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Title: Modern educators and their ideals
Author: Ph.D. Tadasu Misawa
Release date: February 18, 2026 [eBook #77974]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1909
Credits: Charlene Taylor, Jwala Kumar Sista and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN EDUCATORS AND THEIR IDEALS ***
Transcriber’s Notes
1. Certain typographic errors & hyphenation inconsistencies were
silently corrected, (excepting at two places being book-reference
titles)
2. The text version is coded for italics and the like mark-ups i.e.,
(a) italics are indicated thus _italic_;
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(d) Images are indicated as [Illustration: (with narration...)].
MODERN EDUCATORS
AND THEIR IDEALS
[Illustration: i_cover]
MODERN EDUCATORS
AND THEIR IDEALS
BY
TADASU MISAWA, +Ph.D.+
[Illustration: logo]
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK MCMIX
+Copyright, 1909, by+
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
_Published March, 1909_
PREFACE
The present work is intended mainly for students of pedagogy in
colleges or normal schools, teachers and other practical workers in
educational fields, and those parents who take a special interest
in the problems of education. It aims to give a general idea of the
educational views of great philosophers and reformers in modern times,
which form the basis of the present day education in its ideals and
practice. The author’s endeavor has been to present the fundamental
ideas of these thinkers and epoch makers in a concise and coherent
form, and with a sympathetic interpretation. An academic criticism or
amplification of any theories is purposely avoided; and very little
is added to what each writer has said for himself, beyond that which
was found necessary to make the connection of thought clearer and its
significance more comprehensible to the reader.
Thus the book practically consists of excerpts from the main works
of the thinkers here chosen, which are either put in their original
form or modified by the author so as to meet the extent and intent of
the book. And he believes that, though not always agreeing with their
ideas, he has made himself a faithful mouthpiece for each of them.
The bibliographies attached are by no means meant to be exhaustive.
They include only those references specially consulted by the author as
well as those which were judged to be easily accessible and worthy of
recommendation to the reader.
The author wishes to express his sense of great indebtedness to
President G. Stanley Hall for inspiration and help in many ways, to
Professor William H. Burnham for suggestions and encouragement, to Dr.
Arnold L. Gesell for aid in correcting his English, and to Dr. Theodate
L. Smith for assistance in revising the manuscript and putting the book
through the press.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--+Introduction+ 1
II.--+John Amos Comenius+ (1592-1670) 18
III.--+John Locke+ (1632-1704) 35
IV.--+Jean Jacques Rousseau+ (1712-1778) 59
V.--+Basedow and Kant+
Johann Bernard Basedow (1723-1790) 93
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) 98
VI.--+Heinrich Pestalozzi+ (1746-1826) 116
VII.--+Johann Gottlieb Fichte+ (1762-1814) 143
VIII.--+Friedrich Froebel+ (1782-1852) 166
IX.--+Johann Friedrich Herbart+ (1776-1841) 199
X.--+Herbert Spencer+ (1820-1903) 223
XI.--+Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel+ (1770-1831) 245
XII.--+W. T. Harris and G. Stanley Hall+
William Torrey Harris (1835-1909) 267
Granville Stanley Hall (1844-1924) 276
+Index+ 295
MODERN EDUCATORS AND
THEIR IDEALS
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION
The Ægean peninsula was the great reservoir of ancient civilization
into which the cultural stream of every nation around the Mediterranean
had its outlet and from which all subsequent ages of Europe have drawn.
Therefore without an understanding of the Greek ideas and ideals of
education we shall not be able to understand the European ideas and
ideals of education. As Compayré says, “in respect to education, as in
respect to everything else, the higher spiritual life of modern nations
has been developed under the influence of Grecian antiquity” (5: p.
18). And we can safely say that, with the exception of the ancient
Chinese--so misunderstood and misrepresented in the West, but the Greek
of the Orient in my opinion--no nation in antiquity represents modern
conceptions so nearly as the Greek, especially the Athenian.
The complete and harmonious development of the human body and soul
in their strength and beauty; the perfect and full, yet regulated
enjoyment of earthly life in its social as well as individual form; the
attainment of virtue and happiness in and through the state--these were
the fundamental ideals which governed the ancient Greeks. The state not
only took nearly the sole charge of the education of its citizens, but
it was in itself the educational and educative institution. People were
educated through their social and communal life. The part played by the
school was very small; it had a later and private origin, beginning
with the rhetoricians and philosophers, and meeting the need of the few.
There were two main types in Greek education, one represented by the
Spartans, the other by the Athenians. In the former, the power and
vigor of personality were emphasized above all else, while in the
latter, beauty and wisdom were adored. The former produced men of
action, the latter, persons of elegant manners and speech. Efficiency
in the state service had larger place in the former; individual
perfection and felicity received more attention in the latter. In a
word, the Athenian represented intellectual and æsthetic culture; the
Spartan, military and moral culture.
In Greece, the Athenian ideals and tendencies superseded the
Spartan, and Greece lost her vitality under the pressure of
overintellectualization, overrefinement, and the almost necessary
consequence, overindividualization. But the Spartan ideal revived in
Rome; military and political Rome needed men of strength and action
for its citizens. So, while the Greek philosophy degenerated into
Neo-Pythagorean and Neo-Platonic mysticism, stern and practical
stoicism took root in Italy. Roman education was essentially the
education of her warriors and legislators; physical and mental
vigor and courage, justice, integrity, and practical sense were to
be cultivated above everything else; mere knowledge and effeminate
refinement were despised. While the Greeks intrusted the education of
their children largely to the State, the Romans laid great stress upon
the home training. Not the group life of children among themselves and
under adult influences, but the personal direction and discipline of
parents were to be the chief molding power. Rome thus had no public
institution concerned with the education of her children until she
began to imitate Greece and establish schools for the teaching of
grammar and rhetoric. Cicero gave voice to the individualistic point
of view of old Roman education when he said: “Our ancestors did not
wish that children should be educated by fixed rules, determined by the
laws, publicly promulgated and made uniform for all” (5: p. 46).
The advent of Christianity necessarily introduced a new epoch in the
tendency of education as well as in the general course of social
evolution. Its fundamental principles, unity with the absolute,
supreme, personality as the destiny and possibility of each individual,
the realization of the kingdom of God, to be governed by justice, love,
peace, and felicity as the common aim of the whole body of humanity,
should have become the higher realization of the Greek ideals of
life. But Christianity in its historic form, as an outgrowth from
the Semites, promulgated by single-minded enthusiasts, was fated to
conflict with Hellenic thought. It not only neglected the civic and
economic life of the state, but condemned, as asceticism crept in, the
perfection and enjoyment of earthly existence. The natural man was
evil; passion made the body the source of sin. Even the improvement of
intellect or taste was considered to be contrary to religion. Its God
became deprived of all His human qualities or content, and was made
an abstract, negative spirituality. The kingdom of God receded to the
other world beyond the grave or to some imagined distance. It conceived
everything human and natural as opposed to the divine and spiritual,
and strove to crush the body that the soul might live. Thus instead of
a new heaven and a new earth, the age of death and darkness came to be
introduced into the European world.
Education in the Middle Ages was largely education through and for
the Church. The reward of the victory of Christianity over the pagan
world through that long-suffering struggle and martyrdom was the Church
universal, enthroned above all other human institutions. The seat of
divine authority, the ultimate standard of evaluation shifted from the
state to the Church infallible. Schools were established, universities
organized, but in them the young generation was trained to be better
citizens of a future heavenly state or to serve ecclesiastic interests.
Efficiency in social life or the qualities of individual personality as
such were scarcely considered.
Outside the Church there was constant warfare within and among newly
risen nations. Neither rulers nor the people themselves had time to
give their attention to the advancement of culture. The education of
the knights was essentially military; that of the masses, limited
chiefly to the training naturally offered by home occupations and
trades. The settlement of nations, the rise of free cities, more peace
and prosperity, necessarily tended to arouse an interest in culture.
Contact with the Hellenic and Eastern civilizations through the
crusades, the discovery of America, the expansion of foreign trade, all
could not but broaden the mental horizon and vitalize the soul. The
dialectic education of scholasticism, although formal, had sharpened
the reasoning powers of men. With a new explosion of self-consciousness
and life impulse, Europe keenly realized the pressure of the Church,
its dogmatism and asceticism. The revolt against its dogmatism was the
Reformation, the revolt against its asceticism was Humanism.
The Humanistic movement started as the revival of the ancient classics.
Tired of the dry, attenuated Latin of church scholasticism, the student
wanted to return to the naïve, simple, yet beautiful literature of the
old Roman and Hellenic masters. Weary of the sophistical interpretation
and disputation of the Greek philosophers, he desired to drink directly
from their untainted source.
This Renaissance, though mainly literary at its beginning, brought back
the seemingly exterminated spirit and ideals of the ancient world,
especially of Athens. Man, liberated from the bondage of monastic
spirituality, returned to the human. The beauty and joy of life and the
arts were again restored; learning came to be pursued for its own sake.
But the age of the Renaissance tended to exalt intellectual and
æsthetic culture at the expense of the moral. The revival of Hellenism
brought with it antireligious tendencies and threatened to bring to
naught Europe’s labor of centuries to build up Christian character.
This was rescued by the stronger sister movement of the Reformation,
which united in it both the Hellenic and Christian spirit leading
Christianity to its destined end--namely, to become a human religion.
Unity of religion and life, heaven and earth, divine and human, now
enters into the consciousness of the race. The dignity of individual
conscience and reason, the equal destiny of all mankind without
national, class, or sex discrimination, the future grandeur of the
race and its earthly abode, begin to become the living faith of the
West. Mediæval Christianity aimed to establish a spiritual kingdom
beside and beyond the earthly one; modern Christianity aims at the
gradual spiritualization of the earthly kingdom. Although the above
revelation or message of Christianity was again submerged under the new
scholasticism and ecclesiasticism into which Protestantism fell, the
modern world has never lacked men of insight who, from time to time,
have proclaimed it.
No great new movement in history can pass without having its influence
in the field of education. The Reformation really marks the beginning
of modern education in the West, though to the Catholic Church belongs
the honor of having preserved through the dark ages the treasures of
ancient culture which made the Renaissance possible. In it we see the
basis and germs of the fundamental ideas and ideals which have governed
the education of Christendom until to-day. Luther is naturally the
greatest name in this movement and deserves to represent it in its
educational as well as religious aspect. As Compayré says:
“The German reformer Luther is, of all his co-religionists, the one
who has served the cause of elementary instruction with the most
ardor. He not only addressed a pressing appeal to the ruling classes
in behalf of founding schools for the people, but, by his influence
methods of instruction were improved, and the educational spirit was
renewed in accordance with the principles of Protestantism” (5: p.
114).
If Luther had done nothing else than translate the Bible into German,
he would have been remembered as a great pedagogic figure. Through his
translation the Bible became the text-book of the people, not only in
religion and morality, but also in language study. His plain, refined
style is said to have introduced a new era in the German language and
worked toward the unification of the national speech. But he did more
direct service for the cause of education. In 1519 he wrote a sermon
on married life, in which he appeals to the parents’ sense of duty
to educate their children. Home education should be the basis and
preparation for school education. True piety, better Christian life
can be hoped for only by beginning with the child. It is the duty of
all parents to devote themselves to their children, and the neglect
of this duty will be the heaviest sin. Children should be taught and
led with reasonable words instead of blows and stripes. One must be an
example to them by words, conduct, and life. They must be guarded from
the weakness and effeminacy which comes through indulgence in worldly
pleasures. Yet, on the other hand, asceticism in the education of
children is to be avoided.
Home education, though fundamental, is not sufficient; for many parents
lack the piety and learning, skill and art, time and means to enable
them to lead their children; therefore we need schools and teachers.
In his address to the magistrates and legislators, in which he urges
them to establish and maintain Christian schools in each city for the
education of all citizens regardless of rank and sex, Luther speaks
as if he were proclaiming the oracle of God. He was obliged to speak
because God opened his mouth, nay, God and Christ spoke through his
mouth; education of youth was the fight against the devil; the cause
of religion and education was one. He showed a high estimation of the
teacher’s profession, saying:
“I tell you, in a word, that a diligent, devoted school-teacher,
preceptor, or any person, no matter what is his title, who faithfully
trains and teaches boys, can never receive an adequate reward, and no
money is sufficient to pay the debt you owe him; so, too, said the
pagan, Aristotle. Yet we treat them with contempt, as if they were of
no account whatever; and all the time, we profess to be Christians.
For my part, if I were compelled to leave off preaching and to enter
some other vocation, I know not an office that would please me better
than that of schoolmaster, or teacher of boys. For I am convinced
that, next to preaching, this is the most useful, and greatly the best
labor in all the world, and, in fact, I am sometimes in doubt which of
the positions is the more honorable” (12: p. 414).
But turn your eyes upon the actual state of things, and see if schools
and teachers are fulfilling their honorable missions. “Everywhere we
have seen such teachers and masters, who knew nothing themselves and
could teach nothing that was good and useful; they did not even know
how to learn and to teach” (5: p. 117).
Luther’s innovation in education was to liberate children from this
strait-jacketness of instruction and discipline, and to bring in the
air of freedom, cheerfulness, broad-mindedness, and respect for the
child’s growing personality. “It is dangerous to isolate the young.
It is necessary, on the contrary, to allow young people to hear, see,
learn all sorts of things, while all the time observing the restraints
and rules of honor. Enjoyment and recreation are as necessary for
children as food and drink” (5: p. 119). The individuality of the
child should be respected and nourished. “A child intimidated by bad
treatment is irresolute in all he does. He who has trembled before his
parents will tremble all his life at the sound of a leaf which rustles
in the wind” (5: p. 119). As to the subject-matter of instruction,
religion, classical languages and Hebrew, history, music, and
mathematics should be taught. Luther speaks slightingly of the mediæval
learning of philosophy as “the devil’s rubbish,” which was “acquired
with too great cost, labor, and harm,” and wanted to substitute for it
the study of history, conceived as the source of the real knowledge
of the world. He attaches also a high importance to music, as a means
of emotional culture, even saying that “unless a schoolmaster know
how to sing, I think him of no account” (5: p. 119). “Knightly
sport” is to be encouraged as a means of physical culture. To remedy
“the greatest evil in every place”--i.e., the lack of teachers--he
emphasizes the urgent need of special training for them. The best of
the pupils, boys and girls, are to be selected, kept a longer time in
school, given special instructors, and libraries opened for their use.
The professional training of teachers as well as the education of the
people is the duty of the authorities.
Thus the Reformation represented by Luther was no less an educational
than a religious movement. It awakened a sense of the worth of the
individual; the longing for the perfection of personality in its
all-sidedness, intellectual, moral, and physical, was aroused. It
stirred the parental and official conscience to educate children and
citizens. Schools, which as an institution were, hitherto, only a
part of the ecclesiastical system, and chiefly as a means of training
servants of the Church, now sprang up as a coördinate agency in the
upbuilding of humanity. The chief aim of the new education was not in
behalf of the ecclesiastic interests, nor the soul’s concern for heaven
or hell, but it was to furnish a city with “instructed, reasonable,
honorable, and well-trained citizens,” in which its prosperity, safety,
and strength lie. It was for the need of the world, “to the end that
men may govern the country properly, and that women may properly
bring up their children, care for their domestics, and direct the
affairs of their households” (5: p. 115). If the Renaissance idea
of education was aristocratic, the Reformation idea is democratic; if
the characteristic of the former was literary, that of the latter is
civico-economical. Born the son of a miner, living the life of the
people, Luther could not think with philologists that the humanities
alone could meet the whole educational need of common citizens.
He says: “I by no means approve those schools where a child was
accustomed to pass twenty or thirty years in studying Donatus or
Alexander without learning anything. Another world has dawned, in which
things go differently. My opinion is that we must send the boys to
school one or two hours a day, and have them learn a trade at home for
the rest of the time. It is desirable that these two occupations march
side by side” (5: pp. 117-118). The religious conception of Church
education, the humanistic ideal of the Renaissance, the military and
civic training of knighthood, the industrial claim of the home and
trade, all find recognition and reconciliation in Luther’s view, and
are established as the four pillars on which the educational temple of
modern Christian citizenship rests.
Fifteen years after the death of Luther the world received into its
lap another gifted child, this time to work out reformation in the
field of science. The Reformation together with Humanism restored
the ideal of the total man. But their intellectual outlook was still
chiefly limited to the attainments of the ancient world. Therefore,
they soon degenerated into a new scholasticism on the one hand, and a
linguistic formalism on the other. Then came Francis Bacon to preach
the gospel of knowledge, of true knowledge. For this “father of
English philosophers” the aim of knowledge “is no mere felicity of
speculation, but the real business and fortune of the human race.”
Indeed, “men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge
sometimes from a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes
to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for
ornament and reputation, and sometimes to enable them to victory of
wit and contradiction, and most times for lucre and profession” (2:
p. 42). This abuse of learning was the greatest evil of the mediæval
and Renaissance scholarship. The vocation of scholars is “to give a
true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men”
(2: p. 42). Knowledge must generate, bear fruit; her function is
to satisfy the needs of human life, to increase men’s control over
Nature, and to enrich and ennoble his enjoyments. This can be attained
not by a mere mastery of vain words and letters, or of tricks of the
syllogism, but only by humble, diligent, and methodical inquiries
into the great “volume of God’s works.” “Man is but the servant and
interpreter of nature: what he does and what he knows is only what he
has observed of Nature’s order in fact and thought; beyond this he
knows nothing and can do nothing. For the chain of causes cannot by any
force be loosed or broken, nor can nature be commanded except by being
obeyed. And so those twin objects, human knowledge and human power, do
really meet in one; and it is from ignorance of causes that operation
fails” (13: p. 48). The first-hand experience of living Nature
and induction from it alone provide us real knowledge and truth, and
nothing else. “It cannot be that axioms established by argumentation
should avail for the discovery of new works; since the subtlety of
nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of argument. But
axioms duly and orderly formed from particulars easily discover the
way to new particulars, and thus render science active” (13: pp.
46-47). According to this standard of true knowledge, “all the received
systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own
creation after an unreal and scenic fashion” (13: pp. 56-57). Our
age is far older than that of the ancient people. Why should we bear
the bondage of immature, inexperienced minds? “The wisdom which we
have derived principally from the Greeks is but like the boyhood of
knowledge, and has the characteristic property of boys: it can talk,
but it cannot generate; for it is fruitful of controversies, but barren
of works” (13: p. 54). Turn your eyes from the antiquated record of
the past to the infinite reality of living nature. The key to open
its secret is in your hands. The sphere of conquest here is vast and
inexhaustible; its pleasure is noble and insatiable. Thus rings out
the scientific Sermon on the Mount. The real goal is shown, a broad new
highway opened; science being vitalized by reunion with the infinite
reality of living nature and the ever-progressive life of humanity
marches to her never-ending conquest. Knowledge rescued from the depths
of ignominy and impotence is raised to its heavenly seat; the ideal
of omniscience, coupled with omnipotence, has ever since become the
aspiration and motive power of the modern world. Although Bacon did not
concern himself with the direct problems of education, a conception
such as the above could not but introduce a new tendency into it. If
we may call Luther the father of Protestant education, Bacon should be
called the father of scientific education, both of which, when broadly
interpreted, characterize the modern period of the Western education.
Bacon’s direct influence in the educational field naturally was to be
exercised upon the higher institutions of learning. But the admittance
of his ideas and spirit into them was a very slow and hard process.
In the “advancement of learning” he advocated the founding of a real
university, “left free to the arts and sciences at large,” devoted
entirely to the free investigation and advancement of learning, without
professional aim or any external restrictions. In the “New Atlantis,”
his ideal state, an academy of science with its museum and laboratory,
stands as the center. He also suggested a plan for the coöperation of
all European universities. But the time was not ripe for all these
ideas, nor have his visions yet been fully realized. A more immediate
effect was the inspiration which his new gospel of learning and its
principles have given to those through whom Europe first attained a
definite theory of educational purpose and art, especially Comenius and
Locke.
REFERENCES
1. +Adamson, John William.+ Pioneers of Modern
Education, 1600-1700. University Press, Cambridge, 1905. 285 pages.
2. +Bacon, Francis (Viscount St. Albans).+ The
Advancement of Learning. Third edition, and revised by W. A. Wright.
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1885. 376 pages.
3. ---- The same. Book I, edited by Albert S. Cook. Ginn &
Co., Boston, 1904. 145 pages.
4. ---- The New Atlantis. Edited by G. C. M. Smith.
University Press, Cambridge, 1900. 72 pages.
5. +Compayré, Jules Gabriel.+ History of Pedagogy.
Translated, with an introduction, notes, and an index, by W. H. Payne.
Heath & Co., Boston, 1899. 589 pages.
6. +Davidson, Thomas.+ Aristotle and Ancient
Educational Ideals. Scribner, New York, 1897. 256 pages.
7. +Heman, Friedrich.+ Geschichte der neueren
Pädagogik. Zickfeldt, Osterwieck, 1904. 436 pages.
8. +Heubaum, Alfred.+ Geschichte des deutschen
Bildungswesens seit der Mitte des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts. Vol. I.
Bis zum Beginn der allgemeinen Unterrichtsreform unter Friedrich dem
Grossen. Weidmann, Berlin, 1905. 402 pages.
9. +Hodgson, Geraldine.+ Primitive Christian
Education. T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1906. 287 pages.
10. +Laurie, Simon Somerville.+ Studies in the
History of Educational Opinion from the Renaissance. University Press,
Cambridge, 1903. 261 pages.
11. +Monroe, Paul.+ Source Book of the History of
Education for the Greek and the Roman Period. Macmillan Co., London
and New York, 1901. 515 pages.
12. ---- A Text-book in the History of Education.
Macmillan Co., London and New York, 1905. 772 pages.
13. +Munroe, James Phinney.+ The Educational Ideal:
An Outline of its Growth in Modern Times. Heath & Co., Boston, 1896.
262 pages.
14. +Raumer, Karl von.+ Geschichte der Pädagogik
vom Wiederaufblühen klassischer Studien bis auf unsere Zeit. 5 vols.
Bertelsmann, Gütersloh, 1882-1897.
15. +Rein, Georg Wilhelm+, editor: Encyklopädisches
Handbuch der Pädagogik. 8 vols. Beyer, Langensalza, 1895-1906.
16. +Scherer, Heinrich.+ Die Pädagogik in ihrer
Entwicklung im Zusammenhange mit dem Kultur- und Geistesleben und
ihrem Einfluss auf die Gestaltung des Erziehungs- und Bildungswesens.
Vol. I. Die Pädagogik vor Pestalozzi. Brandstetter, Leipzig, 1897. 581
pages.
