Pedagogics as a System

by Karl Rosenkranz

§ 50. But, although the pupil may rightly now be freed from the hands of instructors, and no longer obtain his culture through them, it is by no means to be understood that he is not to go on with the work himself. He is now to educate himself. Each must plan out for himself the ideal toward which he must daily strive. In this process of self-transformation a friend may aid by advice and example, but he cannot educate, for the act of educating necessarily implies inequality between teacher and pupil. The human necessity for companionship gives rise to societies of different kinds, in which we may, perhaps, say that there is some approach to educating their members, the necessary inequality being supplied by various grades and orders. They presuppose education in the usual sense of the word, but they wish to bring about an education in a higher sense, and, therefore, they veil the last form of their ideal in mystery and secrecy.

By the term Philister the Germans indicate the man of a civilized state who lives on, contented with himself and devoid of any impulse towards further self-culture. To one who is always aspiring after an Ideal, such a one cannot but be repulsive. But how many are they who do not, sooner or later, in mature life, crystallize, as it were, so that any active life, any new progress, is to them impossible?

ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY.

§ 1. Pedagogics is not a complete, independent science by itself. It borrows the results of other sciences [e.g., it presupposes the science of Rights, treating of the institutions of the family and civil society, as well as of the State; it presupposes the science of anthropology, in which is treated the relations of the human mind to nature. Nature conditions the development of the individual human being. But the history of the individual and the history of the race presents a continual emancipation from nature, and a continual growth into freedom, i.e., into ability to know himself and to realize himself in the world by making the matter and forces of the world his instruments and tools. Anthropology shows us how man as a natural being—i.e., as having a body—is limited. There is climate, involving heat and cold and moisture, the seasons of the year, etc.; there is organic growth, involving birth, growth, reproduction, and decay; there is race, involving the limitations of heredity; there is the telluric life of the planet and the circulation of the forces of the solar system, whence arise the processes of sleeping, waking, dreaming, and kindred phenomena; there is the emotional nature of man, involving his feelings, passions, instincts, and desires; then there are the five senses, and their conditions. Then, there is the science of phenomenology, treating of the steps by which mind rises from the stage of mere feeling and sense-perception to that of self-consciousness, i.e., to a recognition of mind as true substance, and of matter as mere phenomenon created by Mind (God). Then, there is psychology, including the treatment of the stages of activity of mind, as so-called "faculties" of the mind, e.g., attention, sense-perception, imagination, conception, understanding, judgment, reason, and the like. Psychology is generally made (by English writers) to include, also, what is here called anthropology and phenomenology. After psychology, there is the science of ethics, or of morals and customs; then, the Science of Rights, already mentioned; then, Theology, or the Science of Religion, and, after all these, there is Philosophy, or the Science of Science. Now, it is clear that the Science of Education treats of the process of development, by and through which man, as a merely natural being, becomes spirit, or self-conscious mind; hence, it presupposes all the sciences named, and will be defective if it ignores nature, or mind, or any stage or process of either, especially Anthropology, Phenomenology, Psychology, Ethics, Rights, Æsthetics, or Science of Art and Literature, Religion, or Philosophy].

§ 2. The scope of pedagogics being so broad, and its presuppositions so vast, its limits are not well defined, and its treatises are very apt to lack logical sequence and conclusion; and, indeed, frequently to be mere collections of unjustified and unexplained assumptions, dogmatically set forth. Hence the low repute of pedagogical literature as a whole.

§ 3. Moreover, education furnishes a special vocation, that of teaching. (All vocations are specializing—being cut off, as it were, from the total life of man. The "division of labor" requires that each individual shall concentrate his endeavors and be a part of the whole).

§ 4. Pedagogics, as a special science, belongs to the collection of sciences (already described, in commenting on § [1]) included under the philosophy of Spirit or Mind, and more particularly to that part of it which relates to the will (ethics and science of rights, rather than to the part relating to the intellect and feeling, as anthropology, phenomenology, psychology, æsthetics, and religion. "Theoretical" relates to the intellect, "practical" relates to the will, in this philosophy). The province of practical philosophy is the investigation of the nature of freedom, and the process of securing it by self-emancipation from nature. Pedagogics involves the conscious exertion of influence on the part of the will of the teacher upon the will of the pupil, with a purpose in view—that of inducing the pupil to form certain prescribed habits, and adopt prescribed views and inclinations. The entire science of mind (as above shown), is presupposed by the science of education, and must be kept constantly in view as a guiding light. The institution of the family (treated in practical philosophy) is the starting-point of education, and without this institution properly realized, education would find no solid foundation. The right to be educated on the part of children, and the duty to educate on the part of parents, are reciprocal; and there is no family life so poor and rudimentary that it does not furnish the most important elements of education—no matter what the subsequent influence of the school, the vocation, and the state.

§ 5. Pedagogics as science, distinguished from the same as an art: the former containing the abstract general treatment, and the latter taking into consideration all the conditions of concrete individuality, e.g., the peculiarities of the teacher and the pupil, and all the local circumstances, and the power of adaptation known as "tact."

§ 6. The special conditions and peculiarities, considered in education as an art, may be formulated and reduced to system, but they should not be introduced as a part of the science of education.