Outlines of Educational Doctrine

by Johann Friedrich Herbart

The term educative instruction frequently occurs. It means, primarily, instruction that has, in the broad sense, an ethical bearing, or an influence upon character. It is based on the idea that, not school discipline alone, but also school instruction in the common branches should be of service to the child in moral and especially in social growth. The studies help to reveal to him his place and function in the world, they form his disposition toward men and things, they give him insight into ethical relations. Instruction that contains this element of moral training is therefore called educative instruction (Erziehender Unterricht).

[101.] The realia—natural history, geography, history—possess this one unquestionable advantage, viz., easy association with experience and intercourse. Partially, at least, the pupil’s spontaneous ideas ([71]) may go out toward them. Properly used, collections of plants, picture-books, maps, will contribute their share. In history, the fondness of youth for stories is utilized. The fact that these stories are partly taken from old books written in foreign languages, and that these languages were once actually spoken, has often to be mentioned in passing, before the study of these languages themselves is taken up, nay, even after they have been begun.

It is useless to undertake a demonstration of the utility of the realia. The young do not act for the sake of the more remote ends. Pupils work when they feel they can do something; and this consciousness of power to do must be created.

The remark that it is useless to undertake to demonstrate to the young the ultimate utility of natural science studies leads naturally to a distinction between interest in the studies as ultimate ends and as immediate ends. It is suggested in this paragraph that pupils are interested in showing their capacity to accomplish results. It is very evident that one of the teacher’s chief anxieties must be to awaken an interest in the studies as ends, not perhaps in their final utility in life, but as fields in which useful work can be done even in the immediate present. The chief category by which to measure the pupil’s interest in the various activities of the schoolroom is the quality of work that he can be taught to accomplish. One need not go far to learn that children like those studies best in which they can do the best work. This is true in several respects. They are interested in the artistic perfection of what they can accomplish, as in drawing, painting, writing, the arrangement of arithmetical problems, so that the page presents a neat appearance, and so that all the processes are plainly revealed to the eye. They are interested in reading when they can call the words with facility, with neatness, without stumbling, mispronouncing or miscalling—when the tones of the voice are agreeable. The quality of the work, however, which appeals perhaps most powerfully to the children, is that of intellectual comprehension. In the reading class it is a constant delight to discover the finer shades of meaning, to express them with the voice, to detect in others any deviation from the true thought. Reading in English is particularly susceptible to this kind of treatment. For the English language being largely devoid of inflections does not show through the form of the words the finer distinctions of thought, but the mind must perceive these from a text largely devoid of grammatical inflections. It is quite possible, therefore, to read in such a manner as to miss all but the most salient points of the matter presented. There is in reading an intensive and an extensive magnitude. Our older method of teaching reading was to devote the time to a few extracts from literary masterpieces, which were exhausted by minute study. The more recent tendency in elementary education is to neglect this side of reading and to devote the time to the cursory reading, not of extracts, but of whole masterpieces of literature. The danger of such a proceeding is that the finer qualities of reading will be neglected for the sake of quantitative mastery of a large amount of reading matter. A middle course between the two would doubtless bring better results. It would, on the one hand, secure an interest that attaches to masterpieces as wholes, and, on the other, the literary appreciation that comes from minute analysis both in thought and expression of the finer distinctions of thought. In mathematical studies, the æsthetic interest of form, or the active interest of actual performance of problems, is not the sole or even the chief interest that should be appealed to. But the pupil should feel that he is making a progressive mastery of the principles of number. It is a pleasure to apply a rule, to solve a problem neatly; but it is a still greater pleasure to comprehend thoroughly the meaning of the rule, to grasp and to feel its universality, so that although it is not worth while, as Herbart suggests, to urge the ultimate function of mathematics in the life of the world, it is quite worth while to set up those immediate ends of interest such as appear in the activity of solving problems, in the æsthetic appearance of the work upon paper or board or slate, and in the comprehension of mathematical principles. These ends are near at hand; they can be made to appeal to the pupil through the quality of the work that the teacher demands of him. The same is true in the natural sciences. Even though the ultimate function of biology is an idea too remote or too complex for the child to grasp with enthusiasm, the immediate mastery of a principle in physics, or the discovery of a law of plant life, or of a fact in chemistry, may be an end in which the pupil’s most intense interest can be excited.

[102.] Geometry has other advantages of association, advantages we have begun only recently to turn to account in earnest. Figures made of wood or pasteboard, drawings, pegs, bars, flexible wires, strings, the use of the ruler, of compasses, of the square, counted coins arranged in long or short, in parallel or diverging series,—all these may be offered to the eye ad libitum and connected with other concrete objects. They may be made the basis of systematic employment and exercises, and this will be done more and more when the fact is once grasped that concrete ideas possessing the proper degree of strength constitute the surest foundation of a branch of instruction whose success depends on the manner in which the pupil forms in his mind the ideas of spatial relations. This is not grasped, of course, by those who regard space once for all as a form of sense-perception common to all minds alike. A careful study of the data of experience will convince the practical educator that the opposite is true; for in this respect individual differences are very marked. Pupils rarely hit upon geometrical constructions unaided; the aptitude for drawing, that is, for imitating the objects seen, is met with more often.

It is easy by abstraction to form arithmetical concepts out of the apprehension of geometrical relations. To do so should not be regarded as superfluous, not even when the pupil has already fully entered upon his work in arithmetic.

[103.] To Germans the two ancient classical languages do not offer the advantages of easy transition. On the other hand, the study of Latin, even if only moderately advanced, prepares the soil for the most indispensable modern foreign languages. Herein lies an argument against beginning with French, as was often done formerly. The linking of Latin to French will, moreover, hardly win the approval of students of languages, since, not to mention other reasons, Gallicisms are a source of no little danger to Latinity.

The ancient languages require long-continued labor. This fact alone renders it advisable to begin them early. The strangeness of Latin for Germans should not lead to the conclusion that the study of Latin should be commenced late, but rather that during the earlier years of boyhood it should be carried on slowly. The sounds of foreign languages must be heard early, in order that the strangeness may wear off. Single Latin words will be easily mastered even by a child. These may soon be followed by short sentences consisting of two or three words. No matter if they are forgotten again for a time. That which is said to be forgotten is not on that account lost. The real difficulty lies in the multitude of strange elements that accumulate in relatively long sentences; it lies also in the many ways of connecting subordinate clauses, in the qualifying insertions, in the order of words, and in the structure of the period. Furthermore, we must not overlook the fact that children are very slow to acquire the use of dependent clauses, even in German; their speech for a long time consists merely of a stringing together of the simplest sentences. The attempt to advance them more rapidly in the syntactical forms of Latin than is possible in their mother-tongue is a waste of time; and, besides, their inclination to study is put to a very severe test.

Perhaps the most serious defect of secondary education in the United States is its brevity. Languages are not begun until the pupil is well on to fifteen years old. A reform most urgently needed in this country is the extension of high school influence to the two grades of the grammar school lying immediately below the high school. This would enable pupils to begin foreign languages at about the age of twelve, or two years later than they are now begun in Germany.

[104.] The foregoing remarks show plainly enough that in educative instruction some subjects will be found a comparatively easy and sure means of awakening intellectual activity, while others involve a more strenuous effort, which, under certain circumstances, may end in failure. The concrete studies are nearest to the pupil; mathematics requires some apparatus to render it tangible and vivid; to get pupils started properly in modern languages can be but a slow process. But this difference is, after all, not fundamental enough, nor does it affect the whole course of instruction sufficiently, to constitute a serious pedagogical objection to the study of foreign languages, so long as there is time to teach them. Their fruits mature later.