17. +Schmid, Karl Adolf+, editor: Geschichte der
Erziehung vom Anfang an bis auf unsere Zeit. 5 vols. Cotta, Stuttgart,
1884-1902.
18. +Spielmann, C. Christian.+ Die Meister der
Pädagogik nach ihren Leben, ihren Werken und ihrer Bedeutung. Heufer,
Neuwied, 1904-1905. 365 pages.
19. +Ziegler, Theobald.+ Geschichte der Pädagogik
mit besonderer Rücksicht auf das höhere Unterrichtswesen. Beck,
München, 1895. 361 pages.
CHAPTER II.
JOHN AMOS COMENIUS
(1592-1670)
The movement for the new Christian education, identified with the
Reformation, the effort to establish and spread the new realistic
learning, represented by Bacon, were struggling against the inertia of
prejudice and tradition when Comenius came to the world to unify these
two tendencies and lay the foundations of the modern Protestant school,
nay, even to build its framework. Born in a devout Moravian family,
studying under the most advanced scholars in the most progressive
universities of the time, becoming the pastor and leader of his church
by vocation, the teacher and director of several schools by avocation,
his external circumstances, together with his inborn disposition, made
him “the greatest pedagogical writer of the seventeenth century.”
In him the educational ideas and ideals of the age find the most
comprehensive and systematic embodiment.
The great educational awakening of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries was the demand for equal, universal enlightenment as opposed
to class education; for the upbuilding of Christian manhood; for
citizenship instead of purely monastic and humanistic training; for the
introduction of method and system into school instruction to remedy
the prevailing chaotic condition; for a natural method in discipline
as opposed to harmful artificiality; for making the vernacular instead
of the ancient classics the basis and means of learning. These demands
found expression in the writings of such men as Luther and Bacon, and
also Vives, Ratke, Rabelais, Campanella, Andreä, Alsted, etc. Comenius
studied the writings of these men with his judicious and comprehensive
mind and, aided by his direct experience, built upon this study that
great system of pedagogy, which Professor Laurie of Edinburgh, speaks
of as “the only thoroughgoing treatise on educational method that has
yet appeared in the history of the world” (11: p. 153).
However much he may owe to his predecessors and contemporaries,
he it was who gave a coherency and a larger relation to what was
partially expressed by others; who carried into details and practical
applications what before was treated only in a general manner.
To restore fallen humanity to the image of God was the first and last
aim of education as conceived by him. Thus, education and religion
were one for him, as they were to Luther. His philosophy of education
is, in its fundamentals, really nothing else than the most intelligent
pedagogical application of the Bible. It may be called the pedagogy of
Protestant Christianity.
In the “Great Didactic,” Comenius begins by picturing in biblical
terminology the destined glory of man. He is God’s likeness, God’s
delight. For his use God designed the heaven, the earth, and all that
is in them; to him alone God gave all those things in conjunction,
which to the rest of creation He gave but singly--namely, Existence,
Vitality, Sense, Reason. And to him, finally, God gave Himself in
personal communion, joining his nature to His, for eternity. “Know
therefore that thou art the corner-stone and epitome of my works, the
representative of God among them, the crown of my glory” (2:p. 178).
Human life is a gradual, successive, and eternal development. “Whatever
we are, do, think, speak, contrive, acquire, or possess, contains a
principle of gradation, and, though we mount perpetually and attain
higher grades, we still continue to advance and never reach the
highest” (2: p. 180). The earth, therefore, must not be the end of our
life, the final goal for which we strive, but only the beginning, the
preparation, for an everlasting heaven where we find the fullness of
all. The world is nothing but “our nursery,” “our school,” and “our
workshop.” Accordingly, a purely secular education falls far short of
its true function. We ought to prepare a child not only for this life,
but for the life beyond. The inculcation of piety is thus the most
important thing in education.
The perfection of all the faculties we have in us, which is the
ultimate goal of man, and in which lies his highest felicity, can be
viewed from three aspects: the perfection of knowledge, of power, of
heart, which “are so joined together that they cannot be separated.”
Perfection of knowledge consists in being acquainted with the
properties of all things in the world, including the knowledge of
man himself. By the perfection of power is meant the ability to have
control over all things and over himself. The man of power directs
everything to its legitimate end, and subjects it to man’s own use;
he conducts himself royally--that is, “gravely and righteously among
creatures.” The perfection of heart is piety; it aims to embody the
perfection of Christ, the archetype of man.
Comenius believes that man’s original nature is good. There is, in
every man, a tendency toward every perfection--an infinite possibility
or a possibility of the infinite. However, man is born only with the
potentiality, thus he has the possibility of degeneration as well as of
perfection. Hence the necessity of human striving, of education. “The
seeds of knowledge, of virtue, and of piety are naturally implanted in
us; but the actual knowledge, virtue, and piety are not given. These
must be acquired by prayer, by education, and by action” (2: p. 204).
Every individual has the possibility, the right, and the duty to be a
man, to realize his final destiny, as a rational creature, the lord
of other creatures, the image of his creator; and “it is only by a
proper education that he can become a man” (2: p. 204). From this
it naturally follows that education, in its essentials, should be
universal and equal for all, without regard to the difference between
rich and poor, boys and girls, noble and humble, dull and intelligent.
Comenius shared, with most of the educational writers, ancient and
modern, the view that education should begin as early as possible.
He assigned six reasons for this: First, because we do not know when
the child will be taken from his preparatory life on earth; second,
shortness of time compared with the infiniteness of learning and
manifoldness of duty to be prepared; third, because “it is the nature
of everything that comes into being, that while tender it is easily
bent and formed, but that when it has grown hard, it is not easy to
alter”; fourth, God has granted man the years of youth, “unsuitable
for everything but education,” which are much longer than in animals;
fifth, the influence of early impressions is the most lasting and
potent; sixth, the mind of man seeks constantly for some activity,
and, “if not engaged with what is useful, it occupies with the vainest
and even with harmful things,” of which the world is full. “If, then,
each man have the welfare of his own children at heart, and if that of
the human race be dear to the civil and ecclesiastical guardians of
human affairs, let them hasten to make provision for timely planting,
pruning, and watering of the plants of heaven, that these may be
prudently formed to make prosperous advances in letters, virtue, and
piety” (2: pp. 210-212).
The necessity of equal, universal education of the young calls for the
universal establishment of schools. In the home lies the foundation
of education, and parents are naturally to be the first teachers, but
modern society requires more in the way of education than the home can
provide. The advantages of the school over the home can be enumerated
as follows:
1. “It is very seldom that parents have sufficient ability or
sufficient leisure to teach their children,” and “this is a marvelous
saving of labor, when one man, undisturbed by other claims on his
attention, confines himself to one thing; in this way one man can be
of use to many and many to one” (2: p. 215).
2. Group life affords many benefits and advantages of its own. “Better
results and more pleasures are to be obtained when one pupil serves
as an example and a stimulus for another” (2: p. 215). Emulation and
imitation, which are strong instincts in children, can operate best
when a certain equality of capacity and interest, and consequently
easy mutual understanding, exist. In this sense children are the best
instructors and trainers of children.
3. To secure the best development of the child, a place, specified for
the sole and definite end, with an ample provision and a regulated
environment, is needed. As young plants are transplanted from their
seed beds into the orchards or garden, so children should, after being
cherished in the maternal bosom, be delivered into the school, the
soil specially prepared for them, in order to grow more vigorously and
successfully.
Thus the school, with its specially prepared teachers and
accommodations, with its ample mental nourishment, its pleasant,
healthy, and stimulating environment, its regular systematic work, and
equipment especially adapted to its ends, should become the center
for the advancement and propagation of knowledge and the fittest soil
for the growth of the young generation. In Comenius’s own words, “As
workshops supply manufactured goods, churches supply piety, and law
courts justice, why should not schools produce, purify, and multiply
the light of wisdom, and distribute it to the whole body of human
community?” (2: p. 216).
Comenius’s demand upon and hope in the school was great. The
school that fulfils its function perfectly is “one which is a
true forging-place of men; where the minds of those who learn are
illuminated by the light of wisdom, so as to penetrate with ease all
that is manifest and all that is secret, where the emotions and desires
are brought into harmony with virtue, and where the heart is filled
and permeated by divine love, so that all who are handed over to
Christian schools to be imbued with true wisdom may be taught to live a
heavenly life on earth; in a word, where all men are taught all things
thoroughly” (2: p. 228).
With this ideal, the reformer naturally found that “hitherto there
have been no perfect schools,” and the present state of things is most
unsatisfactory. “The method used in instructing the young has generally
been so severe that schools have been looked on as terrors for boys
and shambles for their intellects, and the greater number of students,
having contracted a dislike for learning and for books, have hastened
away to the workshops of artificers or to some other occupation....
Piety and virtue, which form the most important element in education,
were neglected more than anything else, ... so that for the most part,
instead of tractable lambs, fiery wild asses and restive mules were
produced; and instead of characters molded to virtue, nothing issued
from the schools but a spurious veneer of morality, a fastidious and
exotic clothing of culture, and eyes, hands, and feet trained to
worldly vanities” (2: pp. 229-230).
Even in intellectual culture, which had been almost their sole concern,
the result achieved is pitifully poor. “For five, ten, or more years
they detained the mind over matters that could be mastered in one. What
could have been gently instilled into the intellect, was violently
impressed upon it, nay rather stuffed and flogged into it. What might
have been placed before the mind plainly and lucidly, was treated of
obscurely, perplexedly, and intricately, as if it were a complicated
riddle. In addition, ... the intellect was scarcely ever nourished by
the actual facts, but was filled with the husks of words, with a windy
and parrot-like loquacity, and with the chaff of opinions” (2: pp.
230-231).
Consequently, Comenius proposed a thoroughgoing reform of the schools,
to base them upon the Christian principle, and to introduce a change
in subject-matter, discipline, and method of instruction. “All those
subjects which are able to make a man wise, virtuous and pious” were to
be taught; not Latin, as had been customary, but vernacular language
should be the chief instrument of learning. “This education shall be
conducted without blows, rigour, or compulsion, ... and in the most
natural manner” (2: p. 233). The student “shall not merely read the
opinions of others and grasp their meaning or commit them to memory
and repeat them, but shall himself penetrate to the root of things and
acquire the habit of genuinely understanding and making use of what he
learns” (2: p. 234). As to method, the most easy, natural, economical,
and efficient way of learning must be investigated and established.
Method is the great thing in the pedagogy of Comenius. To find out the
universal rules which can be applied to all pupils in all cases was
his chief task, and herein lies the main contribution he made to the
subsequent progress of educational art. He says:
“The art of teaching, therefore, demands nothing more than the skilful
arrangement of time, of the subjects taught, and of the method. As
soon as we have succeeded in finding the proper method it will be no
harder to teach school-boys, in any number desired, than with the
help of the printing-press to cover a thousand sheets daily with the
neatest writing, or with Archimedes’s machine to move houses, towers,
and immense weights, or to cross the ocean in a ship, and journey to
the New World. The whole process, too, will be as free from friction
as is the movement of a clock whose motive power is supplied by the
weights. It will be as pleasant to see education carried out on my
plan as to look at an automatic machine of this kind, and the process
will be as free from failure as are these mechanical contrivances when
skilfully made” (2: pp. 248-249).
The form of argumentation by which Comenius endeavors to establish his
methodology is quite mediæval and often ludicrous. It rests largely
on the exaggerated, sometimes misapplied analogies from Nature and
mechanics, and evidences from the Bible. But it also contains many
pedagogical truths embodied in the schoolrooms of our day. To epitomize
the general principles of his methodology, the process of teaching
should begin with the most plastic mind of early childhood in slow
progressive order, proceeding always from the general to the specific,
from what is easy to what is more difficult, following the natural
interests of the child, paying a due consideration to his age, mental
capacity, and development; everything being taught first through the
medium of the senses, a special emphasis being laid upon logical
sequence and ideational correlation between the different subjects and
different parts of the same subject; only those subjects that are of
real use should be taken in hand, everything of little importance being
invariably discarded, and the purpose and use of everything taught
should be constantly kept in view. He advocates that everything should
be taught according to one and the same method; there should be only
one teacher in each school, or at any rate in each class; that only one
author should be used for each subject studied, and the same exercise
should be given the whole class.
The method of teaching arts, sciences, languages, morals, and
instilling piety is each and severally discussed. But a large part
of Comenius’s time and energy was devoted to the reform of language
teaching and to the writing of text-books for it. And by this work
alone he was known in Europe during nearly two hundred years of
practical oblivion after his death.
With his methodization of the process of instruction necessarily went
the systematizing of school organization. The entire educational system
is graded by him as follows: I. The home as a preparatory school for
infancy. II. The vernacular school for childhood. III. The Latin school
or gymnasium for boyhood. IV. The university and travel for youth.
He considers the first twenty-four years of human life as the period
of growth and plasticity, and recognizes in it four distinct stages,
each of which contains six years. In his idea of a mother-school he
anticipates Froebel’s kindergarten, and in his sketch of the vernacular
and Latin school we see the archetype of the modern graded school.
As a summary of his whole pedagogy nothing better can be offered than
the title page of his work, which so well reflects the characteristics
of his book and that of the age:
The Great Didactic
Setting forth
The Whole Art of Teaching
All Things to all Men
or
A Certain Inducement to found such Schools in all
the Parishes, Towns, and Villages of every
Christian Kingdom, that the entire
Youth of both Sexes, none
being excepted, shall
_Quickly, Pleasantly, & Thoroughly_
Become learned in the Sciences, pure in Morals,
trained to Piety, and in this manner
instructed in all things necessary
for the present and for
the future life,
in which, with respect to everything that is suggested,
+Its Fundamental Principles+ are set forth from the
essential nature of matter,
+Its Truth+ is proved by examples from the several
mechanical arts,
+Its Order+ is clearly set forth in years, months, days,
and hours, and finally,
+An easy and sure Method+ is shown by which it can
be pleasantly brought into existence.
Comenius has not lacked his admirers in every land. To-day he must
especially appeal to the educational thinkers and administrators of
the orthodox type of mind. But this great architectonic genius and
scholarly reformer has naturally won the best recognition in Germany.
Spielmann even goes so far in his admiration as to say:
“If all the pedagogical writings of all ages had been lost and the
great didactic alone remained it would have sufficed as a basis for
the later generation to build the science of education anew” (25: p.
28).
He might indeed be blamed for putting too much confidence in the
power of school education, and laying too much emphasis on method and
system with too little on the personal force of the educator. Yet he
deserves our remembrance as one who has left us the most comprehensive
system of pedagogy, in which one of the greatest civilizing agents,
nay, probably even the greatest, in modern communities--the universal
public school--is foreshadowed in its fundamentals and in its details.
If Bacon, as the greatest apostle of the new learning, proclaimed the
gospel of knowledge, Comenius, as the greatest apostle of the new
education, proclaimed the gospel of the school. And as the former
rescued knowledge from fossilization by uniting her with her true
spouse, the reality of nature and life, so the latter vitalized the
school by giving it its glorious function, the forging shop, the
nursery garden of the human race. Through it not only do individuals
become able to attain their destiny as individuals, but the solidity
and prosperity of social institutions rest upon it.
The Reformation ideal finds its culmination in the educational
scheme of Comenius. Erudition, which was formerly only the privilege
of scholars; morality, which used to be required only from the
so-called guardian or citizen class; piety, which was left to the
priesthood--were now all made the common ideals for every individual,
to be striven for without regard to sex, occupation, or rank.
REFERENCES
1. +Adamson, John William.+ Pioneers of Modern Education,
1600-1700. University Press, Cambridge, 1905. 285 pages.
2. +Comenius, John Amos.+ The Great Didactic. Translated, with
introduction, biographical and historical, by M. W. Keatinge. Black,
London, 1896. 468 pages.
3. ---- School of Infancy; an Essay on the Education of Youth during
the First Six Years. Edited, with an introduction and notes, by W. S.
Monroe. Heath & Co., Boston, 1896. 99 pages.
4. +Compayré, Jules Gabriel.+ History of Pedagogy. Translated,
with an introduction, notes, and index, by W. H. Payne. Heath & Co.,
Boston, 1899. 589 pages.
5. +Hähner, H.+ Natur und Naturmässigkeit bei Comenius und
Pestalozzi. Lamprecht, Chemnitz, 1890. 87 pages.
6. +Heman, Friedrich.+ Geschichte der neueren Pädagogik.
Zickfeldt, Osterwieck, 1904. 436 pages.
7. +Heubaum, Alfred.+ Geschichte des deutschen Bildungswesens
seit der Mitte des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts. Vol. I. Bis zum Beginn
der allgemeinen Unterrichtsreform unter Friedrich dem Grossen.
Weidmann, Berlin, 1905. 402 pages.
8. +Hoffmeister, Hermann Wilhelm.+ Comenius und Pestalozzi als
Begründer der Volkschule. Second revised edition. Klinkhardt, Leipzig,
1896. 97 pages.
9. +Kerrl, Th.+ Johann Amos Comenius. Sein Leben, seine
pädagogischen Schriften und seine Bedeutung. 4 vols. Schroebel, Halle
a. Saale, 1904-1905. 389 pages.
10. +Laurie, Simon Somerville.+ John Amos Comenius. Small,
Boston, 1885. 229 pages.
11. ---- Studies in the History of Educational Opinions from the
Renaissance. University Press, Cambridge, 1903. 261 pages.
12. +Melchers, Karl.+ Comenius und Pestalozzi; eine
vergleichende Betrachtung ihrer Grundideen. Schmidt, Bremen, 1896. 47
pages.
13. +Möhrke, Max August Heinrich.+ Johann Amos Comenius und
Johann Valentin Andreä. Glausch, Leipzig, 1904. 168 pages.
14. Monathefte der Comenius-gesellschaft. Comenius-gesellschaft.
Charlottenburg, Berlin, 1892-1908.
15. +Monroe, Paul.+ A Text-book in the History of Education.
Macmillan & Co., London and New York, 1905. 772 pages.
16. +Monroe, William Seymour.+ Comenius and the Beginning of
Educational Reform. Scribner, New York, 1900. 184 pages.
17. +Müller, Walter.+ Comenius, ein Systematiker in der
Pädagogik. Bleyl & Kämmer, Dresden, 1887. 50 pages.
18. +Munroe, James Phinney.+ The Educational Ideal: an Outline
of Its Growth in Modern Times. Heath & Co., Boston, 1896. 262 pages.
19. +Pappenheim, Eug.+ Amos Comenius, der Begründer der neueren
Pädagogik. Ackermann, München, 1871. 66 pages.
20. +Quick, Robert Hebert.+ Essays on Educational Reformers.
Appleton, New York, 1890. 560 pages. The same. (International
Education Series), 1903. 568 pages.
21. +Raumer, Karl von.+ Geschichte der Pädagogik vom
Wiederaufblühen klassischer Studien bis auf unsere Zeit. 5 vols.
Bertelsmann, Gütersloh, 1882-1897. Vols. I and III.
22. +Rein, Georg Wilhelm.+ Encyklopädisches Handbuch der
Pädagogik. 8 vols. Beyer, Langensalza, 1895-1906. Vol. I.
23. +Scherer, Heinrich.+ Die Pädagogik in ihrer Entwicklung
im Zusammenhange mit dem Kultur- und Geistesleben und ihrem Einfluss
auf die Gestaltung des Erziehungs- und Bildungswesens. Vol. I. Die
Pädagogik vor Pestalozzi. Brandstetter, Leipzig, 1897. 581 pages.
24. +Schmid, Karl Adolf+, editor. Geschichte der Erziehung vom
Anfang an bis auf unsere Zeit. 5 vols. Cotta, Stuttgart, 1884-1903.
Vol. III.
25. +Spielmann, C. Christian.+ Die Meister der Pädagogik nach
ihren Leben, ihren Werken, und ihrer Bedeutung. Heufer, Neuwied,
1904-1905. 361 pages. Part II.
26. +Witte, J.+ Johann Amos Comenius in seiner
kulturgeschichtlichen Stellung und seiner historischen Bedeutung
für die Entwicklung des Schulwesens, im Besonderen, der Volkschule.
Andreæ, Ruhrort, 1892. 51 pages.
27. +Ziegler, Theobald.+ Geschichte der Pädagogik mit
besonderer Rücksicht auf das höhere Unterrichtswesen. Beck, München,
1895. 361 pages.
CHAPTER III.
JOHN LOCKE
(1632-1704)
When the second greatest educational work in the seventeenth century
appeared in 1693, the world was only a generation and a half older
than when it saw the “Great Didactic.” While we find in Comenius
a strange mixture of mediæval and modern thinking, Locke’s “Some
Thoughts concerning Education” reflects entirely modern conceptions and
tendencies. But the differences between the two works are not wholly
due to the difference of the times; they are due more to that of the
men themselves and their nationalities.
Though born a Slav, Comenius represents, in his personality and
pedagogy, the idealistic and theorizing genius of the German nation.
Locke, on the contrary, is a typical Englishman, and perfectly embodies
the practical genius of that people. Compare the titles of the two
books referred to above. How elaborate and ornate is the one and
how homely the other! One might compare the former to a great piece
of architecture, built up stone by stone with exactness of sequence
and plan. Every detail is manifestly studied and follows a scheme
previously laid out. The latter, on the contrary, is like a painting,
or a work of artisanship, if you please. There is the design, unity and
harmony, but these lie in the artist’s experience or mental make-up,
and develop themselves as he moves his hand. Comenius’s pedagogy starts
with the highest ideal of humanity, and then proceeds to consider how
each and all can be made to conform to it. His plans and practical
recommendations are also, in general, more of deductions from his
basal hypothesis or philosophy than inductions from the considerations
of the actual conditions and problems. With Locke the procedure
is very different: a particular boy concerning whose education he
was consulted is the starting-point. This boy has to grow up in a
particular age, environment, and social class, and must be fitted to
all these actual conditions. Not the ultimate end of the race, but the
particular destiny of a real boy, his mentality, the best educative
forces conducing to the possibly perfect fulfillment of his destiny,
are to be the chief considerations. Comenius was a practical as well as
theoretical reformer in education, but he was, above all, a scholarly
priest, probably the best type that his age could produce. Locke was
a great original thinker, the father of English psychology. But he
was, essentially, and in its highest sense, a man of the world. In
spite of his physical weakness, which hindered him from an active
participation in the social and political affairs of his country, he
was always concerned and identified with them. Thus the Christian
citizenship at which he aimed was not a gazing from the stepladder of
this earthly life toward the distant vision of heavenly perfection, but
a vigorous, efficient, working and living with others as a child of
this world. There is no bold brilliancy in his educational thoughts,
but they are full of living truths which come only from the actual
broad experience of life, and so can be applied to real life. There is
in them no soaring transcendentalism. Yet if we intelligently follow
his leadership, we shall find that it does not lack a glow of idealism
which can illumine our earthly path. It is a sound philosophy of a
sound personality who has seen the wide living world with his own eyes,
and expressed his views with the scrupulous conscientiousness and the
sincerity of conviction--a perfect product of great common sense.
