Outlines of Educational Doctrine

by Johann Friedrich Herbart

If the teacher can reveal to the pupil the function of wool in making garments for the race, and can lead him to repeat the processes by which, from time immemorial, the wool has been spun into yarn and woven into cloth; if, at the same time, the influence of this industry upon the home life, both of men and women, can be shown, the study of the sheep becomes worthy the attention even of a boy who can play foot-ball or of a girl who can cook. The literature of the sheep is no longer infantile or fatuous. We have a gamut reaching from Penelope to Priscilla. In the words of Professor Dewey: “The child who is interested in the way in which men lived, the tools they had to do with, the transformation of life that arose from the power and leisure thus gained, is eager to repeat like processes in his own action; to make utensils, to reproduce processes, to rehandle materials. Since he understands their problems and their successes only by seeing what obstacles and what resources they had from nature, the child is interested in field and forest, ocean and mountain, plant and animal.... The interest in history gives a more human coloring, a wider significance, to his own study of nature.”[34]

The conclusion arising from this argument is that nature study as an end in itself, or a thing apart from the real or imagined experiences of the pupil, is but a faint reflection of what it may become under a more rational treatment. In order of time, nature study in the earliest grades may indeed rest upon the mere delight of the childish mind in the new, the strange, the beautiful, and especially in the motion of live creatures, and may be reinforced by childish literature. When boyhood and girlhood begin, however, then the industrial motive, first in the home environment, then of primitive times, becomes the chief reliance for an abiding interest. In the reproduction of primitive processes, there is of necessity a historical element. When nature has attained a firm apperceptive basis through imitation of primitive industrial processes, and has obtained a historical background, then it may properly be further reinforced by literary reference. The poetic value of nature will now appeal to the mind with a potency that springs from inner life and experience; scientific law will now have some chance of appealing to the mind with something of the same reverence that Kant besought for the moral law. The true order of appeal in nature study is therefore as follows: For infancy, natural curiosity and delight in the movements of living creatures; for the age of boyhood and girlhood, imitation, real or imaginary, of processes depending upon natural objects and forces, together with historical and literary reference; secondarily, nature work may also appeal to youthful interest in natural law or beauty.

[34] Dewey, John, “The Aim of History in Elementary Education,” Elementary School Record, November, 1900, University of Chicago Press.

[259.] With the foregoing should be conjoined much attention to external nature, to the changes corresponding to the seasons, and to means of intercommunication.

Under this head belongs, on the one hand, observation of the heavenly bodies,—where sun and moon rise, how the latter waxes and wanes, where the north star is found, and what arcs are described by the brighter stars and the most conspicuous constellations.

Here belongs, on the other hand, technological knowledge, acquired partly through direct observation, partly through lessons in descriptive physical science. Technology ought not to be considered merely from the side of the so-called material interests. It furnishes very important connecting links between the apprehension of the facts of nature and human purposes. Every growing boy and youth should learn to handle the ordinary tools of the carpenter as well as rule and compasses. Mechanical skill would often prove far more useful than gymnastic exercises. The former benefits the mind, the latter benefit the body. With burgher schools should go manual training-schools, which does not mean that the latter must necessarily be trade schools. Finally, every human being ought to learn how to use his hands. The hand has a place of honor beside language in elevating mankind above the brute.

The foregoing store of information also enters into the study of geography; how, will appear in the next chapter.

The soundness of the foregoing remarks is witnessed by the rapid development of manual training-schools in the last decade, and the almost universal desire, if not practice, of providing considerable amounts of manual training for the pupils of the grammar grades. The girls usually have some form of sewing and cooking, while the boys have sloyd or other similar tool work in wood. The rationale of requiring girls to do carpenter work instead of the forms of manual exercise that especially pertain to their sex is not yet satisfactorily established.

[260.] On the observation of the heavenly bodies is based popular astronomy, which provides a test as to whether the mathematical imagination has been properly cultivated.