Johann Friedrich Herbart

“ It is important for the teacher to see the full scope of the doctrine of interest in its relation to effort. In Herbart’s psychology it assumes a most important place, since the primacy of mental life is, in this system, ascribed to ideas. In other systems, notably those of Kant, Schopenhauer, Von Hartmann, Paulsen, primacy is ascribed to the will, first in unconscious or subconscious striving, later in conscious volition. ”

“ It must be granted, however, that Herbart’s classification is convenient, even if not especially scientific.
The empirical interest is the mental eagerness aroused by direct appeal to the senses, as by novel shapes, colors, sounds, odors, and the like. Its first stage is wonder, admiration, fear, awe. The child that drops his picture-book to chase a butterfly abandons one empirical interest for a stronger one. This form of interest is usually transient; unless it develops into a new kind of interest, it is soon abandoned for some other attraction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That spot where pupils and teacher are at the moment is the point from which the pupils must take their bearings, and in thought extend their horizon. It will never do to pass over the natural starting-points provided by sense-perception.
Had the note to this section been properly heeded, we should not have had to wait for fifty years after Herbart’s death before witnessing the present rational methods of applying geographical science to elementary education. It is the proud boast of the modern elementary geography that it begins [264] with a study of the pupil’s actual environment. ”

“ As long as his judging lacks clearness, energy, and completeness, his resolutions are without a foundation in his mind and heart. They are hardly more than memorized words.
When, on the other hand, the theoretical judgment has become interwoven with the totality of interest growing out of experience, social intercourse, and instruction, it creates a warm affection for the good wherever found, an affection which influences not only all of the pupil’s efforts of will, but also the manner in which he assimilates what instruction and life henceforth offer. ”

“ They are indeed to be rejected as the final ends of character, but what Kant did not recognize is that they are the psychological means for attaining character. Primarily these feelings, far from being radically bad, as he thought, are radically good, since they help to furnish the necessary conditions of survival, both for the individual and for the race. Hunger, fear, courage, combativeness, prudence, sexual instinct, inquisitiveness, love of adornment, frugality, and a hundred other elemental passions have preserved the race from destruction in the past. ”

“ Even though the ultimate function of biology is an idea too remote or too complex for the child to grasp with enthusiasm, the immediate mastery of a principle in physics, or the discovery of a law of plant life, or of a fact in chemistry, may be an end in which the pupil’s most intense interest can be excited. ”

“ Where training has not provided for occupation and for the distribution of time, we must always expect to encounter an activity which has no aim, and which forgets its own purposes. From such a state of affairs arise a craving for liberty averse to all control, and, where several pupils are grouped together, contention, either for the possession of something or for the sake of showing off. Each wants to be first; recognition of the just equality of all is deliberately refused. Mutual ill-will intrenches itself and stealthily waits for an opportunity to break forth. ”

“ Thus a child will stand in open-eyed wonder at beholding a novel spectacle, the scientist becomes absorbed in watching the outcome of a new experiment, the philosopher loses consciousness to all about him in the unfolding of some new train of thought. Not only may absorption concern momentary experiences, but it may in a broad way be said to cover considerable periods of life, as, for instance, when a student becomes absorbed in the mastery of foreign languages having no immediate relation to his daily life. Reflection is the assimilation of the knowledge gained by absorption. ”

“ It is true that education usually counteracts the tendency to indolence and to unruliness, not only by the use of the spur and the bridle, but also through guidance in the direction of the proprieties; giving rise to the thought “what will others say,” it shows existing conditions as mirrored in the minds of others. But when these others are compelled to remain silent, or when the pupil is sure of their partiality, or is exposed to their errors of judgment, the effect is to vitiate rather than to arouse the ethical judgment. ”

“ When looking historically at mankind as a whole, they arrive at fatalism, as does Gumplowicz in his “Outlines of Sociology.” Teacher and pupil alike seem to them to be in the current of a mighty stream, not swimming,—that is, self-active,—which would be the correct view, but carried along without wills of their own. They arrive, on the other hand, at the idea of a perfectly free will, when they contemplate the individual and see him resist external influences, the aims of the teacher very often included. ”

“ Such contempt of moral judgment gains ground and spreads ruin all the more, the farther the ethical judgments on which morality must rest fall short of the clearness that ought to mark them, and the cruder the pupil’s knowledge is of the antithesis between them and maxims of utility or pleasure. ”

“ Instruction and training have this in common, that each makes for education and hence for the future, while government provides for the present. A distinction should, however, be made here. Instruction is far from being always educative or pedagogical. Where acquisition of wealth and external success or strong personal preference supply the motives for study, no heed is paid to the question: What will be the gain or loss to character? One actuated by such motives sets out, such as he is, to learn one thing or another, no matter whether for good or bad or for indifferent ends ”