Leibniz, the great German philosopher, who recognized Locke’s Essay on
“Human Understanding,” as “one of the most beautiful and most esteemed
work” of his time, was disposed to rate his “Thoughts on Education”
still higher. Even to-day, after we have become familiar with a host
of great and modern thinkers, he finds such an admirer as Professor
Laurie, of Edinburgh, who thinks “that no educational writer surpasses
him.” Rousseau’s indebtedness to him is a well-known fact, and through
Rousseau his influence extends to the whole continental development
of educational thought down to the present day. As to the wide and
deep effect which his thought directly exerted upon England there can
be no question. Oscar Browning, of Cambridge, believes that Locke’s
ideas “determine the character of our most characteristic educational
institution, the English public school” (2: p. 118). And yet Locke had
little interest in the public school of his day. England produced in
him her ideal type of a gentleman, and he, as the incarnation of her
genius, has formed the gentlemen of England.
Thus, the two greatest educational writers of the seventeenth century,
standing at the fountainhead of the pedagogical stream of the modern
era, present a very interesting contrast, which is not insignificant
in its effects. If one is the harbinger of the idealistic and the
theorizing pedagogy of the German type, the other is the champion of
the realistic and empirical school of the English type. A religious
tendency predominates in the former, a secular tendency in the latter.
If Comenius may be called the pedagogue of public education, Locke is
to be called that of private education. In the former, the emphasis
is on the order, system, and method; in the latter, the stress is
laid on the personal influence of the educator. While in the former,
instruction is the main thing; in the latter, discipline and training
are essential.
If we are justified in thinking that the intellectual side of the
Renaissance attained its true destiny in the Baconian conception of
science and its principles, so we might say with equal validity that
the practical genius of the ancient Greeks and Romans blossomed again
in Locke in the new soil of Christian consciousness. In spite of his
sharing with Bacon a strong intolerance of the prevailing humanistic,
classical education, it is evident that he imbibed deeply the spirit
of ancient culture. He once admitted that “amongst the _Grecians_
is to be found the original, as it were, and foundation of all that
learning which we have in this part of the world,” and “no man,” he
held, “can pass for a scholar that is ignorant of the Greek tongue” (7:
p. 170). Thus, Sparta’s example of building up a vigorous physique and
character in her youth through hard discipline, of inculcating wisdom
through free conversation with older people, Pythagoras’s teaching of
the harmony of body and soul, Socrates’s fidelity to truth and unbiased
attitude of mind, Plato’s exaltation of virtue above all things,
Aristotle’s ideal of a perfectly balanced life, regulated by reason,
the Roman fidelity, patriotism, and statesmanship,--these together
with the true spirit of Christianity flowed into his life and into
his philosophy of education. Locke had, like every other reformer,
his predecessors, such as Rabelais and Montaigne. But what was in
them, mainly mockery and ridicule of the current education, became in
Locke more positive and more comprehensive assertion. His philosophy
of education was grounded on his new empirical psychology, which was,
after Bacon, the next great stimulus to the intellectual activity of
the world.
With the Montaignean dictum: “A sound mind in a sound body,” Locke
begins his Thoughts on Education. This is, he says, “a short but full
description of a happy state in this world--he that has these two, has
little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be but
little the better for anything else” (7: p. 1). For Locke, the art
of education was synonymous with the art of hygiene in its broadest
sense--i. e., the formation and the maintenance of a healthful life,
mental and moral as well as physical. How can we form such a healthful
life? His answer is simple: By accustoming ourselves to a healthy mode
of living. Habituation is the keynote of his whole pedagogy.
Although the human body was conceived by him still as “the clay
cottage” of the mind, yet he wanted us to understand “how necessary
_Health_ is to our business and happiness, and how requisite a
strong constitution, able to endure hardship and fatigue” (7: p. 2). So
he began his treatise with the physical care of the child. A simple,
rigorous life was his ideal, and so he prescribed the following rules
for children: Plenty of open air, of exercise, and of sleep; plain
diet, no wine or strong drink, and very little or no drugs; not too
warm or straight clothing; the head and feet especially to be kept
cold, and the feet to be accustomed by exposure to wetness. Locke
studied medicine, and once practiced it with much success. And the
hygienic rules above cited, which were the result of his own experience
and experimentation, introduced almost a revolution in the physical
bringing up of children. We see how subsequent writers, like Rousseau
and Kant, reflect his thoughts.
His ideas of mental training rest on his theory of the mind. According
to him, the mind of a new-born child is a _tabula rasa_: there is
nothing innate in it; experience is what makes a mind. Every sensation
one receives or every act one does, however small and insignificant
it may seem, leaves some impression upon it, and contributes not only
to the constitution of its content, but also to the formation of a
definite tendency. He recognized the important rôle played by the
unconscious or automatic part of the mind in our actual life, which is
nothing more than an aggregate or a system of various habits. Volition
has but little power against it; it works more “constantly and with
greater facility than reason, which, when we have most need of it,
is seldom fairly consulted and more rarely obeyed” (7: p. 91). Habit
formation is, therefore, the great thing in education. The significance
of any act of a child, of any educational process, is to be measured
only by what kind of habit it is likely to lead to.
Although he compared children’s minds to water which we can easily
turn this way or that, or to wax upon which we can impress any figure
as we like, yet he meant to illustrate by this simply the extreme
plasticity and flexibility of childhood. He was not blind to the
great individual differences, and was perfectly aware that “there are
possibly scarce two children who can be conducted by exactly the same
method” (7: p. 187). Moreover, he says: “We must not hope wholly to
change their original tempers, nor make the gay pensive and grave, nor
the melancholy sportive, without spoiling them; God has stamped certain
characters upon men’s minds which, like their shapes, may perhaps be a
little mended, but can hardly be totally alter’d and transformed into
the contrary” (7: p. 40). The uniformatization of method, then, is a
crime of educational art instead of its aim. The only common rule to
be fixed is not to have any definite rule, but to find out about every
child, what his temperament, inclinations, defects are, and apply
methods or treatment that are “adapted to his capacity” and “suited to
his natural genius and constitution.”
In discussing the process of discipline, he first makes a plea for
the free expression of the play instinct. “This gamesome humour,” he
says, “which is wisely adapted by Nature to their age and temper should
rather be encourag’d to keep up their spirits, and improve strength
and health, than curb’d or restrain’d” (7: p. 38). A “misapply’d and
useless correction” in this case may serve “only to spoil the temper
both of body and of mind.” Our hope of education will be gone if we
kill this tendency to spontaneous activity at its growth. For here is
just the point of grasp by which alone we can lead children anywhere we
desire. “The chief art of the educator is to make all that they have to
do sport and play, too.” (7: p. 38).
Shall we then put no restraint whatever upon their conduct? No, far
from that. Locke insists that even “the plays and diversions of
children should be directed towards good and useful habits or else
they will introduce ill ones” (7: p. 113). He demands a stern and
rigorous discipline, and accuses parents of weakening their little
ones by too much fondling. Children ought not to be allowed to satisfy
a craving which comes from their whims and fancies and not from their
natural wants. They ought to learn the control of their passions and
appetites from their cradles, and so be kept in absolute subjection to
the parents’ authority while their own reason is not yet developed.
Their instinctive sense of awe should be utilized and obedience be
made implicit and natural. But as they grow up, more liberty should be
allowed, and friendliness, love, and even respect should take the place
of authority.
Nevertheless, Locke does not believe in severe punishment. “The usual
lazy and short way by chastisement and rod,” he thinks, encourages
“our natural propensity to indulge in corporeal and present pleasure
and to avoid pain at any cost,” instead of conducing to its mastery,
and “thereby strengthens that in us which is the root from whence
spring all vicious actions, and the irregularities of life” (7:
p. 30). Again, “such a sort of _slavish Discipline_ makes a
_slavish Temper_” (7: p. 31). It creates a hypocrite who
dissembles obedience, yet with his natural inclination only heightened
and increased on account of external suppression. It creates “a
low-spirited, moped creature, who, however, with his unnatural sobriety
may please silly people, who commend tame inactive children, because
they make no noise, nor give them any trouble; yet, at last, will
probably prove as uncomfortable a thing to his friends, as he will be
all his life as useless a thing to himself and others” (7: p. 31). It
severs a child from the parent or the teacher who administers it, and
causes disgust for work when applied for its enforcement. But in case
of lying and obstinacy, which he considered as the two grave moral
faults issuing from the conscious volition of the child, Locke allows
and even advises us to resort to severe measures, in order to check
them at their first manifestation. Here the rod should be heavy and
unswerving, and not laid down until it has brought the child’s will
into a complete subjugation. But he thinks that if we keep our strict
hand constantly over the unnatural desires of the child, from its
cradle, and at the same time give a full freedom to its natural wants
and activities, we shall seldom find an occasion which calls for the
rod.
Material rewards are equally condemned by Locke as the physical
punishment. He admits, however, that pain and pleasure, reward and
punishment, are “the only motives to a rational creature,” “the spur
and reins whereby all mankind are set to work and guided.” “Remove hope
and fear, and there is an end of all discipline” (7: p. 33). What he
wished, was to accustom children to connect their hope and fear, pain
and pleasure, with proper objects, in such a way as not to form those
habits which are detrimental to their future happiness and virtue.
There is a force or motive power in human life equally strong or even
stronger than material, physical pain and pleasure. It is the sense
of honor, the desire for esteem and the hate of disgrace. This shall
be used as the lever to move the young. “Make his mind as sensible of
credit and shame as may be; and when you have done that, you have put
a principle into him which will influence his actions when you are not
by; to which the fear of a little smart of a rod is not comparable;
and which will be the proper stock whereon afterwards to graft the
true principles of morality and religion” (7: p. 177). If you succeed
in this, “by all arts imaginable,” “the business is done and the
difficulty is over” (7: p. 34).
Locke does not believe in “charging children’s memories upon all
occasions with _Rules_ and precepts, which they often do not
understand, and constantly so soon forget as given” (7: p. 38). Mere
admonition or verbal instruction cannot teach what long experience
and broad generalization alone taught the race. Even commanding is
more effective than teaching. But the lesson by example, learning by
imitation, is the method he recommends. “The tincture of company sinks
deeper than the outside; and possibly, if a true estimate were made of
the morality and religions of the world, we should find that the far
greater part of mankind received even those opinions and ceremonies
they would die for, rather from the fashions of their countries, and
the constant practice of those about them than from any conviction of
their reasons” (7: p. 128). If this is true of those in whom reason is
already developed, still more so with children. So, the self-discipline
of parents themselves, the most careful choice of tutor, friends,
nurse, governess, and servants, are spoken of by Locke as a matter
of the first importance. Nobody has felt the great significance of
environment in education deeper than Locke. He says:
“Having named _Company_, I am almost ready to throw away my pen
and trouble you no further on this subject: For, since that does more
than all precepts, rules, and instructions, methinks it is almost
wholly in vain to make a long discourse of other things, and to talk
of that almost to no purpose” (7: p. 45).
The main aim of education for Locke is character-building, since he
conceived virtue as “the first and most necessary of those endowments
that belong to a man or a gentleman.” Next to virtue, wisdom is the
most necessary quality for a man. Wisdom means “a man’s managing his
business ably and with foresight in this world.” And since “this is the
product of a good natural temper, application of mind, and experience
together,” we cannot teach it to children. “To accustom a child to
have true notions of things, and not to be satisfied till he has them;
to raise his mind to great and worthy thoughts, and to keep him at a
distance from falsehood and cunning, which has always a broad mixture
of falsehood in it, is the fittest preparation of a child for wisdom”
(7: pp. 119-120). The rest is “to be learned from time, experience and
observation, and an acquaintance with men.” Let him inform his mind
by engaging in conversation with “men of parts and breeding,” as soon
as he is capable of benefitting by it, and send him to travel when he
reaches mature adolescence.
The third important quality is good breeding. “The happiness that all
men so steadily pursue consisting in pleasure--he that knows how to
make those he converses with easy, without debasing himself to low
and servile flattery, has found the true art of living in the world,
and being both welcomed and valued everywhere” (7: p. 124). The aim
of good breeding is to avoid a sheepish bashfulness on the one hand,
and a misbecoming negligence and disrespect on the other; to cultivate
a modest but assured, courteous yet not mean attitude of mind and
outward demeanor accompanying it, this is “a great skill which good
sense, reason, and good company can only reach.” Here, again, rules and
exhortation avail little, unless good examples are shown. “Be as busy
as you like with discourses of _Civility_ to your son, such as is
his company, such will be his manners” (7: p. 125). But young children
should not be too much interfered with as to the outward manners;
carelessness and clumsiness are natural to them, and age will cure
them, if you only “teach them humility and to be good-natured,” and
always choose for them good company. Dancing should be taught as soon
as they are capable of learning it, for “nothing appears to me to give
children so much becoming confidence and behavior, and so to raise them
to the conversation of those above their age, as _Dancing_” (7: p.
42). To give a “freedom and ease to all the motions of the body” is the
main thing in dancing. “One that teaches not this is worse than none at
all: natural unfashionableness being much better than apish affected
postures; and I think it much more passable to put off the hat and
make a leg like an honest country gentleman than like an ill-fashioned
dancing master. For as for the jigging part and the figures of dances,
I count that little or nothing further than as it tends to perfect
graceful carriage” (7: p. 174).
Learning is the last and least concern in Locke’s philosophy of
education. It is, he recognizes, a great help both to virtue and
wisdom in all well-disposed minds; but “in others not so disposed, it
helps them only to be the most foolish or worse men.” When Locke saw
“what ado is made about a little _Latin_ and _Greek_, how
many years are spent in it, and what a noise and business it makes
to no purpose,” he could not but despise it, and say: “A great part
of learning now in fashion in the schools of Europe, and that goes
ordinarily into the round of education, a gentleman may in a good
measure be unfurnished with, without any disparagement to himself or
prejudice to his affairs” (7: p. 74). “_Learning_,” he declares,
“must be had, but in the second place, as subservient to greater
qualities.... Place him (your child) in hands where you may, as much
as possible, secure his innocence, cherish and nurse up the good, and
gently correct and weed out any bad inclinations, and settle in him
good habits. This is the main point, and this being provided for,
learning may be had into the bargain” (7: pp. 128-129).
In learning, too, acquirement of habits is the chief educational
process. Not so much to supply ready-made knowledge nor to impart
the teacher’s own ideas, as to implant, by practice, a proper habit
of reading, thinking, observing, and doing is the goal to be striven
for. The educator must see to the constant and correct exercise of
the powers to be developed. But premature use or overexercise is as
detrimental to the vigorous development of the mind as neglect or too
little exercise. “The mind, by being engaged in a task beyond its
strength, like the body strained by lifting at a weight too heavy, has
often its force broken, and thereby gets an unaptness or an aversion
to any vigorous attempt ever after” (8: pp. 87-88). Children’s natural
weakness of mind should be understood and not taken for their willful
fault. Healthful activity of mind is the thing to be secured, and for
this the following principles are laid down by Locke, which we may
regard as the laws of hygiene of attention and association:
* * * * *
1. Keep up the natural tendency of children to free, spontaneous
activity; if they lack this, awaken it. Introduce them to something,
anything, which they can do with pleasure and enthusiasm. “None of
the things they are to learn should ever be made a burden, or imposed
upon them as a _Task_. Whatever is so proposed, presently becomes
irksome” (7: p. 52), and they will form an habitual prejudice against
it. This manifestation of spontaneous activity has its ebb and flow; so
catch the proper moment as well as the proper subject for setting them
to work.
2. Cherish the curiosity or natural inquisitiveness of children and
give it encouragement. However foolish and trifling their questions may
appear to you, do not forget that for them these questions are matters
of great moment. Treat them as “a stranger in an unknown land,” and
thus lead them to useful knowledge that they should know. Knowledge
grows by constant quest, and thus only.
3. The wandering mind and the fleeting thought are the result of
the natural constitution of childhood. It is the law of mental
economy, especially dominant in children, that “their thoughts should
be perpetually shifting from what disgusts them, and seek better
entertainment in more pleasing objects” (7: p. 143). A frequent
change of subject, introduction of some new, strange objects, making
instruction interesting, and thus holding the involuntary attention,
are therefore necessary in teaching children.
4. Children’s minds are strongly susceptible to emotional disturbances.
“Passionate words or blows from the tutor fill the child’s mind with
terror and affrightment, which immediately takes it wholly up, and
leaves no room for other impressions” (7: p. 143). Therefore, “keep
the mind in an easy, calm temper, when you would have it receive your
instructions or any increase of knowledge. It is as impossible to draw
fair and regular characters on a trembling mind as on a shaking paper”
(7: p. 143).
5. However great the part which involuntary attention plays in the
process of learning, the cultivation of the power of voluntary
attention should not be neglected. Children should be habituated to the
voluntary direction or control of attention “by trying them sometimes,
when they are by laziness unbent, or by avocation bent another way,
and endeavoring to make them buckle to the thing proposed” (7: p. 54).
Some bodily labor which requires a constant vigilance and application
of mind is recommended as a remedy for a diffused attention. The work
interest stands to the voluntary attention in the same relation as the
play interest to the involuntary attention. So, the former should be
stimulated by letting the child see “by what he has learned, that he
can do something which he could not do before; something, which gives
him some power and real advantage above others who are ignorant of it”
(7: p. 144).
6. We find in our mind often an association of ideas which is
accidental and arbitrary in its origin, but once being established is
almost inseparable and imperative. This wrong association “has such an
influence, and is of so great force to set us awry in our action, as
well moral as natural, passions, reasonings, and notions themselves,
that perhaps there is not any one thing that deserves more to be
looked after” (9: vol. ii, Book II, chapter 33, § 9). To prevent such
erroneous associations in the mind of children, the strict order of
learning should be observed. “Give them first one simple idea, and see
that they take it right, and perfectly comprehend it, before you go
any further; and then add some other simple idea which lies next in
your way to what you aim at; and so proceeding by gentle and insensible
steps, children without confusion and amazement will have their
understandings opened and their thoughts extended farther than could
have been expected” (7: p. 158).
* * * * *
Mathematics is recommended as a help to the training of reasoning
power, for a mathematical demonstration represents the coherent process
of reasoning. As for logic, he thinks with Bacon that it, “catching
at what it cannot reach, has served to confirm and establish errors,
rather than to open a way to truth” (8: p. 19).
No general improvement of memory is affected by any usual method of
“committing to memory,” or “learning by heart.” For in his psychology
(9: vol. ii, Book II, chapter xxxiii, xxxix; vol. i, Book II, chapter
x) our memory of ideas or impressions depends upon the strength of
power to hold them in mind--namely, attention, on the one hand, and
upon that of the power to retain and recall them, on the other. Yet
the intensity and duration of attention is largely determined by
interest, and the retentive power is owing to our constitution, and
therefore beyond education. Thus he says: “What the mind is intent upon
and careful of, that it remembers best, ... to which if method and
order be joined, all is done, I think, that can be for the help of a
weak memory; and he that will take any other way to do it, especially
that of charging it with a train of other people’s words, which he
that learns cares not for, will, I guess, scarce find the profit
answer half the time and pains employed in it.” For memory is not a
power that is transferable from one thing to another. “The learning
pages of _Latin_ by heart, no more fits the memory for retention
of anything else, than the graving of one sentence in lead makes it
the more capable of retaining firmly any other characters” (7: pp.
154-155). Improvement of memory can come only through the formation of
habits of fixating attention and of orderly association.
Thus, to sum up, learning by self-active, pleasurable exercise of
mental powers, directed in an orderly manner and constantly repeated,
is the fundamental principle of intellectual education.
Although learning was a matter of secondary importance in Locke’s plan
for the education of a “young gentleman,” the curriculum he proposed
was as rich as that of Comenius, and the practical suggestions he
gives as to the teaching of each subject are of much worth. The
subject-matter comprises: reading, writing, drawing, shorthand, French,
Latin, geography, arithmetic, chronology, history, geometry, astronomy,
anatomy, ethics, law, English grammar, rhetoric taught in a practical
way, letter-writing, natural philosophy containing biblical history,
and physics. Gardening, carpentry, turning, varnishing, graving, metal
and jeweler’s work, and other manual occupations are recommended as
healthful diversions. Bookkeeping also makes a part of a gentleman’s
useful accomplishments. He recommends dancing and wrestling, but
depreciates music, painting, fencing, and riding, from one reason
or another. The main difference between Locke and Comenius lies in
that, while one considers knowledge and information in themselves of
great value, as deserving the dignity of man, the other values these
rather for their influence on the efficiency and happiness of actual
life. Comenius is often called the father of realistic pedagogy,
but in my opinion his ideals of education and curriculum are still
largely humanistic and even scholastic. It is in Locke that we see
the complete victory of realism. Bacon’s influence upon Comenius was
mainly in his ideal of universal knowledge. But the real spirit of the
new scientific learning found its true supporter in Locke. Comenius
drew his philosophical arguments for education from the Bible and from
the analogy of Nature. But by Locke pedagogy was put upon a scientific
basis--namely, physiology and psychology.
At the opening of the chapter, I contrasted Locke as the pedagogue of
private education with Comenius as that of public education. Comenius
aimed at the enlightenment of the masses, so the machinery of school
was necessarily of high importance; hence the dictum: “Good teacher,
good books, good method.” Locke, on the other hand, had in view the
perfect bringing up of an individual; consequently, a good home with a
good tutor was naturally esteemed above everything else. The advantage
of group education lies, according to him, in that it will make a boy
“bolder, and better able to bustle and shift among boys of his own age;
and the emulation of school-fellows often puts life and industry into
young lads” (7: p. 46). And the main disadvantage of home education
lies in that it makes a youth more ignorant of the world; “wanting
there change of company, and being used constantly to the same faces,
he will, when he comes abroad, be a sheepish or conceited creature”
(7: p. 46). But these shortcomings can be remedied by providing him
good company at home and by later traveling. As for the inculcation of
virtues and manners, home is decidedly the better place.
“The difference is great between two or three pupils in the same
house, and three or four score boys lodged up and down; for let the
master’s industry and skill be never so great, it is impossible he
should have fifty or a hundred scholars under his eye any longer than
they are in the school together; nor can it be expected that he should
instruct them successfully in anything but their books; the forming of
their minds and manners requiring a constant attention, and particular
application to every single boy, which is impossible in a numerous
flock, and would be wholly in vain, (could he have time to study and
correct every one’s particular defects and wrong inclinations) when
the lad was to be left to himself, or the prevailing infection of his
fellows, the greatest part of the four and twenty hours”.
