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.