“ Now the time has arrived for moral education in the strict sense. For we cannot leave it to chance whether our young charges will, of their own initiative, synthesize for themselves noble actions on the one hand and base actions on the other, whether they will take time to reflect, and will, each for himself, apply the lessons taught. On the contrary, they [194] all have to be told, each one individually has to be told, truths that no one is wont to hear with pleasure. The more thoroughly the teacher knows his pupils, the better. ”

“ In order that instruction may act on the pupil’s ideas and disposition, every avenue of approach should be thrown open. The mere fact that we can never know with certainty, beforehand, what will influence the pupil most, warns us against one-sidedness of instruction. ”

“ In cities social good-will means coöperation for paving and lighting streets, for the suppression of crime, for furnishing good water and efficient sewerage, for defence against fire, for rapid transit, besides the myriad agencies for promoting the mental, moral, and spiritual welfare of the people. A man in a city needs to be a good neighbor to everybody, even though he may know personally but one in a million. ”

“ As regards the bearings of interest on virtue, we need to remember that many-sidedness of interest alone, even of direct interest such as instruction is to engender, is yet far from being identical with virtue itself; also that, conversely, the weaker the original mental activity, the less likelihood that virtue will be realized at all, not to speak of the variety of manifestation possible in action. Imbeciles cannot be virtuous. Virtue involves an awakening of mind. ”

“ It is valuable to a teacher to see what changes have been wrought so that he may join in the movement to weed out the bad, to cling to the good, and to reach up into the realm of modern mathematics to see if, perchance, he cannot find that which is good and usable and light-shedding for the elementary work. ”

“ It is obvious, therefore, that moral education will always remain essentially a home task, and that the institutions of the state are to be resorted to for educative purposes only with a view to supplementing the home.
But on closer inspection it is found that family life is very often too busy, too full of care, or too noisy, for that rigor which is undeniably required both for instruction and for morality. Luxury and want alike harbor dangers for youth. Consequently families lean on the state for support more than they ought. ”

“ The idea of perfection in its universal aspect is indeed as foreign to the child’s mind as that of good-will; nevertheless, the rudiments of what this idea implies can be imparted with far greater assurance of success. As the child grows and thrives, his strength and accomplishments increase likewise, and he takes pleasure in his own progress. But here innumerable differences in kind and in degree demand our observation, particularly in view of the purpose of linking instruction to the stage of growth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yet when we consider that the knowledge taught in the school goes to the root of every vital human relation, that, in other words, the studies may be made instruments for progressively revealing to the child his place and function in the world, it follows as a necessary consequence, that to interest the pupil thoroughly in these branches of learning, is to work at the foundation of his character, so far, at least, as insight into duty and disposition to do it are concerned. Even if interest in ethical things is not of itself virtue, it is an important means for securing virtue. ”

“ The power of education must be neither over- nor under-estimated. The educator should, indeed, try to see how much may be done; but he must always expect that the outcome will warn him to confine his attempts within reasonable bounds. In order not to neglect anything essential, he needs to keep in view the practical bearings of the whole theory of ideas; in order to understand and interpret correctly the data furnished by observation of the child, the teacher must make constant use of psychology. ”

“ That the earth is a sphere revolving about its own axis and about the sun, for a long time sounds to children more like a fairy-tale than like a statement of fact; and even educated young men sometimes hesitate to accept the theory of the planetary system because they are unable to comprehend how it is possible to know such things. ”

“ It cannot be denied that there are many, even among the educated, who aspire to nothing higher than freedom from care by means of a lucrative calling, or a life of social enjoyment, and who, accordingly, estimate the value of their knowledge by this standard. Such a state of things is not mended by a kind of instruction that awakens little interest, and that in after years constitutes the dark side of reminiscences connected with early youth. ”

“ But when they do turn up, the character of the choice alone, but still more the execution, will throw light on the opinions current among the pupils, and on the impressions which not only the school, but experience and society as well, have been constantly at work to produce. The writer’s individuality reveals itself even more distinctly. Every teacher must be prepared to come upon these individual traits, however much he might prefer to have his pupils reflect himself. ”

“ In the work of supervision the teacher will find it hard to rely on himself entirely, particularly if he has charge of classes only at stated times. Others must assist him; he himself will have to resort occasionally to surprises. Supervision is always an evil when coupled with unnecessary distrust. It is essential, therefore, to make those who do not merit distrust understand that the measures adopted are not directed against them. ”

“ The capacity for education, therefore, is determined not by the relationship in which various originally distinct mental faculties stand to one another, but by the relations of ideas already acquired to one another, and to the physical organism. ”

“ To teach history solely from a single book, even if this be among the best, is to produce an atrophy of the historical interest. It is on this account that successful teachers introduce large amounts of collateral reading, not of similarly condensed books, which would be like remedying the drouth with more dry weather, but of sections from fuller works on the same subject. In American history the pupil is directed to read selected portions of standard works like those of Fiske, Parkman, McMaster, Turner, Tyler, or earlier historians. ”