“What qualities are ordinarily to be got from such a troop of
play-fellows as schools usually assemble together from parents of all
kinds, that a father should so much covet, is hard to divine” (7: pp.
48-49).
Thus we see that while Comenius pointed to an ideal school and
preached its gospel, Locke, by showing us the defects of the school,
persuades us to flee into his idealized home. The actual condition of
the average home and the increasing need of modern society makes the
school indispensable, in spite of its imperfections as an educational
institution. Nevertheless, it is well for us always to keep our eyes
open to the defects and dangers of mass education.
REFERENCES
1. +Bourne, Henry Richard Fox.+ The Life of John Locke. 2 vols.
Harper, New York, 1876.
2. +Browning, Oscar.+ An Introduction to the History of
Educational Theories. Kellogg, New York, 1880. 237 pages.
3. +Compayré, Jules Gabriel.+ History of Pedagogy. Translated,
with an introduction, notes, and an index, by W. H. Payne. Heath &
Co., Boston, 1899. 598 pages.
4. +Heman, Friedrich.+ Geschichte der neueren Pädagogik.
Zickfeldt, Osterwieck, 1904. 436 pages.
5. +Heubaum, Alfred.+ Geschichte der deutschen Bildungswesens
seit der Mitte der siebzehnten Jahrhunderts. Vol. I. Bis zum Beginn
der allgemeinen Unterrichtsreform unter Friedrich dem Grossen.
Weidmann, Berlin, 1905. 402 pages.
6. +Laurie, Simon Somerville.+ Studies in the History of
Educational Opinions from the Renaissance. University Press,
Cambridge, 1903. 261 pages.
7. +Locke, John.+ Some Thoughts Concerning Education. With
introduction and notes by R. H. Quick. University Press, Cambridge.
Second edition, 1889. 240 pages.
8. ---- On the Conduct of the Understanding. Maynard, New York, 1901.
132 pages.
9. ---- An Essay on the Human Understanding. 3 vols. M. Tegg, London,
1832.
10. +Monroe, Paul.+ A Text-book in the History of Education.
Macmillan Co., London and New York, 1905. 772 pages.
11. +Munroe, James Phinney.+ The Educational Ideal: an Outline
of its Growth in Modern Times. Heath & Co., Boston, 1896. 262 pages.
12. +Quick, Robert Hebert.+ Essays on Educational Reformers.
Appleton, New York, 1890. 560 pages. The same. (International
Education Series), 1903. 562 pages.
13. +Raumer, Karl von.+ Geschichte der Pädagogik vom
Wiederaufblühen klassischer Studien bis auf unsere Zeit. 5 vols.
Bertelsmann, Gütersloh, 1882-1897.
14. +Rein, Georg Wilhelm+, editor. Encyklopädisches Handbuch
der Pädagogik. 8 vols. Beyer, Langensalza, 1895-1906. Vol. IV.
15. +Scherer, Heinrich.+ Die Pädagogik in ihrer Entwicklung
im Zusammenhange mit dem Kultur- und Geistesleben und ihrem Einfluss
auf die Gestaltung des Erziehungs- und Bildungswesens. Vol. I. Die
Pädagogik vor Pestalozzi. Brandstetter, Leipzig, 1897. 581 pages.
16. +Schmid, Karl Adolph+, editor. Geschichte der Erziehung vom
Anfang an bis auf unsere Zeit. 5 vols. Cotta, Stuttgart, 1884-1902.
Vol. IV. Parts I and II.
17. +Spielmann, C. Christian.+ Die Meister der Pädagogik nach
ihren Leben, ihren Werken, und ihrer Bedeutung. Heufer, Neuwied,
1904-1905. 365 pages. Part II.
18. +Wilke, Georg.+ Die Hauptberührungs- und
Unterscheidungspunkte der Erziehungsgedanken John Locke’s und J. J.
Rousseau’s. Scheinfeld, Erlangen, 1898. 67 pages.
CHAPTER IV.
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
(1712-1778)
The limitation of the Lockean philosophy of education is the limitation
of his personality. His practical, utilitarian, and rationalistic
pedagogy may be good for making an efficient and respectable member
of society, but cannot meet the demands of the whole human soul.
Fortunately his pedagogy found its successor in just the right kind
of man. What Nature spared in this English gentleman she bestowed
luxuriantly upon the French artist.
In Rousseau we strike the prodigy of the pedagogic world. Such a
personality is rare, and Nature will probably not produce another
Rousseau. He was a man of no schooling and no discipline. His life
was, in a sense, a life of vagabondage and of abandonment. He was, in
the eye of Carlyle, “a morbid, excitable, spasmodic man,” whose motive
principle was “a mean hunger,” whose faults and miseries are summarized
by the single word, egoism. But it was to this egoist, this sensualist,
that Madame de Staël attributes the honor of having inspired women to
virtue as no other man ever did. And it was to this uneducated vagabond
that the Western world owes the revolution in its politics and thought.
The Puritan prophet counted Rousseau among his heroes in spite
of his constitutional hate of the man, granting to him this one
virtue--the heroism of intense sincerity. I would add to this another
characteristic which makes him a genius, the intrinsic beauty and
wealth of his emotional nature. He was a Frenchman in whose veins
ran the blood of a Swiss mountaineer. In short, he was a bold
incarnation of the artistic spirit. Absolute independence, freedom,
and satisfaction of all that is instinctive and spontaneous, this was
the claim of his personality. But this, we know, is too beautiful a
dream to be realized in the actual world of ours. Thus his early life
of idyllic intoxication in the beauty of Nature and human sentiments
was soon shattered by the cruel hand of social conventions and prosaic
actuality: seeing the sacredness of instinctive nature everywhere
trampled down by corrupted passions and vanities on the one hand,
and by sophisticated refinement and cold ratiocination on the other,
he raised the voice of protest against what they called culture and
civilization, and made a plea for the entire reorganization of human
society and of the race itself. Freedom from pedantry of superficial
learning and accomplishment, from the hypocrisy of conventional
morality, manners, and religion, from slavery to all artificialities
and externalities, the restoration of man from his accessory life to
his fundamental being, this is the center of his whole philosophy,
which began in his negative answer to the question presented by
the French Academy, “whether the progress of sciences and arts has
contributed to the corruption or the purification of morality,” and
culminates in his greatest work, “Émile,” in which he sets forth what
he conceives as the only salvation of the corrupted race. “Émile” is
the boldest assertion of this boldest child of Nature, and in the
influence it has exercised upon the course of human thoughts and events
we see the wonder of genius, and thus it will remain one of the rarest
treasures in the educational literature of mankind. This book is, in
the words of Niemeyer, like “a meteor which may blind and mislead a
man, but at the same time can illumine regions into which the ordinary
eye can only seldom penetrate.” Even Thomas Davidson, who shows little
sympathy and poor appreciation of Rousseau, is obliged to acknowledge
that “it has been given to few men to exert, with their thought, an
influence so deep and pervasive as that of Rousseau,” and he traces
the way in which this influence extended to “all departments of human
activity, philosophy, science, religion, ethics, art, politics,
economics, and pedagogy” (3: p. 224). Especially in regard to the last
department, with which we are now concerned, we could truly say with
Oscar Browning: “He stands astride across the field of education.
Nothing comes after him which is not affected by him” (1: p. 153). So
I might well add here that every one of us who is actually drinking
from the stream which flowed down from him ought for once to go
directly to its very source, and receive its refreshing benediction,
which, in the phrase of John Morley, “admitted floods of light and air
into tightly closed nurseries and schoolrooms” (8: ii, p. 249).
Return to Nature! was the war cry of Rousseauean pedagogy as it was
that of his whole life and philosophy. Here is his often quoted passage
with which he opens his proclamation of war against the conventional
attitude of education:
“All things are good as they come out of the hand of their Creator,
but everything degenerates in the hand of man.... He is not content
with anything in its natural state, not even with his own species.
His very offspring must be trained up for him, like a horse in the
menagerie, and be taught to grow after his own fancy, like a tree in
his garden” (17: i, p. 7).
This may sound to some like an advocacy of _laissez faire_
principle. But the very word Nature presents an ideal, and to return to
it or to preserve it, there is the need of educative effort. For:
“Should a man in a state of society be given up from the cradle to
his own notions and conduct, he would certainly turn out the most
preposterous of human beings.... His humanity would resemble a shrub,
growing by accident in the highway, which would soon be destroyed by
the casual injuries it must receive from the frequent passenger” (17:
i, pp. 7-8).
To preserve and develop “the natural man in a state of society” (17: i,
p. 337) is the aim of education. By “natural” he does not necessarily
mean primitive and savage traits of man only, but all those tendencies,
dispositions, qualities, which are inherent, essential, and universal
to all mankind, whether inborn or developed in life and society. He
writes:
“After taking a comparative view of as many ranks and degrees of
people as I have met with during a whole life spent in observing them,
I have thrown aside as artificial all the peculiarities of particular
nations, ranks, and conditions; and have regarded those things only
as incontestably belonging to man which are common to men of all
countries, ages, and circumstances of life” (17: ii, p. 79).
From this view follows, however, the elevation of the generic
fundamental traits of man which express themselves in his instincts,
sentiments, intuitions, and common sense, accompanied by the
depreciation of the individual mental superstructure, which is seen in
our reason, learning, artistic accomplishments, etc. Thus, to interpret
in modern terms, the development of the generic psychophysical organism
is the essential task of the education of the young as understood by
Rousseau.
There are three agents of education--Nature, men, and circumstances.
“The constitutional exertion of our organs and faculties is the
education of nature: the uses we are taught to make of that exertion
constitute the education given us by men; and in the acquisitions made
by our own experience on the objects that surround us consists our
education from circumstances” (17: i, p. 10). Of these, the first does
not depend on ourselves, the second depends on us, and the third is
under our power of control to a certain extent. So in order to secure
the harmony of these three it is to the first that we must adjust the
two others. Therefore, Nature--i. e., the law of the psychophysical
organism of the child itself--must be the true nurse and trainer of the
child. The function of an educator is simply to administer her oracle.
Then let us hear some of the oracles of Nature: First of all: “Nature
requires children to be children before they are men”; and “by
endeavoring to pervert this order we produce forward fruits, that
have neither maturity nor taste, and will not fail soon to wither
or corrupt” (17: i, p. 108). Beware of forcing upon the child any
adult standard, for “every age, every state of life has its peculiar
degrees of perfection, a kind of maturity peculiar to itself” (17: i,
p. 246). The end of life is in itself; our aim is to live our life to
the full; and this is happiness. “To live is not merely to breathe;
it is to act, to make a proper use of our organs, our senses, our
faculties, and of all those parts of the human frame which contribute
to the consciousness of our existence. The man who has lived most is
not he who has survived the greatest number of years, but he who has
experienced most of life. A man may be buried at a hundred years of age
who died in his cradle. Such a one would have been a gainer by dying
young, at least if he had lived, in our sense of the word, till the
time of his decease” (17: i, pp. 18-19). Therefore, let the child live
its own present life, which is the only reality to him; “let us promote
the happiness of man in every stage of life.”
From this viewpoint Rousseau directs his indignation upon the current
mode of education. He says:
“What can we think, then, of that barbarous method of education, by
which the present is sacrificed to an uncertain future, by which a
child is laid under every kind of restraint, and is made miserable, by
way of preparing him for we know not what pretended happiness, which
there is reason to believe he may never live to enjoy? Supposing it
not unreasonable in its design, how can we see, without indignation,
the unhappy innocents subjected to a yoke of insupportable rigor and
condemned like galley-slaves to continual labor, without being assured
that such mortifications and restrictions will ever be of any service
to them? The age of cheerfulness and gayety is spent in the midst of
tears, punishments, threats, and slavery” (17: i, pp. 85-86).
Liberty for all their healthful activities and enjoyments prompted and
dictated by Nature, this is the fundamental Rousseauean _dictum_.
Another collateral principle set up by Rousseau, the full significance
of which is only lately beginning to be realized, is that of education
by inaction, by delay. He says:
“May I venture here to lay down the greatest, most important, and most
useful rule of education? It is this, not to gain time, but to lose
it.... We should not tamper with the mind till it has acquired all its
faculties; for it is impossible it should perceive the light we hold
out to it while it is blind.”
“Let the infancy of children therefore have time to ripen. In short,
whatever instruction is necessary for them, take care not to give it
them to-day, if it may be deferred without danger till to-morrow” (17:
i, pp. 114-116).
Do not imagine that there is no education when we ourselves do not
instruct or train a child. “Before he can speak, before he can
understand, he is already instructed. Experience is the forerunner
of precept” (17: i, p. 57). There is little danger in intrusting a
child’s growth to the hand of Nature, and “so long as we know not how
to proceed, wisdom consists in remaining inactive” (17: iii, p. 172).
Thus he opposes teaching a child a multiplicity of things. Ignorance
is better than imbibing superficial knowledge and false ideas. He also
rallies the _encyclopedists_ of his day, who were “enamored by the
charms of universal knowledge,” and likens them to “a child gathering
shells on the seashore. He first loads himself indiscriminately with as
many as he can carry; when, tempted by others of a gayer appearance,
he throws the first away, taking and rejecting till fatigued and
bewildered in his choice, he has thrown all away, and returns home
without a single shell” (17: i, p. 270). There are so many things in
the world which we all need not or should not know. Ignorance is as
much virtue as knowledge. Elimination is probably as necessary for the
true advancement of science and humanity as accumulation.
But the knowledge he so much depreciates and the ignorance he thus
advocates in children refer chiefly to words and books. According to
him, the only true knowledge is that direct experience of reality which
comes through the exercise of our organs and faculties; it is action
that really instructs us. In his opinion:
“The multiplicity of books is destructive of science. Imagining the
theory we have read in authors to be sufficient, we think ourselves
excused from the trouble of learning the practice. Too much reading
only encourages presumption and ignorance.... Such a multitude of
books makes us forget the volume of the world” (17: iii, pp. 188-189).
Naturally he makes mockery of the naturalists who “study natural
history in their cabinets,” and would let his child Émile have “a
cabinet much better furnished than that of crowned heads--the whole
globe.” Teach the child with objects, by its own experience of them;
never substitute the shadow unless where it is impossible to exhibit
the substance; this is his general rule of instruction.
The great psychological discovery proclaimed by Rousseau is that the
child lives in a totally different world from that of grown-up people,
that “childhood has its manner of seeing, perceiving, and thinking,
peculiar to itself” (17: i, p. 108). He says:
“We never know how to suppose ourselves in the place of children;
we never enter into their manner of thinking. On the contrary,
we attribute to them our ideas; and pursuing our own method of
argumentation, fill their heads, even while we are discussing
incontestable truths, with extravagance and error” (17: i, p. 268).
No writer has ever before entered so deeply into the child-soul, and
many facts first discovered by his wonderful power of observation are
borne out by the more recent systematic studies. He is entitled to the
name of the discoverer of childhood, and can be called the forerunner
of child-study.
Another great discovery made by Rousseau, which is related to the
above, is that there are certain definite stages in the natural
development of the child to which modes of education should correspond.
True, Comenius divided the whole educative period, which, in his
conception, covers the period of physical growth, into four, and
assigned for each of them a different institution. But his gradation
was made rather artificially and arbitrarily, while Rousseau’s division
was based on his careful observation of the actual evolution of the
child’s body and mind, the correctness of which is rather surprising in
the light of modern science.
The first epoch of human life begins with birth and ends with the time
when the infant begins to eat and to walk. In this stage the principle
of educating by inaction, on the part of the educator, by leaving the
child to its natural development, is to be strictly observed. Absolute
freedom should be granted to the child’s growing physical being. He
also made a strong plea for the personal care of the child by the
mother, which is said to have created a fashion among aristocratic
mothers of the day, of carrying their nurslings even to balls and
parties.
“Other women, nay brutes, might afford it the milk which she refuses;
but the solicitude, the tenderness of a mother cannot be supplied....
Would you have mankind return all to their natural duties, begin with
the mothers of families; you will be astonished at the change this
will produce. Almost every kind of depravation flows successively
from this source; the moral order of things is broken, the natural
quiet is subverted in our hearts; home is less cheerful and engaging;
the affecting sight of a rising family no more attaches the husband
nor attracts the eyes of the stranger; the mother is less truly
respectable whose children are not about her; families are no longer
places of residence; habit no longer enforces the ties of blood; there
are no fathers, no mothers, children, brothers, nor sisters; they
hardly know, how should they love, each other? Each cares for no one
but himself; and when home affords only a melancholy solitude, it is
natural for us to seek diversion elsewhere” (17: i, pp. 24-25).
This impeachment made upon the depraved condition of the aristocratic
home in France of his day fortunately sounds to us somewhat remote, but
the appeal he made to the fathers is still to the point for our own
generation.
“A father, in begetting and providing for his children, has in that
discharged but a third part of his obligations. He owes a being to his
species, social beings to society, and citizens to the state. Everyone
who is capable of paying this triple debt and refuses is, in that
respect, criminal; and perhaps is more so when he pays it by halves.
He who is incapable of performing the duties of a father has no right
to be one. Neither poverty nor business nor personal importance can
dispense with parents nursing and educating their children” (17: i,
pp. 31-32).
Although it is our duty to assist infants and supply their
deficiencies, since they are yet physical weaklings, yet “every
assistance afforded them should be confined to real utility,
without administering anything to the indulgence of their caprice
or unreasonable humors” (17: i, p. 70). We must carefully study
the meaning of their inarticulate speech and gestures, in order to
distinguish between their natural wants and whimsical claims. The
principle of the whole matter is “to give children more real liberty
and less command; to leave them more to do of themselves than to
require of others” (17: i, p. 70). Thus they shall learn to confine
their desires to their abilities, and harmony shall be established
between the want and the power to satisfy it, the disparity of which is
the source of all human miseries. He also speaks of the uselessness and
harmfulness of providing elaborate toys, and forcing speech too early
upon the child.
Now we come to what he calls the age of puerility, extending from
the advent of speech to the dawn of puberty. “His memory extends the
sense of his identity to every moment of his existence; he becomes
always one and the same person, and of course already susceptible of
happiness or misery. From this time therefore he must be considered
as a moral being” (17: i, p. 85). If the preceding stage was the
period of education by natural growth, this one is the period of
training, but without instruction. His sensory-motor being is at its
greatest activity, with the least activity in the thinking self. It
is, therefore, preëminently the age for habit formation. Our principle
still should be “to lose time,” so far as the inculcation of knowledge
or ideas is concerned. “Teach nothing if you can help it” is to be the
motto. Action is the monitor of the child at this age; our business
is simply to guide it without the air of restraint. To those who are
alarmed at this idea Rousseau says:
“Is it nothing, then, to spend his time in freedom and happiness?
Dancing, playing, and running about all day, is this doing nothing?
Depend on it, he will never be so fully employed again during life”
(17: i, p. 142).
He compares the child whose undeveloped intellect is taxed in order
to make the most of its time to one who, in his eagerness for work,
determines never to go to sleep. “Infancy is the sleep of Reason” (17:
i, p. 143); by depriving her of it, you thrust her into the arms of
death.
“The apparent facility with which children seem to learn, operates
greatly to their prejudice and, though we do not observe it, is a
plain proof that they learn nothing.... A child retains the words, but
the ideas accompanying them are reflected back again; those who hear
him repeat, may understand what he means; but he himself knows nothing
of the matter” (17: i, p. 143).
“What, then, does it signify to imprint on their minds a catalogue
of signs which to them represent nothing?... In the very first
unintelligible sentence with which a child sits down satisfied, in
the very first thing he takes upon trust, or learns from others,
without being himself convinced of its utility, he loses part of his
understanding; and he may figure long in the eyes of fools before he
will be able to repair a considerable loss” (17: i, p. 152).
And since “no science consists in the knowledge of words, so there
is no study proper for children” (17: i, p. 152). Rousseau’s pupil,
Émile, “will hardly know what a book is at twelve years of age” (17:
i, p. 162). In his opinion, “reading is a vexation to children; ...
it is good for nothing, but to disgust and fatigue them till they see
its use” (17: i, p. 162). As for writing, he says he is ashamed of
condescending to discuss such a trifling subject. On the other hand,
the acquisition power of which children are possessed can be fully
engaged in other things than studying books. Instead of beginning by
teaching the child how to read and write according to the time-honored
custom of his day, Rousseau would give it as much opportunity to
gather, correct, and broaden sense experience as possible.
“Everything they see or hear appears striking, and they try to commit
it to memory. A child keeps in his mind a register of the actions
and conversation of those who are about him; every scene he is
engaged in is a book, from which he insensibly enriches his memory,
treasuring up his store till time will ripen his judgment and turn it
to profit. It is in the choice of these scenes and objects, in the
care of presenting those constantly to his view with which he ought
to be familiar and in hiding from him such as are improper, that the
true art of cultivating this primary faculty of a child consists. By
such means also it is that we should endeavor to form that magazine
of knowledge which should serve for his education in youth, and to
regulate his conduct afterwards. This method, it is true, is not
productive of little prodigies of learning, nor does it tend to
enhance the character of governess or preceptor; but it is the way to
form robust and judicious men, persons sound in body and mind, who,
without being admired while children, know how to make themselves
respected when grown-up” (17: i, pp. 153-154). “During the time that
their supple and delicate organs are adapted to making experiments
on bodies while their senses are as yet exempt from illusions; this
is the interval in which we should exercise both the one and the
other in their proper functions; this is the time to teach children
the perceptible relations of things. As everything that enters into
human understanding is introduced by the senses, the first kind of
ratiocination in man is a kind of sensitive reasoning; and this serves
as the basis of his intellectual reason. Our first instructors in
philosophy are our feet, hands, and eyes. In substituting books in
their place we do not learn to reason, but to content ourselves with
the reasoning of others; we learn indeed to believe a great deal, but
to know nothing” (17: i, pp. 180-181).
If in the former period the educator simply ministered to the call of
the child’s organism, in this second period he adjusts the environment
to it. The close relation between the muscular and mental development
is a great discovery of modern science. Yet with what an intuition of
genius Rousseau has already seen this! He writes:
“It is a wretched mistake to think the exercise of the body
prejudicial to the operations of the mind; as if the action of both
were incompatible, or that the one could not always direct the other”
(17: i, p. 166).
“In proportion as the sensitive becomes an active being, he acquires a
discernment proportional to his corporeal abilities; when he possesses
more of the latter, also, than are necessary for his preservation,
it is with that redundancy, and not before, that he displays those
speculative faculties which are adapted to the employment of such
abilities to other purposes” (17: i, p. 165).
Moreover, “our limbs and our organs ... are the instruments of our
intelligence; and in order to make the best use of these instruments,
it is necessary that the body furnishing them should be robust and
healthy” (17: i, p. 181).
