The transition to the graded elementary school came easily and naturally. For half a century the course of instruction in the evolving elementary state school had been in process of expansion. Pestalozzi paved the way for its creation by changing the purpose and direction, and greatly enlarging (p. 543) the field of instruction of the vernacular school. After him other new subjects of study were added (see diagram, Figure 226), new and better and longer textbooks were prepared (R. 351), and the school term was gradually lengthened. The way in time became clear, earliest in the German lands and in a few American cities, but by about 1850 in most leading nations, for that simple reorganization of school work which would divide the school into a number of classes, or forms, or grades, and give one to each teacher to handle. When this point had been reached, which came about 1850 to 1860 in most nations, but earlier in a few, the modern type of town or city graded elementary school was at hand. Teaching had by this time become an organized and a psychological process; graded courses of study began to appear; professional school superintendents began to be given the direction and supervision of instruction; and the modern science of school organization and administration began to take shape. From this point on the further development of the graded elementary public school has come through the addition of new materials of instruction, and by changing the direction of the school to adapt it better to meeting the new needs of society brought about by the scientific, industrial, social, and political revolutions which we, in previous chapters, have described. A few of the more important of these additions and changes in direction we shall now briefly describe.
[Illustration: FIG. 227. AN "USHER" AND HIS CLASS. The usher, or assistant teacher, is here shown with a class in one of the small recitation-rooms, off the large schoolroom.]
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.