesting book on psychology, and we must do the same though our basis is no more than the common experience of mankind so far as one mind can express the experience common to us all.
Herbart’s psychology is extraordinarily gratifying and attractive to teachers who are, like other people, eager to magnify their office; and here is a scheme which shows how every child is a new creation as he comes forth from the hands of his teacher. The teacher learns how to do it; he has but to draw together a mass of those ideas which themselves will combine in the mind into which they effect an entrance, and, behold, the thing is done: the teacher has done it; he has selected the ideas, shewn the correlation of each with the other and the work is complete! The ideas establish themselves, the most potent rule and gather force, and if these be good, the man is made.
Here, for example, is a single week’s ‘Correlation of Subjects’ worked out by a highly qualified teacher. “Arithmetic (Decimal Fractions), Mathematics (Simple Equations, Parallelograms), Science (Latent Heat), Housecraft (Nerves, Thought, Habits), Geography (Scotland, General Industries); or, again, for another week,—under the same headings,—Metric problems, Symbols (four rules), Triangles (sum angles), Machinery, Circulation, Sculpture of the British Isles.” The ideas, no doubt, have an agility and ability which we do not possess and know how to jump at each other and form the desired ‘apperception masses.’
A successful and able modern educationalist gives us a valuable introduction to Herbartian Principles, and, by way of example, “A Robinson Crusoe Concentration Scheme,” a series of lessons given to children in Standard I in an Elementary School. First we have nine lessons in literature and language, the subjects being such as ‘Robinson climbs a hill and finds he is on an island.’ Then, ten object lessons of which the first is,—The Sea, the second, A Ship from Foreign Parts, the sixth, A Life-Boat, the seventh, Shell-Fish, the tenth, A Cave. How these ‘objects’ are to be produced one does not see. The third series are drawing lessons, probably as many, a boat, a ship, an oar, an anchor and so on. Then follows a series on manual training, still built upon ‘Robinson’; the first, a model of the sea-shore; then, models of Robinson’s island, of Robinson’s house and Robinson’s pottery. The next course consists of reading, an indefinite number of lessons,—‘passages from The Child’s Robinson Crusoe and from a general Reader on the matters discussed in object lessons.’ Then follows a series of writing lessons, “simple composition on the subject of the lessons ... the children framed the sentences which the teacher wrote on the blackboard and the class copied afterwards.” Here is one composition,—“Robinson spent his first night in a tree. In the morning he was hungry but he saw nothing round him but grass and trees without fruit. On the sea-shore he found some shell-fish which he ate.” Compare this with the voluminous output of children of six or seven working on the P.U.S. scheme upon any subject that they know; with, indeed, the pages they will dictate after a single reading of a chapter of Robinson Crusoe, not a ‘child’s edition.’
Arithmetic follows with, no doubt, as many lessons, “many mental examples and simple problems dealt with Robinson”; the eighth and last course was in singing and recitation,—‘I am monarch of all I survey,’ etc. “The lessons lasted about forty-five minutes each.... Under ordinary conditions the story of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ would be the leading feature in the work of a whole year ... in comparing the English classes with the German classes I have seen studying ‘Robinson Crusoe’ I was convinced that the eagerness and interest was as keen among the children here as in the German schools.... One easily sees what a wealth of material there is in the further development of the story.” One does indeed! The whole thing must be highly amusing to the teacher, as ingenious amplifications self-produced always are: that the children too were entertained, one does not doubt. The teacher was probably at her best in getting by sheer force much out of little: she was, in fact, acting a part and the children were entertained as at a show, cinema or other; but of one thing we may be sure, an utter distaste, a loathing, on the part of the children ever after, not only for ‘Robinson Crusoe’ but for every one of the subjects lugged in to illustrate his adventures. We read elsewhere of an apple affording a text for a hundred lessons, including the making of a ladder, (in paper), to gather the apples; but, alas, the eating of the worn-out apple is not suggested! The author whom we quote for ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and whom we refrain from naming because, as a Greek Chorus might say, ‘we cannot praise,’ follows the ‘Robinson’ series with another interminable series on the Armada.