Therefore, Rousseau advocates the natural motor training which children
receive in their free outdoor play as the most effective and solid form
of intellectual culture. It not only secures the mental vigor, but also
extends the sphere of our experience and knowledge: “it teaches us to
become acquainted with the proper exertion of our forces, the relation
our bodies bear to those which surround us, the use of those natural
implements which are within our reach, and which are adapted to our
organs” (17: i, p. 179). Besides, free play is a good, if not the best,
emotional culture we can give a young child, because the harmony of
heart comes from the balance between desires and capacity to satisfy
them, and in the full exercise of his instinctive healthful activities,
this is vouchsafed.
In this way a full-grown child is built up--not young professors and
old children, of which we have so many; indeed, too many. He does not
represent a perfection of manhood, but of childhood, which is a totally
different thing.
“His figure, attitude, and countenance speak assurance and
contentment; his face is the picture of health; his firm step gives
him an air of strength and vigor; his complexion, delicate without
being pale and wan, has nothing in it of effeminate softness, the
sun and the wind having already given to his skin the honorable tint
of his sex; his features, though still plump, begin to show some
distinguishing marks of physiognomy; his eyes, as yet unanimated by
the glow of sentiment, have all their natural serenity; they are not
grown dull and heavy from care and sorrow, nor have incessant tears
made furrows in his cheeks. On the contrary, you may see, in his
alert but steady motions, the vivacity of his age, the firmness of
his independence, and the experience he has gained from the many and
various exercises to which he has been accustomed. He has an open and
liberal mien, without the least air of insolence or vanity; as he
has not been kept poring over his books, his looks are not directed
downward, nor is there any occasion to bid him hold up his head,
neither fear nor shame ever made him hang it down” (17: i, p. 249).
As to his intellect:
“His ideas, it is true, are confined, but clear; if he knows nothing
by rote, he knows a great deal by experience. If he has read less
than other children in printed volumes, he has read much more in the
volume of nature. His understanding does not lie on his tongue, but
in his brain; he has less memory than judgment; he can speak only one
language, but then he understands what he says, and though he may not
talk of things so well as others, he will do them much better” (17: i,
p. 250).
He is not a shadowy reflection of printed words and external
authorities, but a whole-hearted expression of life and soul.
“Whether he is at work or at play, he knows no difference; both are
alike to him; his diversions are his business. In everything he does,
he is gayly interested, and pleasingly at liberty; displaying at once
the turn of his genius and the compass of his knowledge” (17: i, p.
253).
Till the age of puberty, the whole course of child life was “one
continuous series of imbecility” (17: i, p. 256). His strength was
deficient to meet all the wants and necessities arising from his inner
impulse. It was, on the whole, the period of accumulation of energy.
Now follows that of its superabundance and overflowing. The abilities
he possesses exceed his wants. “Considered as a man, he is very
weak, but as a child, he is abundantly strong.” This period of early
adolescence “contains the most precious moments of his life--moments
never to return, few and transitory, hence the more precious” (16: i,
p. 258).
He is now first freed from the necessities of the immediate
present, and can look for other things than those pertaining to
self-preservation. Consequently, “he should throw ... the superfluity
of his present being into his future existence. The robust child should
provide for the subsistence of the feeble man; ... to appropriate
his acquisitions to himself, he will secure them in the strength and
dexterity of his own arms, and in the capacity of his own head. This,
therefore, is the time for employment, for instruction, for study”
(17: i, p. 259). During the preceding period we had to lose time. “The
case is now altered, and we have not time sufficient for everything
that might be useful.” The moment of emotional storm is approaching;
“the term of impassionate intelligence is short and transitory.” Yet
art is long. The principle, therefore, should be not to make the child
“an adept in the sciences, but to give him a taste for them, and point
out the method of improving it” (17: i, p. 270). As to the subjects of
study and their order, the standard must be our natural inclination and
interest. And, according to Rousseau, our intellectual curiosity and
efforts as well as physical activities are prompted by our fundamental
instinct: the constant pursuit of happiness and avoidance of
unhappiness. “Our innate desire of happiness, and the impossibility of
fully gratifying that desire, are the cause of our constant researches
after new expedients to contribute to that end” (17: i, p. 261).
And with the development of the organism, with the increase of its
powers and desires, the sphere of its intellectual interest expands.
“During our infant state of weakness and incapacity, all our thoughts,
influenced by self-preservation, are confined within ourselves. On the
contrary, in a more advanced age, as our abilities increase, the desire
of improving our existence carries us out of ourselves, and our ideas
extend to the utmost limits. As the intellectual world, however, is as
yet unknown to us, our thoughts cannot extend further than we can see;
but our comprehension dilates itself with the bounds of the space” (17:
i, p. 202). This is the age we have now reached. So the first science
to be taught shall be physics, in its widest sense--the study of the
phenomena of Nature.
As to the method of teaching natural sciences, Rousseau was the first
who truly and fully embodied the Baconian principle in pedagogy. His
way was to let a child-study the concrete, living nature, with his own
eyes and hands, under the guidance of an expert, who understands the
child nature as well as the objective nature. Although these ideas may
be considered impractical and one-sided, they, nevertheless, sound with
a good ring, in this present age, when science instruction has sunk
into a second scholasticism and verbalism. Let me quote a few passages:
“In the first place, you are to consider how seldom it is proper for
you to propose what he is to learn; it is his place to desire to
know, to seek for, to discover it: it is yours artfully to excite his
desire, to place the object within his reach, and furnish him with the
means of attaining it” (17: i, pp. 285-286).
“Direct the attention of your pupil to the phenomena of nature, and
you will soon awaken his curiosity; but to keep that curiosity alive,
you must be in no haste to satisfy it. Put questions to him adapted to
his capacity, and leave him to resolve them. Let him take nothing on
trust from his preceptor, but on his own comprehension and conviction:
he should not learn, but invent the sciences. If you ever substitute
authority in the place of argument, he will reason no longer; he will
be ever afterwards bandied like a shuttlecock between the opinions of
others” (17: i, p. 263).
“The mere speculative part of science is by no means adapted to
children, even when they approach adolescence;.... In your researches
into the laws of nature, begin always with the most common and obvious
phenomena, accustoming your pupil to look upon them always as mere
facts” (17: i, pp. 280-281).
The following passage because of its recognition of a much neglected
principle deserves to be hung upon the wall of every schoolroom:
“Among the many admirable methods taken to abridge the study of
the sciences, we are in great want of one to make us learn with
difficulty” (17: i, p. 280).
The fundamental cause of the superficiality and ineffectiveness of
our school instruction lies in our mistaken desire to teach as many
things as possible in as short a time as possible. This leads to the
insistence on a precocious application to the studies beyond children’s
interest and experience. And we complacently believe that we can make
them understand these by the abundance of explanation on our part. But
this helps not a whit. In the words of Rousseau:
“I do not at all admire explanatory discourses; young people give
little attention to them, and never retain them in their memory. The
things themselves are the best explanations. I can never enough repeat
it, that we make words of too much consequence; with our prating modes
of education, we make nothing but praters” (17: i, p. 286).
Introduction of work interest--i. e., the motive of utility--belongs
to this stage. “As soon as we are so far advanced as to give our pupil
an idea of the word _useful_, we have attained a considerable
influence over his future conduct, this term being very striking,
provided the sense annexed to it be adapted to his years, and he see
clearly its relation to his present welfare.” Remember that the utility
must always be considered from the child’s point of view, not from
ours. “A child knows he is designed to grow up to manhood; all the
ideas he can form of that state will be to him so many opportunities
of instruction; but as for those which are above his capacity to
comprehend, it is better he should remain in absolute ignorance of
them” (17: i, p. 284).
Rousseau thought that the teaching of history and morality had no place
in the education of early adolescents; their interest is in the objects
of Nature, but not in men and society.
Being thus educated at the end of early adolescence,
“Émile has but little knowledge, but what he has is truly his own....
He possesses a universal capacity, not in point of actual knowledge,
but in the faculties of acquiring it; an open, intelligent genius,
adapted to everything, and, as Montaigne says, if not instructed,
capable of receiving instruction” (17: i, pp. 341-342).
This is, according to Rousseau, by far a better equipment for a boy
than the smattering of multiple knowledge with the sense of saturation.
In point of morality he is still nothing more than an animal following
his natural instincts and impulses, which, not being spoiled by our
artificiality, are healthful, and will build up themselves, as his age
matures, into harmonious sentiments.
Now we come to the period of storm and stress, “the presumptive
period,” the educational significance of which is so great, yet
hitherto has been so little considered.
“As the roaring of the sea precedes the tempest, so the murmuring
of the passions portends this stormy revolution. The foaming
surge foretells the approach of danger. A change of disposition,
frequent starts, and a continual agitation of mind, render the pupil
intractable. He becomes deaf to the voice of his preceptor; like a
lion in his fury, he disdains his guide, and will no longer submit to
be governed.”
“These moral indications of changing dispositions are accompanied by
a visible alteration in the person. His features assume a character;
then the soft down upon his chin begins to gather strength. His voice
is lost between hoarseness and squeaking: for being neither man nor
boy, he has the tone of neither. His eyes, those organs of the mind,
hitherto inexpressive, learn to speak; animated with a lively flame,
their looks, though more expressive, are yet pure and innocent; but
they have lost their primitive dullness and insipidity. He already
feels their power of expression,... He perceives his sensibility
before he knows what he feels; he is restless without knowing the
cause of his disquietude” (17: ii, p. 2).
Here commences the second birth of man. “At this stage man is truly
born to live, and enters into full possession of the power of human
nature” (17: ii, p. 3). This dawning of the sexual life is the birth
of the social self: man’s moral relations now truly begin. Up to this
time self-love was the only real motive of his life, but now love of
another self comes in, and if it is directed well, this will extend to
wider and wider range. The time is reached when one’s study should be
man and human society; when youth should be initiated into the world
of his fellow beings; when moral instruction proper should begin; when
religion can be taught effectively. Rousseau’s insight into the infant
mind was wonderful; still deeper is his understanding of adolescent
psychology. He would be immortal even if he left us nothing but just
this part of his “Émile.” Many pedagogues would allow themselves to be
led by Nature, so long as they are treating with young children, but
as soon as they reach the age of puberty or adolescence they leave her
or else loosen their responsibility to their pupil. Rousseau, on the
contrary, would stick more to the laws of Mother Nature, and take the
more responsibility upon his shoulders. He says: “Our care hitherto
has been little more than children’s play; it now becomes of real
importance. This era, where common education ends, is properly the time
where ours should begin” (17: ii, p. 3). What unites man to man is
firstly his heart’s need of companions. “All his connections with his
species, all the affections of his soul, are born with this sensation.
His first passion soon ferments the other into being” (17: ii, p. 7).
Then, secondly, it is one’s sense of weakness, his insufficiency, our
common misery, that render him social, incline his heart to humanity.
Lastly, emotion and imagination are closely connected, and the rise in
emotional life stimulates the power to realize other’s sufferings and
joys--another connecting link of mankind. Until we come to the age of
adolescence these elements are all lacking in the child. But, now, with
the sudden outburst of emotions, moral education is not only possible,
but most ardently needed.
“To excite and nourish this growing sensibility, to guide or follow
it in its natural propensity, it will be necessary to throw such
objects in the way of our young pupil as will most effectually
dilate his heart, extend it to other beings, and separate him from
himself; to hide carefully from his view those objects which, on the
contrary, tend to contract the heart, and compress the spring of human
selfishness; in other terms, to inspire him with goodness, humanity,
compassion, benevolence, and all the soft attractive passions which
are so pleasing to mankind; and to stifle envy, hatred, and all those
cruel and inhuman appetites, which, if I may be allowed the phrase,
render sensibility not only null, but negative, becoming the torment
of those who possess them” (17: ii, p. 22).
The pomp and luxury of rank, class, and wealth, “the charms of public
entertainments, polite circles, and brilliant assemblies,” tend to sow
the seeds of pride, vanity, and envy, and give a man a superficial
view of life and human felicity. These are not the places for youth.
If we come across the splendor of the rich and fortunate, show him the
other aspect of their existence. Let him learn all the vicissitudes of
fortune. Teach him to separate appearance from reality, the accidental
from the inherent; to put no value on birth, rank, or riches, but
estimate and respect man as man. The contact with the life of the
common people is more educative than the society of the rich and high
classes. For the former presents the truer picture of humanity, with
its toils and sufferings. It, at the same time, cultivates in him the
sense of contentment with his lot and compassion with others. By thus
directing the newly arisen impulse of love into a broader channel, we
may hope to “blunt the dangerous edge of inclination and divert the
attention of nature while we follow her dictates” (17: ii, p. 37).
Sex pedagogy, which has lately come to be one of the burning questions
in education, already received full attention from Rousseau. “A total
ignorance of certain things,” he thinks, “were perhaps the most to be
wished; but children should learn betimes what it is impossible always
to conceal from them.” Avoid any words or conduct before them, which
might become the cause of their curiosity. When their curiosity about
the matter is premature or not genuine, you may impose silence upon
them with safety. It is much better than telling a falsehood. “Your
conduct with regard to your pupil greatly depends on his particular
situation; the people by whom he is surrounded, and many other
circumstances. It is of importance to leave nothing to chance; and if
you are not positively certain that you can keep him ignorant of the
difference of sex till the age of sixteen, be careful to let him know
it before the age of ten” (17: ii, p. 11). But when he reaches the age
of sixteen or so, “make no scruple to instruct him in those dangerous
mysteries, which you so long and so carefully concealed from his sight”
(17: ii, p. 204). Your instruction must “be concise, serious, and
determined, without seeming to hesitate” (17: ii, p. 11). Of course,
strict truth must be told and at the same time the matter impressed
upon him as the most sacred thing.
As for the measures to retard the progress of Nature in him, books,
solitude, idleness, a sedentary and effeminate life, the company of
young people is to be avoided. The city is not a proper abode for many
plain reasons, so the boy should be taken out into the country. “He
must have some new exercise, which shall engage him by its novelty,
keep him fully employed, and administer to his pleasure and diversion”
(17: ii, p. 207).
However, as age advances there will come a time when these negative
means no longer work. Then must positive measures be taken in order to
lead the youth to the proper road of sex relation. “The passions can
never be mastered but by themselves: by their empire you must combat
their tyranny.” So Rousseau would flatter now, instead of suppress,
this noble passion in his pupil, and endeavor to make its fire burn
pure. “By rendering him sensible of the charms which a union of
hearts adds to the allurement of sense, I shall give him a disrelish
to debauchery, and render him wise, by inspiring him with love” (17:
ii, p. 221). Then, after preparing him by the formation, in his mind,
of the picture of an ideal girlhood or womanhood, we lead him to the
society of the other sex, to the life of courtship, which is a great
education in itself.
The interest in the world is now keen; the judgment and discretion
are fairly matured. The youth can go into it with much benefit and
little danger, if his previous training has been successful. The study
of history and biography will now give him also a knowledge of human
nature.
Rousseau’s pupil Émile finds his angel in Sophia, who is by no means
“such a model of perfection as nowhere exists,” but an innocent healthy
country girl, “with such defects as shall hit his taste, shall please
him, and help to correct his own” (17: ii, p. 225). While courting
Sophia, Émile learns a trade, mingles with the common people, and
extends his service to those who need it. By this means not only
his feelings, which are now intensified and deepened, expand to all
humanity, but he also learns the psychology of unsophisticated souls,
the sociology of real life, the vital problems of civics and economics.
He conceives such social service as a great educational means for later
adolescence. And striking it is that Rousseau so perfectly anticipated
the essential principles of social-settlement work in the following
passages:
“The practice of the social virtues roots the love of humanity in the
bottom of our hearts. By doing good actions we become good ourselves;
I know of no method more certain. Employ your pupil in every good
action within his power; teach him to consider the interest of the
indigent as his own; let him not only assist them with his purse, but
with his care; he must protect them and dedicate his person and time
to their service” (17: ii, pp. 70-71).
“His active beneficence produces a knowledge which, with a more
obdurate heart, he would have acquired much later, or perhaps not at
all. If discord reigns among his companions, he endeavors to reconcile
them; if he sees his fellow-creatures in affliction, he inquires into
the cause; if the wretched groan under the oppression of the great and
powerful, he will not rest till he has detected the iniquity of the
oppressor” (17: ii, p. 73).
“Thus interested in the welfare of his fellow-creatures, he will soon
learn to estimate their actions, their tastes, their pleasures, and
in general to fix a truer value on what will promote or destroy human
felicity than those who know no interest separate from their own, and
who act only for themselves” (17: ii, p. 75).
Comenius already stood for education according to Nature; in Locke
the conception developed and became more psychological. But with the
former, the child was subjected to the Bible; with the latter, to
the present society; it was in the “Naturevangelium der Erziehung”
of Rousseau that the nature of the child was entirely liberated from
every bondage, and made the sole guidance for education. His pedagogy
rested on his observational psychology, and his psychology had a basis
in biology. The body was not for him as it was for his predecessors, a
mere “clay cottage” for the mind. But the soul and life were one. Man
as a unified psychological organism was the conception on which his
pedagogy rested.
Some one has said that Romanticism is the vacation of philosophy. We
may also say that it is a rejuvenation, a revitalization of philosophy.
No matter what our opinions are, it would do us all great good to take
a vacation, if you please, and take fresh air, in this great gospel of
educational Romanticism, especially when we reflect that our education
has been so long under control of the pedagogic theories made by
scholars whose interest and viewpoint always smell of the air of their
study rooms. Man does not live by brain alone; he lives more by action
and by heart. This discovery we owe to the great book of prophecies
left by the greatest vagabond the world of letters has ever crowned
with honor, Jean Jacques Rousseau.
REFERENCES
1. +Browning, Oscar.+ An Introduction to the History of
Educational Theories. Kellogg, New York, 1880. 237 pages.
2. +Compayré, Jules Gabriel.+ History of Pedagogy. Translated,
with an introduction, notes, and an index, by W. H. Payne. Heath &
Co., Boston, 1899. 598 pages.
3. +Davidson, Thomas.+ Rousseau and Education According to
Nature. Scribner, New York, 1898. 253 pages.
4. +Giraldin, Saint-Marc.+ J. J. Rousseau, sa vie et ses
ouvrages. 2 vols. Charpentier, Paris, 1875.
5. +Heman, Friedrich.+ Geschichte der neueren Pädagogik.
Zickfeldt, Osterwieck, 1904. 436 pages.
6. +Lemaitre, Jules.+ J. J. Rousseau. Calmann-Levy, Paris,
1807. 360 pages.
7. +Monroe, Paul.+ A Text-book in the History of Education.
Macmillan Co., London and New York, 1905. 772 pages.
8. +Morley, John.+ Rousseau. 2 vols. Chapman, London, 1873.
9. +Munroe, James Phinney.+ The Educational Ideal: an Outline
of its Growth in Modern Times. Heath & Co., Boston, 1896. 262 pages.
10. +Quick, Robert Hebert.+ Essays on Educational Reformers.
Appleton, New York, 1890. 560 pages. The same (International Education
Series), 1903. 568 pages.
11. +Raumer, Karl von.+ Geschichte der Pädagogik vom
Wiederaufblühen klassischer Studien bis auf unsere Zeit. 5 vols.
Bertelsmann, Gütersloh, 1882-1897. Vols. III and IV. Parts I and II.
12. +Rein, Georg Wilhelm+, editor. Encyklopädisches Handbuch
der Pädagogik. 8 vols. Beyer, Langensalza, 1895-1906. Vol. VI.
13. +Rousseau, Jean Jacques.+ Œuvres complètes. 13 vols.
Hachette, Paris, 1886-1903.
14.----Émile, ou de l’éducation. Nouvelle edition. Garnier, Paris,
1904. 638 pages.
15.----Émile; or Concerning Education. Extracts concerning the
Principal Elements of Pedagogy found in the First Three Books.
With Introduction and Notes by Jules Steeg. Translated by Eleanor
Worthington. Heath & Co., Boston, 1888. 157 pages.
16.----Émile; or Treatise on Education. Abridged, translated, and
annotated by W. H. Payne. Appleton, New York, 1893. 363 pages.
(International Education Series.)
17.----Emilius. 3 vols. A. Donaldson, Edinburgh, 1768.
18.----Emilius. Translated by Eloisa. 4 vols. Second edition. Becke &
de Hondt, London, 1763.
19. +Schaumann, Gustav.+ Religion und religiöse Erziehung bei
Rousseau. Siegismund, Leipzig, 18--. 80 pages (Päd. Sammelmappe, 181
Heft.)
20. +Scherer, Heinrich.+ Die Pädagogik in ihrer Entwicklung
im Zusammenhange mit dem Kultur- und Geistesleben und ihrem Einfluss
auf die Gestaltung des Erziehungs- und Bildungswesens. Vol. I. Die
Pädagogik vor Pestalozzi. Brandstetter, Leipzig, 1897. 581 pages.
21. +Schmid, Karl Adolf+, editor. Geschichte der Erziehung vom
Anfang an bis auf unsere Zeit. 5 vols. Cotta, Stuttgart, 1884-1902.
Vol. IV, Parts I and II.
22. +Schneider, Karl.+ Rousseau und Pestalozzi, der Idealismus
auf deutschen und auf französischen Boden. Fifth edition. Gärtner,
Berlin, 1895. 63 pages.
23. +Spielmann, C. Christian.+ Die Meister der Pädagogik nach
ihren Leben, ihren Werken und ihrer Bedeutung. Heufer, Neuwied,
1904-1905, 365 pages. Part IV.
24. +Spitzner, R. A.+ Natur und Naturmässigkeit bei J. J.
Rousseau. Frommann, Jena, 1891. 103 pages.
25. +Ziegler, Theobald.+ Geschichte der Pädagogik mit
besonderer Rücksicht auf das höhere Unterrichtswesen. Beck; München,
1895. 361 pages.
CHAPTER V.
BASEDOW AND KANT
_Johann Bernard Basedow_
(1723-1790)
The revolutionary ideas contained in Rousseau’s works shook the whole
social structure of France so violently that his educational theories
were unable to make any systematic and lasting impression. It was the
neighboring Germans who received them as the fire for their rising
aspiration and the antidote for the existing evils in the field of
education. At the head of this new educational movement in Germany
under the Rousseauean influence stands Johann Bernard Basedow.
There is almost nothing in Basedow’s fundamental ideas of education
which was not said by his three great predecessors and La Chalotais.
But while these men were too much ahead of their time, Basedow, with
his shrewd perception, saw the practical needs and tendencies of the
age, to which he knew how to accommodate himself. Moreover, he, with
his strong, though unstable, energy of will and indefatigable fighting
spirit, could accomplish what scholarly Comenius, modest Locke, or
the visionary Rousseau could not. He blazed the way for the march of
realistic and naturalistic pedagogy against the tenacious resistance
of traditional forces, and “succeeded in effecting a complete change
in the whole nature of education and instruction in Germany” (8: p.
