Outlines of Educational Doctrine

by Johann Friedrich Herbart

[258.] Even young children may very well busy themselves with picture books illustrating zoölogy, and later with analyses of plants which they have gathered. If early accustomed to this, they will, with some guidance, readily go on by themselves. At a later time they are taught to observe the external characteristics of minerals. The continuation of the study of zoölogy is beset with some difficulties on account of the element of sex.

Though industriously debated, there is no field of education more undecided both as to matter and method than nature work in the grades. Some scientists would teach large amounts of well-classified knowledge; others are content when they have secured a hospitable frame of mind toward nature. If a love for flowers and birds can be cultivated in children, the latter class are satisfied that the best result has been attained. Thus a discussion arises as to which is the more valuable, attitude or knowledge.

It is feared by some that any attempt to teach real science, even of an elementary kind, will result in a paralysis of permanent scientific interest. To this it is replied that a sentimental regard for æsthetic aspects of nature insures little or no true scientific interest.

Both sides are, in large measure, wrong; for, though apparently antagonistic in their aims, they make merely a different application of a common principle, which, if not wholly erroneous, is at least inadequate. Both parties assume that the end to be attained in nature study is something only remotely related to the pupil’s practical life. One would present nature for its own sake as scientific knowledge; the other would offer it for its own sake as a source of æsthetic or other feeling. The scientist often assumes that to a pupil a scientific fact or law is its own excuse for being. He thinks there must be a natural, spontaneous response to such a fact or law in the breast of every properly constituted child, so that, to imbue the mind with the scientific spirit, it is only necessary to expose it to scientific fact.

Perhaps, unfortunately for the normal child, this view is somewhat encouraged by the biographies of scientific geniuses. On the other hand, those who hold the poetic view of nature assume that there must be a native response to natural beauties in every child; so that the true method is to expose him to nature’s beauty, when rapture is sure to follow. Unfortunately again for the pupil, this view is also encouraged by the influence of the nature poets. The result is that natural science is presented as an end in itself—in the one case as scientific knowledge, in the other as the lovable in nature.

While it may be admitted that a few children will respond now to the one stimulus, now to the other, the great mass are not thrilled with rapture at nature’s beauty, nor are they fettered by scientific interest in her laws. To become an object of growing interest to children, nature must have a better basis than natural childish delight in the novel, or reverence for scientific law. The first of these is evanescent, the second feeble.

We may agree with the scientist as with the poet, that both science and poetic appreciation are desirable ends, but they cannot be imparted to the childish mind by didactic fiat.

If there is one service greater than another that Herbart has rendered to education, it is in bringing clearly to our consciousness the supreme importance of the principle of apperception, or mental assimilation, as a working basis for educative processes. So long as a fact or a principle or system of knowledge stands as an end in itself, just so long is it a thing apart from the real mental life of the child. Even a formally correct method of presentation, should it even appeal at once to all ‘six’ classes of interest, will fail to create more than a factitious mental enthusiasm. It is like conversation that is ‘made’ interesting; it may suffice to lighten a tedious hour, but it awakens no vital response. When, however, the natural love of novelty or inborn response to the true is reinforced by a sense of warm personal relationship, when the facts of forest, or plain, or mine, or animal life flood the mind with unexpected and significant revelations concerning either the present or the past in close personal touch with the learner, then instruction rests upon an apperceptive basis. Abstractions that before were pale, beauties that were cold, now receive color and warmth because they get a new subjective valuation that before was impossible.

A sedate sheep nibbling grass or resting in the shade, a skipping lamb gambolling on the green, are suitable objects of nature study. Their pelts, their hoofs, their horns, their wool, are worthy of note as scientific facts. A diluted interest may even be added by recitation of the nursery rhymes about “Little Bo-Peep” and “Mary had a Little Lamb.” But these are devices for the feeble-minded.