Outlines of Educational Doctrine

by Johann Friedrich Herbart

In the second place, adaptation of the vocabulary employed, both to the subject-matter and to the intelligence of the pupils, and adjustment of phraseology to the pupil’s stage of culture are essential.

Lastly, careful memorizing. At first this should be done almost verbatim. At all events, the teacher must prepare his lesson as though he had his pupils before him and were talking to them. Later on he must memorize at least the facts and turning-points of the subject to be presented, in order that he may not be compelled to consult books or look at notes. A few remarks on some particular points will be made farther on.

[109.] The effect of the teacher’s narrative and description should be to make the pupil realize events and objects as vividly as if they were actually present to his eye and ear. The pupil must, therefore, have actually heard and seen much previously. This recalls to our minds the necessity, pointed out before, of first enlarging the young pupil’s range of experience, when found too limited, through excursions and the exhibition of objects. Again, this form of instruction is adapted only to things that might be heard or seen. We must therefore avail ourselves of all the help pictures can give.

If the presentation has been a success, the reproduction by the pupils will show that they recall, not merely the main facts, but largely even the teacher’s language. They have retained more exactly than they have been asked to do. Besides, the teacher who narrates and describes well gains a strong hold on the affections of his pupils; he will find them more obedient in matters pertaining to discipline.

The foregoing paragraphs on presentative instruction may seem strange to the American teacher. We must remember, however, that they were written before the modern era of text-books, when, in point of fact, the teacher was practically the sole reliance for the facts that the children were to learn. It is the custom, even to the present, in the lower schools of Germany, to rely very largely upon the teacher for the information which the children are to acquire. In American schools, this method is not followed, for so enormous has been the development of text-book industry, that in every field of education the richest material is offered to the schools in the form of text-books. There is, however, still a legitimate field for purely presentative instruction in the earlier grades of the elementary school, especially in literature and in the beginnings of history. The most primitive method of instruction, as we see clearly in the earlier periods of Grecian education, was the narrative. The children of those days received their instruction in history, mythology, literature, geography, by listening to the tales of heroes and heroic deeds narrated by their parents, by wandering minstrels and rhapsodists. To this day, the teacher who can narrate biographical or literary matter in an attractive manner is sure to awaken intense interest in the children under her control. Perhaps one facility which the modern teacher needs to acquire more than any other is the capacity of happy, vivacious, interesting narrative cast, at the same time, into simple yet excellent literary form. Such a teacher is an undoubted treasure in the primary school. There is occasion, moreover, in nearly all school study for the presentation of supplementary material in almost every school study. This is true especially in literature and history. It is also true in geography and in mathematics, as where, for instance, the teacher narrates the methods of the ancient Egyptians in the development of geometrical ideas, or those of the Greeks. If one is teaching a foreign language, one may always find happy opportunities for introducing bits of history, biography, or other illuminating material. In the sciences nothing is more interesting to children, more stimulative of renewed effort, than narratives concerning our great scientists, their desire for education, their struggle to attain knowledge, their misfortunes, and their triumphs. Every aspect of instruction may be supplemented and illumined by instruction given in the purely presentative form of narration.

[110.] While skilful presentation produces results akin to an extension of the pupil’s range of actual experience, analysis helps to make experience more instructive. For, left to itself, experience is not a teacher whose instruction is systematic. It does not obey the law of actual progress from the simple to the complex. Things and events crowd in upon the mind in masses; the result is often chaotic apprehension. Inasmuch, then, as experience presents aggregates before it gives the component particulars, it becomes the task of instruction to reverse this order and to adjust the facts of experience to the sequence demanded in teaching. Experience, it is true, associates its content; but if this earlier association is to have the share in the work of the school that it should have, that which has been experienced and that which has been learned must be made to harmonize. With this end in view we need to supplement experience. The facts it has furnished have to be made clearer and more definite than they are, and must be given an appropriate embodiment in language.

[111.] Let us consider first the earliest stage of analytic instruction. In order to understand the significance of this method of teaching, we must examine the nature of a child’s experience. Children are indeed in the habit of familiarizing themselves with their surroundings; but the strongest impressions predominate. Objects in motion have greater attraction for them than objects at rest. They tear up and destroy without troubling themselves much about the real connection between the parts of a whole. In spite of their many why’s and what for’s, they make use of every tool or utensil without regard for its purpose; they are satisfied if it serves the impulse of the moment. Their eyes are keen, but they rarely observe; the real character of things does not deter them from making a plaything of everything, as their fancy may direct, and from making one thing stand for every other thing. They receive total impressions of similar objects, but do not derive concepts; the abstract does not enter their minds of itself.

These and similar observations, however, apply by no means equally to every child. On the contrary, children differ greatly from one another; and, with the child’s individuality, his one-sidedness already begins.

[112.] It follows at once that the first thing to be done, in a school where many children are to be taught together, is to make the children more alike in their knowledge. To this end the store of experiences which they bring with them must be worked over. But the homogeneity of pupils, desirable as it is, is not the sole aim. We must take care also that the whole of instruction acts upon the particular stock of ideas of each pupil taken individually. We must seek those points of contact and departure to which attention has repeatedly been called above, and hence cannot leave the pupil’s mass of ideas in its original crude state. Thoughtful teachers have long since testified to the necessity of this requirement, which mere scholars in their zeal for learning fail again and again to appreciate.