580). The establishment of the _Philanthropium_ in 1774, which
was continued by Wolke, Salis, Bahrdt, Trapp, Campe, Rochow, Salzmann,
and others, heralds the dawn of new education in Teutonic countries.
If Basedow was not great as an educator or an original thinker, he
was, in the best sense, one of the greatest educational politicians or
agitators we have had in the history of the world.
In the “Philalethie,” one of his earlier works, he already raises
the voice of protest against the ineffective, futile, and one-sided
education of his day. “Are not there too many doctors?” he writes.
“How many of the professors, doctors, or masters will make themselves
more useful by working with their hands, by becoming turners, etc.? It
is certain that parents push their children too much to the scholarly
studies, when the children would do much better to learn commerce,
surgery, book trade, fine arts, and especially agriculture.” Again he
sneers in the vein of Montaigne at “the learned men who are praised for
the dissertations on Virgil and Homer, Corneille and Racine, etc., but
who neglect to be good husbands, to be good friends, and to perform
well their duties,” and accuses the mistaken purpose and method of
learning which “prevents one from living with the people” (9: pp.
190-191).
He proclaims that the “chief purpose of education should be to prepare
the child for a useful, public-spirited and happy life” (5: p. 42).
To secure one’s own happy existence and to promote the general good
of mankind is the end of individual life. By the happiness of an
individual he understands a self-contented, cheerful existence, with
a “sound mind in a sound body.” Not mere knowledge or accomplishment,
but efficiency and virtue, power and character, are the essential
things in a man. So, instruction, though important, occupies only a
secondary place; the training, the formation of manhood, by inculcating
good habits and dispositions, by guarding against the establishing of
bad ones, is the first and chief task of education. In this respects
Basedow is entirely Lockean. Requirement of absolute obedience for
younger children, appeals to the sense of honor as the chief educative
motive, are also common in both.
In the initiation of children to language study through play and
playthings, in the abundant use of pictures, models, globes, etc., as
the handmaid of verbal teaching, in the introduction of more realistic
studies and manual activities, in the encouragement of physical
culture, he again follows Locke’s suggestions, but carried them into
details and elaborations in the practice in his institution. The
emphasis laid on the physical culture in the _Philanthropium_
especially became an incentive and model to others; Jahn, the father of
German gymnastics, is numbered among those who have been inspired by
Basedow.
In writing a text-book for children, comprising elementary knowledge of
everything that ought to be known, Basedow took as his model Comenius’s
“Orbis Pictus.” His didactics of language owes much to Comenius as
well as to Locke. And in “The Book of Methods for Fathers and Mothers
of Families and for the People” he foreshadows Pestalozzi. He believed
with Comenius that the remedy for a large part of educational evils
lies in “good teachers and good books.” So, besides the text-books,
there should be an abundance of supplementary reading for the children
and reference books for the teacher; school libraries should be
established for the use of both. Institutions should be established
for the professional training of teachers, with the model schools
attached. In fact, the _Philanthropium_ made the beginning of the
normal school in its modern sense, and the flourishing age of juvenile
literature came as the result of Basedow’s teachings.
The natural development of the child into an ideal citizen, through
a free life of frolic and unrestrained pleasurable learning and
occupations, was the central idea of Basedowean education. Rousseau’s
motto, “The child for the child,” was not well understood by him
or did not appeal to him. The chief inspiration he drew from the
French Romanticist was the principle, “the child as the child.” And
the child, in his understanding, was essentially a gayety-seeking,
pleasure-seeking, noisy, restless creature. “Children are fond of
movement and noise” (7: p. 23). This was the major premise of his
didactic. But utility was another central principle which he shared
with all French and English empiricists. And his conception of utility
was more like Locke’s than Rousseau’s, namely, that viewed from the
standpoint of society and the adult life. The child ought to learn
everything useful for becoming an efficient, patriotic member of
society--those things alone which are useful. This is the minor premise
of his didactic. Now, what conclusions can he draw from these two
premises? How a child could be built up to the requirements of adult
life without acting against his child nature, how he could be taught
everything necessary to make a useful citizen without restraining
his playful instincts, this was the problem he tried to solve in his
philanthropic institute. The invention of many devices and schemes--all
manner of educational machinery was the result. And though he often
carried things too far and left several trivial contrivances which
have made him a laughing-stock of contemporary and subsequent critics,
yet his historic merit as an ingenious inventor of many useful and
commendable methods, systems, and plans is certainly undeniable.
Moreover, by this ingenuity he exemplified how Lockean and Rousseauean
ideals could be made practicable, and how they could be introduced
systematically into group education. With all his shortcomings he
is entitled to be numbered among the most influential educational
reformers and the great promoters of human weal.
_Immanuel Kant_
(1724-1804)
If Basedow was the first great apostle of “the nature evangelism
of education” in the practical world, Rousseau finds in Kant “his
most illustrious disciple” among scholars. Kant was not only greatly
influenced by Rousseau in his educational ideas, but even in his
conceptions of morality, religion, and anthropology. Kant also put
himself among the conspicuous thinkers of the age, like Goethe,
Mendelssohn, Lavater, as an ardent admirer and indorser of Basedow’s
_Philanthropium_, which he deemed an excellent experiment, opening
a new way to the progress of educational art. But as Basedow had
already modified Rousseau’s naturalistic pedagogy, so our Scotch-German
philosopher, whose life was perfectly regulated by reason, also
departed widely from the French Romanticist. Nay, the two are opposite
in many respects. The rationalistic element is so prominently developed
in Kant’s pedagogy that the Rousseauean characteristics are almost
effaced. Kant learned much from Rousseau, but he was not, after all,
his disciple in its true sense.
The founder of that gigantic system, which is said to have determined
the general course of philosophic thought of the nineteenth century,
has not left us any systematic theory of education. We have only a
glimpse of his educational views in his “Lecture Notes on Pedagogy,”
which were collected and arranged by one of his students, Theodor Rink.
The grand conception of humanity, the large view of education was
worthy of this father of German idealistic philosophy, but he does not
always soar in the world of these great ideas; he condescends to come
down to the world of actuality and discuss the details of educational
practice in a Lockean manner. His lectures exhibit a mixture of the two
tendencies: English Empiricism on the one hand and German Idealism on
the other, and these tendencies, we find, also characterize his whole
system of philosophy. Exaltation of reason, of inner freedom, and of
moral dignity run through whole pages of his lecture notes, as in all
his critical writings.
Education, Kant conceives as the humanization of mankind, through the
coeffort of all members of society. “Man is the only creature that must
be educated” (1: p. 101), because there is in him immense possibility
which is not yet developed, and a grand destiny for him, which is not
yet attained. Of the universal good and the perfection of humanity,
which is to be the destiny of man, we have not yet reached a full
and clear conception. Hence, education is the greatest and yet the
hardest problem to which man can devote himself. “No individual man,
no matter what degree of culture may be reached by his pupils, can
insure their attaining their destiny. To succeed in this, not the work
of a few individuals only is necessary, but that of the whole human
race” (2: p. 10); because man lives in society, and on society, too;
and any individual would never be able to realize a perfect manhood
unless society or the race became perfect. Education must be, thus,
the cosmopolitan process, in order to fulfill its aim. Then consider
education as an art. “What a vast culture and experience does not
this conception presuppose!” It can only become perfect through the
practice of many generations, and advance by slow degrees, for “insight
depends on education, and education in its turn depends on insight”
(2: pp. 11-12). “Our only hope is that each generation, provided with
the knowledge of the foregoing one, is able, more and more, to bring
about an education which shall develop man’s natural gifts in their due
proportion and relation to their end, and thus advance the whole human
race toward its destiny” (2: pp. 10-11).
With this grand aim and task in view, education should not be left to
the home nor to rulers. For “parents usually educate their children
merely in such a manner that, however bad the world may be, they may
adapt themselves to its present conditions,” or “_make their way_
in the world,” and “sovereigns look upon their subjects merely as
tools for their purposes,” neither have they the universal good so
much in view as the well-being of the state; while the child should
be educated not according to the present, but for the better future
state of the human race--i. e., the ideal of humanity and its destiny
(2: pp. 14-15). The rulers may help or lighten the task of education
with influence or money; but the practice of education ought to depend
entirely upon the judgment of the most enlightened experts, who best
represent the highest attainment of the age.
Education consists in care, discipline, and culture, including
instruction. The necessity of care arises from the insufficiency
of man’s instincts for his self-preservation; the necessity of the
discipline and instruction arises from man’s capability to rise above
his instincts. The chief function of care is the prevention of the
harmful uses by children of their natural powers; its nature should be
largely negative on the part of educators. “We have not to add anything
to the provision of Nature, but merely to see that such provision is
duly carried out. If any addition to this is necessary on our part, it
must be the process of hardening the child” (2: p. 39). All artificial
contrivances are more harmful than beneficial for his healthy growth.
Therefore keep his freedom and only prevent his forming effeminate
habits.
By discipline “we must understand that influence which is always
restraining our animal nature from getting the better of our manhood,
either in the individual as such, or in man as a member of society.
Discipline, then, is merely restraining unruliness” (2: p. 18). Reason,
not instinct, determines good conduct. But, since man comes into the
world with undeveloped reason “in the first period of childhood, the
child must learn submissive and positive obedience” (2: p. 26).
“The love of freedom is naturally so strong in man that when once he
has grown accustomed to freedom, he will sacrifice everything for
its sake. For this very reason discipline must be brought into play
very early; for when this has not been done it is difficult to alter
character later in life” (2: p. 4). Neglect of culture can be remedied
later in life, but neglect or mistake in discipline never.
Kant’s view on care and discipline, in its general character and
details, very much reminds us of that of Locke. Kant is peculiarly
empirical here in his procedure, and his protest against playing with
and flattering the child, against indiscriminate punishment, his plea
for the freedom of children’s bodily activities, for early inculcation
of self-restraint and obedience, for gaining the child’s confidence and
respect, his opinion in regard to manners, and children’s crying, his
advocation of the hardening process, all seem to be the repetitions of
Locke in a modified language. In regard to habit formation, the two
writers seem to differ from each other, for Kant repeatedly opposes
the formation or fostering of any habits in children. He says: “The
more habits a man allows himself to form, the less free and independent
he becomes; ... for whatever he has been accustomed to early in life
always retains a certain attraction for him in after-life” (2: p.
45). But if we read his lines a little more carefully we find this
opposition more apparent than real. One emphasizes the establishing
of good habits while the other lays stress on the prevention of the
formation of harmful habits. Whether Kant ever read Locke’s “Thoughts
on Education,” and was thus influenced by him or not, I am unable to
ascertain. This great similarity may come from their common experience
in tutorship. Or we might attribute it largely to the influence he
received from Rousseau and Basedow, and not directly to that of Locke.
Care and discipline were in Kant’s view essentially negative functions.
The positive side of education he calls culture. It includes the
physical, mental, and moral training. It is the building up or the
unfolding of naturally endowed faculties of man by their exercise.
Instruction is sometimes necessary, but it is only as an aid to the
self-activity of the child. Children should be provided with ample
opportunities for such exercise.
What should be observed in physical culture relates either to the
exercise of voluntary movements or of the organs of sense. As to
the motor training, the first condition is that “the child should
always help himself” (2: p. 60). Strength and skill, quickness and
self-reliance are thus developed. He recognizes a coördinate relation
between the sense and muscle. Touching upon the psychology and
pedagogy of various outdoor games common among children, he recommends
those games as the best which “unite the development of skill with
the exercise of the senses.” Moreover, these games entered upon by
the children serve them as an unconscious training for self-denial,
hardship, privations, and the habit of constant occupation, and,
besides, have a beneficial bearing on their social life. “A lively boy
will sooner become a good man than a conceited and priggish lad” (2:
p. 64). He also drops a line on the task of gymnastics, saying that
since they are merely intended to direct Nature, we must not aim at
artificial grace nor the perfection of performance. Thus, Kant not only
shows his broad pedagogical view in advocating children’s games for the
culture of the senses and muscles, but anticipates one of the great
discoveries of modern psychology--the mentality of the muscles.
In mental culture we can distinguish two kinds: one “free,” the other
“scholastic.” By free culture children’s natural learning by their
spontaneous activities is meant; it is, so to speak, a play, a pastime,
or an occupation in leisure. It goes on all the time, without our
interference; our function is simply to observe and guide it properly.
Scholastic culture, on the other hand, constitutes work, business,
or an occupation by compulsion. “In _work_, the occupation is
not pleasant in itself, but it is undertaken for the sake of the end
in view.... It is of great importance that children should learn
to work. Man is the only animal who is obliged to work. He must go
through a long apprenticeship before he can enjoy anything for his own
sustenance” (2: pp. 68-69). And it is in man’s nature that he wants
occupation, even though it involves a certain amount of restraint.
Therefore, Kant disagrees with Basedow’s view “that children should be
allowed to learn everything, as it were, in play.” Play and work should
go together, and the school is intended for the cultivation of the
work interest and work-habit.
The principal rule of mental culture is that “no mental faculty is to
be cultivated by itself, but always in relation to others,” inferior
faculties only with a view to the superior (2: p. 70-71). The superior
mental faculties are, according to Kant, understanding, judgment, and
reason. By understanding, he means the knowledge of the general; by
judgment, the application of the general to the particular; by reason,
the power of understanding the connection between the general and the
particular. Memory and imagination as lower faculties should only serve
these higher ones. Culture includes instruction and teaching, but its
chief aim should be not to impart knowledge, but to train general and
particular faculties. The various subjects of the curriculum are to be
simply means for mental gymnastics, but not the ends in themselves. “It
is culture which brings out ability. Ability is the possession of a
faculty which is capable of being adapted to various ends” (2: p. 19).
To mental culture the inculcation of prudence and civility should be
added, for by this man is made fit to live in harmony with society
at large. But “the moralization of humanity” is the highest aim of
education. According to Kant, “We live in the epoch of disciplining,
culturing, and civilizing, but we are still a long way off from the
epoch of moralizing” (1: p. 124). Discipline is negative; it is the
prevention of evil tendencies and of defective growth. Moral culture
is positive; it is the inculcation of principles, the shaping of the
manner of thinking. It is not mere formation of good manners or habits,
but the establishment of character.
Character consists in firmness of purpose and the power to realize it,
persistency in the choice of one aim or object, and the renunciation
of hindering desires and inclinations. Character is the result of such
consistency in the exercise of inner freedom of will. Sudden conversion
cannot transform a man’s personality from a vicious to a virtuous
one, nor can any artificial, external means, such as mortifications,
fastings, pilgrimages, and the like. A man who acts without settled
principles, with no uniformity, has no character. A man may have a good
heart and no character, because he is dependent upon impulses, and
does not act according to maxims. Firmness and unity of principles are
essential to character. So, he says: “First form character, then a good
character.”
A good character consists in the readiness to act according to moral
principles, which the inner reason gives us as necessary and universal
laws. The youth, therefore, must be taught to honor reason, and be
allowed to exercise his inner freedom of personality. But in the case
of younger children things are different. Reason is not yet developed
in them, so they must first begin by following the external reason
exercised for them--namely, they must be accustomed to give prompt
obedience to the objective laws assigned by parents or schools. And
although willing obedience is desirable and important, even “absolute”
obedience is necessary to prepare the child “for the fulfilment of
laws that he will have to obey later, as a citizen, even though he may
not like them” (2: p. 86). Of course, it goes without saying, that
these laws assigned by teachers or parents should always represent the
universal laws, not their caprice or arbitrary will. Kant is not so
rigorous in regard to the moral education of children as he is in his
moral metaphysics. He admits a place for “inclination,” and permits use
to be made of children’s instinct of fear. Yet he still makes a plea
for the inculcation of the sense of duty, saying: “Even though a child
should not be able to see the reason of a duty, it is nevertheless
better that certain things should be prescribed to him in this way;
for, after all, a child will always be able to see that he has certain
duties as a child, while it will be more difficult for him to see that
he has certain duties as a human being” (2: p. 87). The duties they
have to perform must be placed, as far as possible, by examples and
rules.
According to Kant, the child’s duty toward himself consists in “being
conscious that man possesses a certain dignity, which ennobles him
above all other creatures,” and in “so acting as not to violate in his
own person this dignity of mankind” (2: p. 101). Uncleanness, lying,
and the like should be most effectively taught as unbecoming to mankind
and degrading to oneself, and at the critical period of adolescence,
the idea of dignity of man can alone suffice to keep young men in
bound. The child’s duty toward others consists in the recognition
of the dignity of mankind in the personality of others--namely, in
justice. “A child should learn early to reverence and respect the
rights of others, and we must be careful to see that his reverence is
realized in his actions” (2: p. 102). Generosity is a virtue beyond
the child’s comprehension and power. As to benevolence, it is well to
arouse the sympathies of children, “not so much to feel for the sorrows
of others as to a sense of their duty to help them” (2: p. 104).
Children ought to be prevented from contracting a habit of sentimental,
maudlin, sympathy, which is really nothing else than the delicacy
of sensitiveness, and is “an evil, consisting as it does merely in
lamenting over a thing” (2: p. 97).
We must avoid exciting emulation, envy, or pride in a child by
comparing his work with that of others. He ought only to compare
himself with the conceptions of reason, or with the standard of moral
perfection. Yet, on the other hand, frankness and unassuming confidence
is a desirable virtue to be cultivated, which will “enable him to
exhibit his talent in a becoming manner.”
Kant recommends as a means of cultivating children’s moral ideas the
use of a catechism, which “should contain, in popular form, every day
questions of right and wrong.” For youth, the Socratic method is
recommended as cultivating best the moral as well as logical reason.
Early adolescence receives special consideration from him. He saw, with
Rousseau, a peculiar educational need of the period.
“Nature has spread a certain veil of secrecy over this subject, as if
it were something unseemly for man, and merely an animal need in man.
She has, however, sought to unite it, as far as possible, with every
kind of morality” (2: p. 115).
Sex-consciousness is the natural result of physiological growth. “Thus
it is impossible to keep the youth in ignorance and the innocence which
belongs to ignorance. By silence, the evil is but increased. We must
speak openly, clearly, and definitely with the youth. We must allow
that it is a delicate point, for we cannot look upon it as a subject
for open conversation; but if we enter with sympathy into his impulses
all will go well” (2: p. 116). We must guard the youth from the
unnatural vices common among them and also from too early marriage. We
must cultivate in them a proper respect for the other sex, and the true
conception of a happy marriage.
At this time the youth begins to be conscious of the distinction of
rank and the inequality of men. “As a child he must not be allowed
to notice this.” As a youth, “the consciousness of the equality of
men together with their civil inequality may be taught him little by
little” (2: p. 119). Interest in others and in the progress of the
world should now be encouraged. Kant’s cosmopolitanism here flashes
forth:
“Children should be made acquainted with this interest, so that it
may give warmth to their hearts. They should learn to rejoice at the
world’s progress, although it may not be to their own advantage or to
that of their country” (2: p. 121).
Morality and religion were for Kant one and inseparable at bottom.
Religion is nothing else than “the consciousness of all our duties
as divine commands.” Or it is “the law in us in so far as it derives
emphasis from a Lawgiver and Judge above us” (2: p. 111). Morality is
the realization of duties from the consciousness of the inner law.
The relation of our actions to this inner law we call conscience. “The
reproaches of conscience will be without effect if it be not considered
as the representative of God, who has His lofty seat above us, but who
has also established a tribunal in us” (1: p. 215). On the other hand,
if religion is not joined with a moral conscientiousness, it is of no
effect. The rationalism of the eighteenth century did not recognize,
or rather did not justify, the æsthetic side of religion. So Kant
thought all religious acts without morality “a superstitious worship.”
Religious education is nothing more or less than the inculcation of
the consciousness of the inner law and the Lawgiver. As to the common
usages of worship, the more ignorant the child is the better. “This
much is certain,” he says, “that, could it be brought about that
children should never witness a single act of veneration to God, never
even hear the name of God spoken, it might then be the right order of
things to teach them first about ends and aims, and of what concerns
mankind; to sharpen their judgment; to instruct them in the _order
and beauty of the works of Nature_; then to add a wider knowledge of
the structure of the universe; and then only might be revealed to them
for the first time the idea of a Supreme Being--a Lawgiver” (2: pp.
109-110). But the actual condition of society necessitates our taking a
short-cut and giving early instruction to the child in the right ideas
of religion.
This is done, Kant believes, by pointing to God through moral
consciousness within the child and through the teleology in Nature
without. Lead him to the understanding “that there is a law of duty
which is not the same as ease, utility, or other consideration of the
kind, but something universal, which is not governed by the caprice of
men” (2: pp. 110-111), and he will come to be conscious of the presence
of something in us, which is above us, above human creation. Show him
“how everything is disposed for the preservation of the species and
their equilibrium, but at the same time with consideration in the long
run for man, that he may attain happiness” (2: p. 111), and he will see
the existence of the universal law, which governs the world, yet is
intimately related to himself. Kant thought these two as the only ways
to reach the idea of God. One is the evidence of Practical Reason, the
other the proof of the heart (_Herzensbeweis_). But here again in
religious education he shows his indulgence to children, for he says:
“The idea of God might first be taught by analogy with that of a
father under whose care we are placed, and in this way we may with
advantage point out to the child the unity of men as represented by
one family” (2: p. 111).
And the Christian pulpit has followed his advice. We can summarize his
ideals of moral and religious education in his own words as follows:
“Everything in education depends upon establishing correct principles,
and leading children to understand and accept them. They must learn
to substitute the abhorrence of what is revolting and absurd, for
hatred; the fear of their conscience, for the fear of man and divine
punishment; self-respect and inward dignity, for the opinions of
men; the inner value of actions, for words and mere impulses;
understanding, for feeling; and joyousness and piety with good humour,
for a morose, timid, and gloomy devotion” (2: pp. 108-109).
Ziegler, in his “History of Pedagogy,” epitomizes Kant’s most important
influence on the general trend of thought as the remodeling of our
concept of the universe, the introduction of exact and critical
thinking, the exaltation of mathematical instruction, the substitution
of morality of conscience for the morality of eudemonism or prudence,
the last-mentioned being probably the greatest and most lasting one.
Ziegler tells us further that “the categorical imperative” has since
become “the steel and iron in our blood” (18: p. 282), and that the
German victory in the war for independence owes its debt above all
others to Kant and Fichte. As to his position in the history of
pedagogy itself, we may say, with Dr. Ernst Temming, that “the German
Rationalistic Pedagogy (_Aufklärungspädagogik_) found in Kant
both its founder and undaunted representative” (17: p. 4). Like Locke
in England and Rousseau in France, he, with Basedow in Germany, can be
said to have firmly established education on the human basis, making
moral culture independent of positive Christianity, and religion
subordinate to education. Moreover, by proclaiming from the honored
chair of Königsberg University his grand concept of the education
of humanity, he gave to the contemporary and subsequent generations
of scholars a stimulus to take up pedagogy as a work worthy of
philosophers.
