Outlines of Educational Doctrine

by Johann Friedrich Herbart

[169.] By living alternately with his equals in age and with adults, the pupil grows familiar with diverse standards of honor. To unite these, and to subordinate one to the other in a proper manner, will prove an easy or a difficult part of training, according to the smaller or greater gap between the value set on brute force on the one hand, and the demand for good-breeding, as well as regard for talent and knowledge, on the other. The main thing is not to foster ambition artificially, though care must be taken at the same time to refrain from crushing out a natural and true self-esteem. Usually, however, those interested in the progress of a pupil stand in need themselves of guarding against the self-deception due to extravagant hopes. By giving themselves up to these, they involuntarily turn flatterers, and push the boy, and the young man still more, beyond the position he is able to maintain. Bitter experiences follow.

The tendency to an abnormal overestimation of the value of physical excellence is seen in the attitude of the modern college toward athletics. Doubtless the public as a whole still underestimates the importance of fine physical development. Our modern life with its nerve-racking occupation will shatter the efficiency of large portions of the race, unless the physical organism is so developed as to withstand the strain. This, if true of men, is still more true of women, who are now undertaking many new lines of exhausting labor, not the easiest of which is teaching. But the college student is prone to adore muscle. The successful athlete is, for a brief period, praised, petted, and advertised far more than is the ablest student or professor in the institution. Scarcely do the noblest achievements of science or philanthropy receive so much notice as a successful full-back on a foot-ball team. The athlete goes up indeed like a rocket, startling the ear and dazzling the eye for a moment—then oblivion, or deserved obscurity. The teacher must endeavor to displace this false estimate of values by one more true if less exciting.

[170.] The regard for the value of things in their relation to the ordinary necessities of life develops somewhat more slowly than the natural sense of honor. This is true especially of money, which at first boys rarely know how to use. Instead of saying, either this or that, which a fixed sum will buy, the boy falls a victim to the deception that lurks in saying, this and that. In this respect also the pupil needs to gain experience on a small scale; he must, moreover, come to know the value of objects last, not merely in terms of money, but also in terms of the inconvenience of doing without them. Warnings against petty closeness are seldom necessary; not infrequently, however, a boy follows common talk, and it may happen that he practises parsimony by imitation, and squanders in obedience to his own impulses. Where faults of this sort are not conquered by the pupil’s own sense of honor, they fall within the province of moral education.

A modern device for teaching children the value of money, and especially the usefulness of saving it, is the institution of school savings banks. Here the pupil develops his instincts for accumulation. At the same time he learns to inhibit his often inordinate fondness for spending. If indulgence to self, accompanied by penuriousness toward others, is permitted to grow into a habit in childhood and youth, it becomes a source of much unhappiness in later family life. Wife and children are often victims of this kind of selfishness. Now that women are in the main the teachers of children, they should have the interest of their sex sufficiently at heart to inculcate suitable ideals and habits respecting the gathering and spending of money. No form of selfishness is so obnoxious as self-indulgence at the expense of those who have a natural right to an equitable share of what is produced. The ‘meanness’ of such conduct if constantly unveiled will effect its own cure.

[171.] When experience has taught the pupil to what extent he must endure or need not endure the pressure of human society, and what honors, objects, enjoyments, he can have or must do without, the question arises: How does he connect all this with the pursuits which attract or repel him? The thoughtful pupil soon realizes, without being told, that one thing often makes another possible, that one thing involves or conditions another. But upon the thoughtless boy this truth does not impress itself with sufficient force; consequently, the teacher has to help him to deepen that impression, because a man without a settled mind regarding these matters remains devoid of character.

Yet a lack of fixedness is often desirable rather than otherwise—a statement applying to those pupils whose intellectual interests it is the business of instruction to awaken, or whose moral and religious culture are as yet in a backward state. The objective part of character ([142]) should not become fixed too soon; and very often a large part of the value of training consists in retarding this process. Such an end is subserved by the restraint under which the pupil is kept by the subordinate position assigned to him in conformity with his age, and particularly by the refusal of freedom to act without permission, and according to his own inclination ([152]). The theoretical judgment of will relations ([149]) is frequently late in maturing, or remains weak in comparison with the impression produced by the experiences mentioned. In that case moral ardor is also wanting, and if the pupil were given liberty to do as he chose, his character would be formed, to be sure, but in the wrong way. Rather would it be better to encourage juvenile amusements, and even boyish games, beyond the usual age limit.

[172.] Third. Regulative training begins its work with the first appearance of the subjective part of character ([143]). For an earlier period the rule not to argue with children holds good ([164]); that is, it holds good as long as we can get along with it. That stage, however, is passed when the pupil begins to reason for himself; in other words, when his thinking has acquired such consecutiveness that his thoughts no longer come and go as momentary fancies, but attain to permanency and coherence. Reasoning processes of this sort ought not to be left to themselves, nor can they be repressed by dictatorial decrees. The educator must now enter into his pupil’s trains of reflection, must argue with him and prevent further development in the wrong direction.

The tendency to set up rules reveals itself early; for example, in the games of children. Commands as to what to do are given every moment, only these imperatives are imperfectly obeyed and often changed. Neither is there lack of original, childish resolutions; but they can mean little so long as they do not remain the same. It is very different when they acquire stability, when means and ends combine into plans, when execution is attempted under difficulties, and finally when these resolves are thought in the forms of general concepts, thereby laying claim to validity in possible future instances, and becoming thus transformed into maxims.