REFERENCES
1. +Buchner, Edward Franklin.+ The Educational Theory of
Immanuel Kant. (Translation of “Ueber Pädagogik” and fragmental
remarks on education by Kant.) Lippincott, Philadelphia and London,
1904. 309 pages.
2. +Churton, Annette.+ Kant on Education. (Translation of
“Ueber Pädagogik.”) Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., London, 1899.
121 pages.
3. +Duproix, Paul.+ Kant et Fichte et le problème de
l’éducation. Second edition. Alcan, Paris, 1897. 260 pages.
4. +Garbovicianu, Petru.+ Die Didaktik Basedow’s im Vergleiche
zur Didaktik des Comenius. Bucarest, Leipzig, 1887. 82 pages.
5. +Göring, Hugo.+ Ausgewählte Schriften, mit Basedow’s
Biographie. Beyer, Langensalza, 1880. 519 pages.
6. +Heman, Friedrich.+ Geschichte der neueren Pädagogik.
Zickfeldt, Osterwieck, 1904. 436 pages.
7. +Lang, Ossian H.+ Basedow: His Educational Work and
Principles. Kellogg, New York, 1891. 29 pages.
8. +Monroe, Paul.+ A Text-book in the History of Education.
Macmillan & Co., New York and London, 1905. 772 pages.
9. +Pinloche, Joachim Auguste.+ La Réforme de l’éducation en
Allemagne au Dixhuitième Siècle, Basedow et le Philanthropinisme.
Colin, Paris, 1889. 397 pages.
10. +Quick, Robert Hebert.+ Essays on Educational Reformers.
Appleton, New York, 1890. 560 pages. The same (International Education
Series), 1903. 568 pages.
11. +Raumer, Karl von.+ Geschichte der Pädagogik vom
Wiederaufblühen klassischer Studien bis auf unsere Zeit. 5 vols.
Bertelsmann, Gütersloh, 1882-1897.
12. +Rein, Georg Wilhelm+, editor. Encyklopädisches Handbuch
der Pädagogik. 8 vols. Beyer, Langensalza, 1895-1906. Vol. VI.
13. +Scherer, Heinrich.+ Die Pädagogik in ihrer Entwicklung
im Zusammenhange mit dem Kultur- und Geistesleben und ihrem Einfluss
auf die Gestaltung des Erziehungs- und Bildungswesens. Vol. I. Die
Pädagogik vor Pestalozzi. Brandstetter, Leipzig, 1897. 581 pages.
14. +Schmid, Karl Adolf+, editor. Geschichte der Erziehung vom
Anfang an bis auf unsere Zeit. 5 vols. Cotta, Stuttgart, 1884-1902.
Vols. IV and V.
15. +Spielmann, C. Christian.+ Die Meister der Pädagogik nach
ihren Leben, ihren Werken und ihrer Bedeutung. Heufer, Neuwied,
1904-1905. 365 pages. Part X.
16. +Strümpell, Ludwig H.+ Die Pädagogik Kant’s und Fichte’s.
Pädagogischen Abhandlungen. Part II. Diechert, Leipzig, 1894.
17. +Temming, Ernst.+ Beitrag zur Darstellung und Kritik der
moralischen Bildungslehre Kant’s. Vieweg, Braunschweig, 1892. 55 pages.
18. +Ziegler, Theobald.+ Geschichte der Pädagogik mit
besonderer Rücksicht auf das höhere Unterrichtswesen. Beck, München,
1895. 361 pages.
CHAPTER VI.
HEINRICH PESTALOZZI
(1746-1826)
It was on January 14, 1789, in the desolate town of Stanz, “alone,
destitute of all tools of teaching, alone!--superintendent, bursar,
steward, and even maidservant, in a half-ruined house--surrounded by
ignorance, disease, and unwonted things of all kinds,” that a fantastic
Swiss began his career of “schoolmaster.” He had in his charge a group
of orphan children, which “increased by degrees to eighty; all of
different ages, some of good origin, others from the ranks of beggary,
and all, with a few exceptions, wholly ignorant” (13: p. 186). As
his faithful disciple Krüsi tells us, “in the matter of ordinary
acquirements and methods of teaching he was inferior to any good
village dominie” (13: p. 188, footnote). Without steadiness, without
patience, without order, without art of speech, without clearness
of thought, all that he possessed was the burning, self-forgetting
enthusiasm of a loving heart, “_die Vaterkraft meines Herzens_.”
“What a task,” he says, “imagine it; to elevate these children. What a
task!” But he “attempted it, and stood in their midst, uttered various
sounds and made them imitate them.” Lo! what was the response that came
to this seemingly nonsensical teaching? “Whoever saw it was struck
with the effect,” he writes later. “Truly it was a meteor that flashes
through the air and vanishes. No one understood its nature. I did not
understand it myself. It was the result of a simple psychological idea
which had been revealed to inward consciousness, but which I myself
was far from clearly understanding” (13: p. 186). Is not this the
beginning whereby “the laughing-stock of the passer-by,” “a straw not
fit to sustain a cat,” became the corner-stone of modern elementary
education? If one looks for an example in which the singleness of a
noble purpose and the purity of a loving zeal alone could accomplish
a great thing in the world, he will probably find no better one than
that of Pestalozzi. Indeed, there is no more interesting and inspiring,
though pathetic life, than that of this “greatest pedagogical genius
who has ever lived,” as Ziegler calls him. It is a living drama, in
which a new spirit of the age, or rather a new prophecy, struggles to
realize itself, through the fetters of misunderstanding, the opposition
of tradition, and the blows of adverse fate.
Pestalozzi was, before all, a social reformer. His pedagogy was a part
of his social philosophy, or rather the last fruit of his fervent
efforts for the betterment of his people and country. Having been
brought up in poverty and among the poor, he was well acquainted with
the actual life of the country people. The inborn tenderness of his
heart, ennobled by the influence of both his devout mother and uncle,
deepened by the constant appeal of the helplessness about him, could
not but be touched by the sight of the mass of humanity which was
without right, without comfort and even without necessities of life.
“Dear people, I will help you up!” was the utterance that came already
from the lips of his boyhood. And he confesses in his later age: “Ever
since my youthful days, the course of my feelings, rolled on like a
mighty stream, was directed to this one point; namely, to stop the
sources of that misery in which I saw the people around me immersed”
(1: p. 671).
First, his childhood fancy was attracted by the good example of his
uncle, and he wanted to follow his footsteps as a village pastor.
While a student of theology at Zürich, he came under the influence
of Rousseau, and was animated by an intense reformatory spirit. His
immediate plan was to become a defender of the people’s rights as a
lawyer. Then, finding his unfitness for the profession, he turned to
agriculture, through which he intended to realize his philanthropic
educational dream, according to Rousseauean principles. An orphanage
which he established on his farm having a mill connected with it, Paul
Monroe thinks, was probably the first “industrial school for poor
children.” After having met with a succession of failures, ending in
utter financial ruin, he turned “schoolmaster,” first at Stanz, then
at Burgdorf, lastly at Yverdun. He organized an institute for female
teachers. He became the trainer of educators who came from different
parts of Europe and America to learn his spirit and method. Yverdun
became the Mecca of pedagogues. Meanwhile he wrote extensively, not
only on education, but on politics, finance, jurisprudence, prison
systems and punishment, military affairs, industrial questions, and
social problems, such as infanticide, home, and the church. But through
all changes in his plans, circumstances, and activities, his central
purpose remained the same--namely, the elevation of humanity working
from within and from below. The poor, the destitute, the weak were
always the dearest objects to his heart.
His pedagogy was by no means a studied one, like that of Comenius or
Herbart. He is said to be the most unlettered of the great educational
writers. But the true spirit and genius of the educator, which is more
precious than everything else, was his possession. And with Pauline
enthusiasm that “I am cursed if I do not work for these little ones of
our poor fellow-creatures,” he simply threw himself single-heartedly
into the task of their education. Thus his whole educational career was
a series of experiments, and his pedagogy is its record.
If Rousseau’s plea was for the freedom of the “natural man” from the
yoke of the artificialities of existing society, Pestalozzi’s was for
the recognition of the divinity in the breast of even the humblest of
humanity and its rescue from death. The worth of the poor and little
was once proclaimed by the Founder of the religion of the universal
brotherhood. But the gospel had been long forgotten until it was
reproclaimed by the greatest lover of mankind whom the world has ever
seen since Jesus of Nazareth. He is called by Mager the “Kant of
pedagogy and didactics,” but I would rather name him “the Messiah of
modern education.” And if Comenius’s philosophy of education was the
perfect embodiment of the biblical Christianity of the seventeenth
century, Pestalozzi was the burnt offering which the new humanized
Christianity of the nineteenth century made at the altar of humanity.
“All the pure and beneficent powers of humanity,” writes Pestalozzi,
“are neither the product of art nor the results of chance. They are
really a natural possession of every man. Their development is a
universal human need” (4: p. 122). Yet how this need has hitherto been
unrecognized and neglected, especially for the lower strata of society!
And this is the source of such a deplorable inequality and consequent
instability in our social structure. The true remedy would come not
through charity nor through revolution, but only through technical,
intellectual, and moral elevation of the great neglected mass by
education. This was not a mere theory or an ideal conception for him,
but a working principle. See what confidence and hope he put into
the divine possibility of destitute children, and with what love and
reverence he protected their sanctity.
“Children, your good fortune is great. At a time when the great
majority of children go on in neglect and abandonment, with only
want for their teacher, and their passions for their guides; in
days when so many, so innumerably many, better and more fortunate
children, suffering under a combination of harshness, violence, and
bad guidance, diverted from the paths of Nature, not educated, but
trained only to a one-sided, empty show of knowledge and equally
one-sided pretense and fashion of practical efficiency, and thus
offered up to the world; in such a time, you are not given over to
abandonment and neglect; ... nor are the dubious impulses of passion
used in your training. Among us, neither vanity nor fear, neither
honor nor shame, neither reward nor punishment, as they are elsewhere
almost universally used, purposely and as a part of the method, are
used to show you the path in which you are to go. The divine nature
which is in you is counted holy in you. You are among us what the
divine nature within you and without you summon you to be. We oppose
no vile force against your gifts or your tendencies; we constrain
them not,--we only develop them. We do not instil into you what is
ours, what exists in us as corrupted by ourselves; we develop in you
what remains uncorrupted within yourselves. Among us, you are not
under the misfortune of seeing your whole being, your whole humanity,
subordinated, and thus sacrificed to the training of some single
power, some single view of your nature.... O God, No! What I seek is
to elevate human nature to its highest, its noblest; and this I seek
to do by love. Only in the holy power of love do I recognize the basis
of the development of my race to whatever of the divine and eternal
lies within its nature” (1: p. 713).
This quotation from his address delivered on New Year’s day of 1809
gives us the essence of his philosophy of education. To bring about
the natural, harmonious development of all the powers, faculties,
and qualities, which are potential in every human being, is the aim
of education. The key to open up these treasures of human, therefore
divine, nature is the most human, the most divine, power of love and
devotion.
Now let us examine more closely and minutely the meaning contained in
this fundamental concept of his, which, thus stated, seems nothing new
or striking, but if truly understood and applied would cause an entire
revolution even in the education of our present day.
First, what does Pestalozzi understand by the “natural” development?
“There is an impulse in every capacity of human nature, which compels
its development from lifeless inactivity into a developed power” (1:
p. 738). This impulse leads each one of our powers to a spontaneous
activity or exercise, and Nature develops it by “the single method
of its own activity.” This natural, organic unfolding of life, with
its multiple activities, is necessarily harmonious when unhindered by
human artifices or unfavorable environment. We must guard this natural
harmony of human nature, upon which the peace and happiness of our
individual and social life rest.
“No one faculty in the human child must be treated with exclusive
or indiscriminate attention, for their co-agency alone can ensure
a successful development of the whole being.” “Every one-sided
development of our powers is untrue and unnatural; it is only apparent
cultivation, ... and not human culture itself” (1: pp. 736, 737).
Pestalozzi is not only antagonistic to that kind of education which
“has an external, limited end of culture, of morality, of social
efficiency in view, and wants to fit the child to this,” but he
opposes that type of pedagogue who requires the child to conform to a
plasterlike model of a perfected man. Each particular child is always
the end, the object, the standard.
“Whatever, therefore, man may attempt to do by his tuition, he can
do no more than assist in the effort which the child makes for his
own development. To do this so that the impressions made upon him may
always be commensurate to the growth and character of the faculties
already unfolded, and at the same time, in harmony with them, is the
great secret of education. The knowledge to which the child is to be
led by instruction must, therefore, necessarily be subjected to a
certain order of succession, the beginning of which must be adapted
to the first unfolding of his powers, and the progress kept exactly
parallel to that of his development” (11: p. 611).
This method of leading or assisting the child along the course of his
successive developmental stages in a natural, progressive order is
what he terms “psychologizing education,” and this was the central
problem of his whole experimentation, so far as the individual child
was concerned. The discovery of his famous “Method of Elementary
Instruction” was the fruit of his lifelong endeavor toward this end,
but he considered his achievement only as a beginning.
Pestalozzi, in his advocacy of the natural, psychological method,
seems to be echoing the voice of one who said: “Return to Nature,
to human nature, to child nature!” But he goes deeper than Rousseau
in his insight into child nature. While Rousseau pictured the
natural growth of the child in an imaginary life, isolated from
every human institution, Pestalozzi placed the child in his natural
environment--namely, in the home under the loving care of parents. In
the eyes of both, the course of Nature was divine and inviolable. But
while Rousseau sought Nature’s work in the wilderness, Pestalozzi saw
it in the home life. It is not physical nature, but a well-ordered
home that can become the true cradle and workshop of human nature.
Indeed, there has probably never been a thinker who emphasized the
divine significance of home and mother so strongly as did Pestalozzi.
His method of elementary instruction came from the study of child life
in the home, and was first intended for home education. He was never
tired of repeating that “a man’s domestic relations are the first and
most important of his nature” (4: p. 77). He earnestly endeavored to
convince the world that “it is the domestic virtues which determine the
happiness of a nation,” and that “the home is the true basis of the
education of humanity.” According to him, it is only to supplement the
absence of proper home education that schools are needed; home ought
to have been the educational institution for children. So he speaks in
“Christopher and Alice” through the mouth of the good servant, Josiah:
“It is well that there are schools; and God forbid that I should be
ungrateful for any good that they have done to us. But with all this
I think that he must be a fool who, having plenty at home, runs about
begging; and that is the very thing which our village folk do, by
forgetting all the good lessons which they might teach their children
at home, and instead thereof sending them every day to gather up the
dry crumbs which are to be got in our miserable schools” (1: pp.
665-666).
Again he says in his address on his seventy-third birthday:
“The greatest evil of our time, and the greatest and almost
insurmountable obstacle to the operation of any thorough means is
this, that the fathers and mothers of our time have almost universally
lost the consciousness that they can do anything--everything--for
the education of their children. This great falling away from
their faith, of fathers and mothers, is the universal source of
the superficial character of our means of education.... Fathers
and mothers must, above all, learn to feel vividly how great an
advantage--as intrusted by God and their own conscience with the
duty of educating their own children--they enjoy over any others
to be employed as assistants therein. And, for like reasons, it is
indispensable that there should be a general public recognition of
the fact that a child who has lost father and mother is still a poor,
unfortunate orphan, even though his guardian can employ the first
among all masters of education in the world to teach him” (1: p. 716).
Then, where lies the source of the peculiar educative power of the
home? We have seen before that the art of education consists in
ministering an intelligent, loving help to the natural unfolding of
the child’s powers. But this term “loving help” is really too weak,
prosaic, and conventionalized to express its deep meaning. It is more
than mere kindness, mere effort of good will, or sentimental affection
that is meant. It is giving one’s whole self, giving one’s essence
over into another’s to be absorbed there, and to become a new power.
To use Pestalozzi’s own metaphor, it is like the sun whose light and
warmth silently penetrate to the soil, and in whose light and warmth
the plants grow, bud, and blossom, unconscious of its influence. This
kind of loving help can the mother alone supply to her own children, by
virtue of the natural endowment of a maternal heart, “the most gentle
and the most intrepid power in the whole system of Nature” (1: p. 735).
Love is understanding: a dutiful mother will easily “learn to
distinguish and direct each faculty before it appears in a state of
development sufficient to evidence its own existence” (1: p. 736)--the
principal qualification for an educator. Love is _educative_ in
the etymological sense of the word: it brings out what there is in the
child into self-expression. A loving mother is able “to open children’s
hearts, and their mouths, and to draw forth their understandings, as
it were, from the hindermost corner” (1: p. 667)--the true tact of
education. Pestalozzi compares the method of the ordinary schoolmaster
with what he believes to be the method of maternal instinct in the
following words:
“The teacher starts usually from objects, you from the child himself.
The teacher connects his instruction with what he knows, in order to
teach the child; you know in the presence of your child nothing else
than himself and connect everything with his instincts and impulses.
The teacher has a form of instruction to which he subjects the child;
you subject your course of instruction to the child and surrender it
to him, when you teach, as you surrender yourself to him. With the
teacher, everything comes from the understanding, with you all gushes
out from the fullness of heart. The child is childlike toward you,
because you behave motherlike toward him; the more you are motherlike,
the more childlike he is” (16: x, p. 145).
Pestalozzi expresses his righteous indignation toward the
schoolmaster’s fondness for the everlasting disciplining, drilling,
mechanism, which only thwart the natural free development of tender
minds.
“The schoolmaster seems as if he were made on purpose to shut up
children’s mouths and hearts, and to bury their good understanding
ever so deep under ground. That is the reason why healthy and cheerful
children, whose hearts are full of joy and gladness, hardly ever like
school. Those that show best at school are the children of whining
hypocrites, or of conceited parish officers; stupid dunces, who have
no pleasure with other children; these are the bright ornaments of
schoolrooms, who hold up their heads among the other children like
the wooden king in the nine-pins among his eight fellows. But if
there is a boy who has too much good sense to keep his eyes, for
hours together, fixed upon a dozen letters which he hates; or a merry
girl, who, while the schoolmaster discourses of spiritual life, plays
with her little hands all manner of temporal fun under the desk; the
schoolmaster, in his wisdom, settles that these are goats who care not
for their everlasting salvation” (1: p. 667).
Yet, a greater, nay the greatest thing that the maternal love, and it
alone, can accomplish is to sow the living seed of moral sentiments, to
lay the solid basis of character, in the soul of the child. He says:
“The only sure foundation upon which we must build, for institutions,
for popular education, national culture, and the elevation of the
poor, is the parental heart, which, by means of the innocence, truth,
power, and purity of its love kindles in the children the belief in
love” (1: p. 715).
For “the child at his mother’s breast is already receiving the first
impressions of love and gratitude”; and there is moral instruction in
the morsel of bread he receives from his father’s hand. According to
Pestalozzi, “morality is nothing but a result of the development in the
child of these first sentiments of love and gratitude” (4: p. 92).
Another advantage of the home is the education which children get from
their participation in the domestic occupation of their parents.
“For this work is necessarily what the parents understand best,
what most absorbs their attention, and what they are most competent
to teach. But even if this were not so, work undertaken to supply
real needs would be just as truly the surest foundation of a good
education” (4: p. 92).
Again:
“To engage the attention of the child, to exercise his judgment, to
open his heart to noble sentiments, is, I think, the chief end of
education; and how can this end be reached so surely as by training
the child as early as possible in the various daily duties of domestic
life?” (4: p. 92).
Industry in the factory or school does not provide the continuous and
manifold changes of work, the motivation from the real needs of life
which the child shares with the rest of the family, the stimulus of
parental love, and the impulsion from the child’s own filial feeling,
which home occupation does.
Moreover, home presents real human life in its closest relations to
the child, so that he naturally and unconsciously learns its facts and
laws. Human relations are again more natural, true, and perfect in the
home than anywhere else; thus the child can develop his human qualities
here better than anywhere else. Therefore, “as a general rule, art
and books would not replace it in any way. The best story, the most
touching picture the child finds in a book, is but a sort of dream
for him, something unreal, and in a sense untrue; whereas what takes
place before his eyes, in his own house, is associated with a thousand
similar occurrences, with all his own experience as well as that of his
parents and neighbours, and brings him without fail to a true knowledge
of men, and develops in him a thoroughly observant mind” (4: p. 93).
Lastly, home is in itself a completed whole, a microcosmos of the
larger social life, while school or the factory is not. Home is the
only place where the child can live a real, organic life. And we can
find a true unity and harmony, which is dynamic and progressive only
in an organic life. Therefore, “it is only in the holiness of home
that the equal development of all the human faculties can be directed,
managed, and assured; and it is from this point that educational
efforts must be conducted, if education, as a national affair, is to
have a real reference to the wants of the people, and is to cause, by
its influence, the coinciding of external human knowledge, power, and
motives with the internal, everlasting, divine essence of our nature”
(1: p. 715).
This, then, is the war cry of Pestalozzian reform: the education of the
child for the home, in the home, through the home, and by the home. The
child should be educated to be a dutiful and efficient member of the
family, or he cannot become a dutiful and efficient member of society.
Social reform must begin with the reconstruction of the home life
of the people. Not “go back to Nature!” but “go back to the home!”
Not to build a new society on the absolutely free, independent,
_natural man_, but on the work-loving, man-loving, God-loving,
unsophisticatedly developed, social man, or rather _home man_.
For Pestalozzi, the only hope for the elevation of all mankind was in
the regeneration of the home and perfection of home education. His
idea of elementary education started from this view. “Leonard and
Gertrude” was written as an appeal to parents, to awaken them to the
sense of the most sacred duty intrusted to them and of the grandest
privilege given to them. “How Gertrude Taught Her Children” was to be
a guide to mothers for instructing their children at home. His method
of elementary instruction was to provide the simplest and easiest way
of teaching available to every mother. Lastly, in the “Swan Song”
he formulated the principles by which home education should follow
or assist the course of natural development of the child. In this,
one of his last writings, he says: “At first I desired nothing else,
but merely sought to render the ordinary means of instruction for the
people so simple as to permit of their being employed in every family”
(4: p. 375). But while he was experimenting, in the education of those
destitute and neglected children, to whom he was a “father” rather than
a master, the ardent necessity of school reform at large was impressed
upon him.
“Everywhere the course pursued was in direct opposition to that of
Nature, everywhere the flesh predominated over the spirit, and the
divine element was ignored; everywhere selfishness and the passions
were made the motives of actions, and everywhere mechanical habits
took the place of intelligent spontaneity” (4: p. 377).
The basic principle upon which he wanted every educator to work was:
“Endeavour, first to broaden your children’s sympathies, and, by
satisfying their daily needs, to bring love and kindness into such
unceasing contact with their impressions and activity, that these
sentiments may be engrafted in their hearts; then try to give them
such judgment and tact as will enable them to make a wise, sure, and
abundant use of these virtues in the circle which surrounds them” (4:
p. 157). This is, according to his insight, the principle of parental
education unconsciously going on in the home, and the school must be a
copy of the home in its spirit and method, if it is at all to have a
real and vital influence upon the child.
Pestalozzi traces in the “Swan Song” how the seeds of love, of
confidence, of gratitude, of brotherly feeling, of patience, of
obedience, and of the sense of duty unfolds in the heart of the child,
through the tender and discreet care of the mother, and by means
of family intercourse. He also shows how, out of these instinctive
domestic affections, religious sentiments are born in the human soul.
“It is life that educates,” and this is life’s method of moral culture.
“On the intellectual side, it is again life that educates; for life
develops, in turn, the power of receiving impressions, the power
of speaking, and the power of thinking.” Let us see how these are
developed. “The power of receiving impressions by observations
and experience furnishes the child with ideas and sentiments” (4:
p. 378). This power, which Pestalozzi calls “_Anschauung_,”
is the starting-point of all intellectual activities. “These
impressions excite and animate in the mind its inherent principle of
self-development.” Therefore, “with perception comes the necessity
for expression, and naturally the first attempts of the child are
imitative, but the greatest need is that of human speech,” which
is “an extension of the power thought” (1: p. 739). The desire and
capacity for speech is parallel to the development of vocal organs and
acquirements of knowledge through perception. “The power to speak does
not proceed from the knowledge of language, it is rather the knowledge
of language which proceeds from the power to speak.” Language is a
vital mental power only when it has grown out of the child’s own life.
But forcing the language from outside upon the child “neither develops
the powers of the mind nor produces anything but an empty verbiage” (4:
pp. 378-379). Nevertheless, “Art ... can greatly relieve the tedium of
Nature’s methods in teaching the child to speak, and education must
investigate the means, and present an orderly succession of exercises
adapted to that end.” For instance, “the mother must allow the charms
of seeing, hearing, feeling, and tasting to have full play in the
child. These sense impressions will awaken the desire to give them
expression, that is, to speak. The mother continually varies her tones,
speaking now loudly, now softly, sometimes singing, and sometimes
laughing, so as to awaken the desire to imitate. The sense of sight
must also be enlisted by exhibiting different objects and associating
the impressions with fitting words. Each object should be presented
in the greatest possible variety of relations and positions, and care
should be taken that each impression, matured in the child’s mind
through perception, is properly expressed” (1: pp. 739-740). In this
way the vocal organs are to be trained, a good command of words is to
be given, and the power of expressing related ideas to be cultivated.
“Now when a child’s sense impressions have resulted in clear and settled
ideas, when he can express these ideas in speech, he feels the need
of examining, separating, and comparing them; this is a pleasure to
which life itself invites him, and in which he finds the surest aid
for the development of his judgment and power of thinking.” Education
at all times has aimed to encourage, facilitate, and strengthen this
development. Yet it has failed miserably, because “it has paid little
heed to the laws of Nature and of life.” Pestalozzi condemns the usual
method of “putting before the child a mass of ready-made judgments
that his memory alone has been able to grasp, and which, instead of
strengthening his thought, have allowed it to wither in inactivity.” He
also makes light of logic, which, to his conception, is “a system, more
subtle than clear, of the eternal rules which regulate human thought;
rules, however, which are but a closed book for the child who does
not yet possess the power of thinking” (4: p. 379). What he himself
proposes as the best gymnastics for the child’s thinking power is what
he calls exercises in number and form. As singing is introduced for the
training of the speech faculty, arithmetic, geometry, drawing, writing
are introduced for the training of the power of thought. “But,” he
says, “if the study of number and form is to have any real educational
value, it must consist not in shortened, mechanical methods, but
in a series of exercises so well graduated that the child may take
pleasure in the study, and succeed in it; that his thinking powers
may be always active; that his judgments may be really his own, and
that all he does must be closely connected with his real life” (4:
pp. 379-380). Thus, to summarize, language (including sounds, words,
connected ideas), number, and form are to be the three essential means
of intellectual culture, or the three fundamental elements of mental
upbuilding, and “it is the business of education to present these
elements to the child’s mind in the simplest possible manner, and in
psychological and progressive order.”
In regard to manual skill, again, “it is in the conditions and needs of
actual life, and in the heart of the family, that the child must first
learn how to use and improve his powers” (4: p. 380). The work, when
separated from life, is a mere mechanism. Therefore, “the exercises
intended to develop the industrial and artistic powers must also be
determined by the general circumstances of the child’s life” (4: p.
380). The principle of elementary education applies to the manual
powers as well as to the mental and moral: “It encourages the child’s
activity from the very first; it leads him to produce results which
are really his own, and it gives him at the same time both the power
and the will to rise without slavishly copying others” (4: p. 380).
Further, for industrial skill “to be completely useful, it must be the
outcome of the harmonious development of heart, mind, and body” (4:
p. 374). For, what is skill but “the facile and artful expression of
what is conceived in the mind?” And without perfection of heart, “the
highest development of intellect, art, or industry brings no rest,
but leaves the man full of trouble, uneasiness, and discontent” (4:
p. 375). Therefore, to bring about the subordination of the physical
powers to the moral and intellectual powers is the essential work of
education. This due subordination of the lower to the higher elements
of human nature, in which the harmony of life consists, is naturally
found in “a well-regulated and industrious family life.” So here,
again, the school must learn from the home.
Pestalozzi’s exaltation of home education is certainly a great
rebellion against scholastic and academic training. No less
revolutionary is his advocacy of industrial education as the only real
education for the mass of people. Hitherto, education was conceived
from the standpoint of aristocracy, or purely from the abstract ideal
of perfected man in a perfected society. But now “the fatherland must
learn to educate her poor as the poor” (16: xii, p. 513). The child of
poverty should not be educated to an unpractical and unhappy man who
cannot fulfil the task or duty which his particular circumstances and
position require of him. First, “he must learn to know, handle, and
use those things on which his bread and his quiet will depend through
life” (1: p. 666). To give the power to support himself and his family
is the first remedy for the misery and slavery of the poor: “He is
without rights, because he has no gain,” and “the poor man is poor
mostly because he is not trained to earn his wants” (16: iii, p. 247).
So the first school which he established at Neuhof was intended to be
an industrial school, embracing agriculture, manufacture, and commerce.
This ended in financial ruin before his plan was fully executed, but he
reflects in his later life upon this school as if it were a lost child,
and says: “It is true that, with all the experience of after-life, I
have found but little reason to modify the views I then entertained”
(1: p. 671).
Comenius and Locke both introduced manual work into their curriculum,
but without intending that it should be of much practical use in later
life. Neither did Basedow emphasize the vocational aspect. Locke,
indeed, had an unrealized plan for establishing a “working school” for
the poor. Still, it was to be nothing more than the combination of
a common workshop and a day nursery. We owe to Pestalozzi the first
definite conception of an industrial education and its noble philosophy.
The first aim of an industrial education is of course vocational: the
inculcation of skill in productive labor. But it is more than this: it
is the mental and moral culture as well. Racially and individually,
industrial labor is “the true and holy and eternal means of combining
the whole range of our powers into one common power, the power of
manhood.” It compels our mind to “an unbroken attention, carefulness,
and deliberateness--the fundamental educational basis of all thinking”;
it necessitates in us the belief in the truth and immutability of
natural laws. So he proclaims: “It is the essence of the true art of
human education to transform various works and branches of industry
into the means of human culture” (16: x, p. 357), and “for the laboring
man, the sufficient and efficient cultivation of his senses and limbs
to the service of all of what constitutes the blessings of his life, is
the stepladder, by which he is called to climb up to the right thinking
that would make him happy in his positions and relations.” This, then,
is the other great Pestalozzian motto: Education through and for work.
Of the tributes paid to the merits of Pestalozzi there is no end, and
rightly so. Karl Schneider testifies that “not only a new form was
introduced by him into the school instruction of Germany, but that
her people have come to look upon the work of education as a national
affair is due to him and his disciples” (25: p. 59). But his influence
extends far beyond his fatherland and his adopted country. And through
all the civilized world “the ideas which he set forth are now through
pain and struggle endeavoring to get themselves realized” (22: p. 58).
If Comenius gave us the universal school in form, Pestalozzi put the
soul into it. Locke was the pedagogue of the gentlemen, Basedow of
the bourgeois. But Pestalozzi, as Harnisch well said, was “a people’s
pedagogue, a people’s prophet” (27: p. 42), and “with a higher light
in the head and more warmth in the heart than the world was wont to
have” proclaimed the education of the masses for the masses. Truly, as
Fichte said, “his love was so blessed to him that he found more than
he sought” (26: p. 245). In trying to save the poor, neglected mass of
his country he gave the world “the only remedy for the entire body of
humanity”--the spirit and principles of vitalized and vitalizing, of
humanized and humanizing education.
REFERENCES
1. +Barnard, Henry.+ Pestalozzi and His Educational System.
Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y., 1906. 751 pages.
2. +Boardman, J. H.+ Educational Ideas of Froebel and
Pestalozzi. Second edition. Normal Press, London, 190-. 76 pages.
(Normal Tutorial Series.)
3. +Compayré, Jules Gabriel.+ History of Pedagogy. Translated,
with an introduction, notes, and an index, by W. H. Payne. Heath &
Co., Boston, 1903. 598 pages.
4. +Guimps, Roger Baron de.+ Pestalozzi, His Life and Work.
Translated by J. Russell. Appleton, New York, 1890. 438 pages.
(International Education Series.)
5. +Heim, ----.+ Die soziale Anschauungen Pestalozzi’s. Agentur
des Rauhen Hauses, Hamburg, 1896. 22 pages.
6. +Heman, Friedrich.+ Geschichte der neueren Pädagogik.
Zickfeldt, Osterwieck, 1904. 436 pages.
7. +Hérisson, F.+ Pestalozzi, Élève de J. J. Rousseau.
Delagrave, Paris, 1886. 246 pages.
8. +Hoffmeister, Hermann Wilhelm.+ Comenius und Pestalozzi als
Begründer der Volkschule. Second edition. Klinkhardt, Leipzig, 1896.
97 pages.
9. +Mann, T.+ Die soziale Grundlage von Pestalozzi’s Pädagogik.
Beyer, Langensalza, 1896. 18 pages.
10. +Melchers, Karl.+ Comenius und Pestalozzi, ein
vergleichende Betrachtung ihrer pädagogischen Grundideen. Schmidt,
Bremen, 1896. 47 pages.
11. +Monroe, Paul.+ A Text-book in the History of Education.
Macmillan Co., London and New York, 1907. 772 pages.
12. +Monroe, William Seymour.+ History of the Pestalozzian
Movement in the United States. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y., 1907. 244
pages.
13. +Munroe, James Phinney.+ The Educational Ideal: an Outline
of its Growth in Modern Times. Heath & Co., Boston, 1896. 262 pages.
14. +Natrop, Paul.+ Pestalozzi’s Ideen über Arbeiterbildung und
soziale Frage. Salzer, Heilbronn, 1894. 34 pages.
15. ---- Herbart, Pestalozzi und die heutigen Aufgaben der
Erziehungslehre. Frommann, Stuttgart, 1899. 151 pages.
16. +Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich.+ Sämtliche Werke. 12 vols. C.
Seyffarth, Liegnitz, 1889-1902.
17. ---- Leonard and Gertrude. Translated and abridged by Eva
Channing. Heath & Co., Boston, 1889. 181 pages.
18. +Pinloche, Joachim Auguste.+ Pestalozzi and the Foundation
of the Modern Elementary School. Scribner, New York, 1901. 306 pages.
19. +Quick, Robert Hebert.+ Essays on Educational Reformers.
Appleton, New York, 1890. 560 pages. Same. (International Education
Series), 1903. 568 pages.
20. +Raumer, Karl von.+ Geschichte der Pädagogik vom
Wiederaufblühen klassischer Studien bis auf unsere Zeit. 5 vols.
Bertelsmann, Gütersloh, 1882-1897.
21. +Rein, Georg Wilhelm+, editor. Encyklopädisches Handbuch
der Pädagogik. 8 vols. Beyer, Langensalza, 1895-1906. Vol. V.
22. +Reinhardt, A. J.+ Outline of the History of Education.
Kellogg, New York, 1891. 77 pages.
23. +Scherer, Heinrich.+ Die Pädagogik in ihrer Entwicklung
im Zusammenhange mit dem Kultur- und Geistesleben und ihrem Einfluss
auf die Gestaltung des Erziehungs- und Bildungswesens. Vol. II. Die
Pädagogik als Wissenschaft von Pestalozzi bis zur Gegenwart. 3 parts.
Brandstetter, Leipzig, 1897-1908.
24. +Schmid, Karl Adolf+, editor. Geschichte der Erziehung vom
Anfang an bis auf unsere Zeit. 5 vols. Cotta, Stuttgart, 1884-1902.
Vol. IV, Part II.
25. +Schneider, Karl.+ Rousseau und Pestalozzi; der Idealismus
auf deutschen und auf französischen Boden. Fifth edition. Gärtner,
Berlin, 1895. 63 pages.
26. +Seyffarth, L. W.+ J. H. Pestalozzi, nach seinem Leben und
aus seinen Schriften dargestellt. Eighth edition. Siegismund, Leipzig,
1904. 254 pages.
27. ---- Pestalozzi, in seiner weltgeschichtlichen Bedeutung. C.
Seyffarth; Liegnitz, 1896. 59 pages.
28. +Spielmann, C.+ Christian. Die Meister der Pädagogik nach
ihren Leben, ihren Werken und ihrer Bedeutung. Heufer, Neuwied,
1904-1905. 356 pages. Part V.
29. +Wiget, Theobald.+ Pestalozzi und Herbart. Bleyl, Dresden,
1891. 140 pages.
30. +Ziegler, Theobald.+ Geschichte der Pädagogik mit
besonderer Rücksicht auf das höhere Unterrichtswesen. Beck, München,
1895. 361 pages.
CHAPTER VII.
JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE
(1762-1814)
Fichte considered himself the true interpreter and successor of the
Königsberg philosopher. This is by no means saying that he was the
best expositor of the latter’s theories. The Kantian philosophy worked
a total revolution in his conception of the universe and life; and
it was his determination to interpret to the world that philosophy
that inspired him to the career of a scholar. He received the Kantian
philosophy, so to speak, into his soul, and when he put it forth it
was transformed in turn into the cast of his own personality. Kant was
essentially a man of intellect, of thought, while Fichte was a man
of enthusiasm, of action. So, in Kant, reason forms the world out of
the chaos of impressions; in Fichte, everything, objective as well as
subjective, is the progressive creation of the ego. If philosophy was
in Kant the critical method of thought, it is in Fichte the setting
forth of a grand conception of the world and life: it really became a
preaching and prophecy. The transcendental idealism of Kant culminated
with Fichte in a sort of religion, which he proclaimed his whole life
through with the fire of a devoted missionary and the force of a mighty
army.
This vitalization of Kantian idealism through Fichte has also taken
place in the field of education. The perfection, and, above all, the
moralization of humanity, was in Kant a cosmopolitan ideal, which
was to be realized step by step, generation by generation, through a
cosmopolitan process. It was through Fichte that this somewhat far-off
and ethereal ideal was made an actual and immediate object of national
aspiration for the German people. He was probably the first philosopher
who gave us a broad and lofty conception of national education or the
nationalization of education.
This nationalization of education means the education of a nation by
the nation. Each individual is to participate in the work and enjoy
the benefit of education, by which Fichte understands the progressive
perfection of humanity through the advancement and propagation of
culture. The state is no longer to be merely a military, political,
and economic institution, but also a cultural one. To look after the
cultural interests of the community should be its most important
function. Fichte’s idea of national education is, therefore, very
different from the old classical ideal of state education, which aimed
chiefly at making efficient and faithful citizens for its political and
military prosperity. And Fichte believed, with patriotic faith, that
the Germans were the only people in the world who were able to grasp
and realize this grand ideal, and that through them alone could come
the elevation and ennoblement of mankind. Yet, what was the actual
condition of this chosen people?
The German federation went to pieces under the iron heel of the mighty
Napoleon; the last hope of the people fled with the capture of Jena;
the final crash came with the peace of Tilsit, “the most disgraceful
and bitterest treaty Germany ever made.” During this great national
crisis the cosmopolitan Goethe and Hegel were quietly engaged in their
writings, and most of the scholars of the land were simply trembling
before the invading force, while the people were weakly preparing to
bear the yoke of slavery. Into this wilderness of general depression
and humiliation there came a voice which thundered upon the ears of all
the citizens of Germany:
“Conquered now we are; yet, whether we are also going to be
disgraced--yes, disgraced with right, whether we would or not, in
addition to all other losses, even lose honor, this is still to be
decided by ourselves. The fight with arms is over, but now comes, let
us hope, the new fight of principles, of morals, of character” (3: p.
470).
Thus our philosopher prophet calls forth in his famous “Addresses to
the German Nation,” which flowed from his mouth with fiery eloquence,
such as Germany had not heard since Luther. The great aim of his speech
was to awaken the people and strengthen them for this new war of the
remaking of the whole nation, upon which the existence of Germany
depended. Yet, with what a wonderful conviction and with what a poetic
vision did he speak of his people’s victory in this coming war.
“The morning twilight of the new world has already dawned and gilded
the top of the hill, and foreshadows the day which is to come” (3: p.
279)
was the message he wanted to convey to the bruised and stricken land.
Characterizing his speeches says Barnard:
“Never were a people called upon to arouse themselves to a nobler
enterprise, and never was such a summons pealed forth in tones of more
manly and spirit-stirring energy” (1: p. 146).
If Luther awakened Germany to a sense of the dignity of individuality,
it was through Fichte that she came to the consciousness of her
national dignity and mission. Awakened by Luther, she led Europe in the
reformation of religion; awakened by Fichte, she has come to lead the
world in the advancement of culture and education.
Let us now proceed to the examination of his ideal of “new education,”
which alone, he thought, would save the country from degradation and
ruin. When we think of the particular circumstances of his time and the
fundamental characteristics of his personality, it is quite natural
that the first aim of the new education was to make, above all, an
independent ego, a self-active, self-determinate, creative personality,
the master of himself and environment. He writes in his “Aphorisms on
Education”:
“To educate a man means to give him opportunities to make himself the
complete master and ruler of his whole faculties.--The question is not
what he _learns_, but what he _is_. If one actually is a
reasonable and self-active being in every respect he will always with
facility make himself such, as under the circumstances he should be”
(4: p. 353).
How can such a stable, unchangeable, personality be produced, which
will always remain such, and can never be otherwise? Not by trusting to
chance, but through a necessary law which works surely and infallibly.
And what will this necessary law be? He answers: “Love, love of
self-activity, love of the ideal world, love of universal moral law.”
Will determines action, and love determines will. Love is, therefore,
the only unfailing motive of all life activities. So, in order to
produce a self-active being, the love of self-activity for its own
sake must be cultivated and established in the child. The initiative
activity on the part of the pupil should be cherished and promoted
by every possible means. This is the first and principal task of
educational art.
But we must always keep fresh the energy of this self-activity. How
can this be done? Not by a constant spur from outside, but only by its
own neverceasing, orderly progression or its inner evolution. This
progressive unfolding of self-activity is secured by the power of
aspiration toward an ever-progressive ideal. This ideal cannot be given
by others, but it should be the creation of the pupils’ own will. There
is, in everyone’s breast, an instinct toward perfection or a love of
the highest good. This instinct should be cultivated and strengthened
in the child. When it is strong, it necessarily drives him to create in
his mind a certain state of things which does not exist in actuality,
but which is the prototype of reality. Here lies the everlasting
fountain source for a new higher activity. And the child learns by his
immediate experience the evolution of the spiritual activity in him,
the universal and necessary law, by means of which the actual state of
things is eternally realized in the world. This is a higher kind of
knowledge than that of mere actuality or a dead record of the past. In
fact, soaring into the vast regions of ideals is better beloved by the
youth than memorizing mere names and dates.
Even from the standpoint of mere acquisition, the awakening of
self-activity is a more important thing than the imparting of
knowledge. For learning is simply a mode of activity, and by
establishing the love of activity for its own sake in the mind of the
child, we also establish the love of learning for learning’s sake.
This, and this alone, is the lifelong spring of all knowledge. By the
self-active learning which comes from pure love, one learns more, and
more securely than by being taught receptively. Mechanical and passive
learning destroys the very source of knowledge by killing the child’s
self-activity, and, moreover, by introducing alien motives for his
activity, implants the root of weakness and uncertainty of character.
Fichte was a great admirer of Pestalozzi. He was captivated by
the educational zeal and the pedagogic principles of the Swiss
reformer, and recommended them as the true foundation upon which the
new education of the German nation should be laid. Kant indorsed
Basedow’s experimental efforts in the philanthropic institute; but
Fichte preached the gospel of the Swiss “fanatic.” Historians are
inclined to count this as the most important merit of Fichte in the
history of education. For it contributed greatly to the influx of the
Pestalozzian tide into Germany, especially into Prussia, and thus led
to the most flourishing age of pedagogical writers, and to inscribing
the motto of universal education on the national flag of the country.
We might say that it is due largely to Fichte that the great Swiss
educator has become an adopted son of Prussia, and what he intended
for the elevation of the Helvetian poor has become the inspiration of
elementary education for all the nations on the globe.
But in a few points Fichte did not agree with Pestalozzi. One is in
regard to the position of reading and writing in the education of
the masses: Pestalozzi cherished, so thought Fichte, too innocent a
belief in the tradition of ages, in that he set up these two as though
they were the end and goal of instruction, when, in fact, they have
hitherto been the very instruments to enwrap men in the mist and the
shadow of learned ignorance, and to make them over-intelligent. They
take men away from the immediate perception to the mere symbol, from
the concentration of mind to its diffusion. Instruction in letters and
words, therefore, is not only unessential for the education of the
people at large, but even harmful.
In the second place, Fichte did not quite agree with Pestalozzi in the
method of sense-education. The Pestalozzian idea of the A. B. C. of
perception is a praiseworthy one, but it cannot be attained through
words. Fichte asks: “How can a child obtain the knowledge of his body
without having first learned to use it?” According to Fichte’s theory
of knowledge, self-activity precedes every content of consciousness,
and the vague feeling or sensation of this primordial, subjective
activity is the first beginning of our knowledge. Consequently,
“the true foundation of instruction and knowledge must be, to use
the Pestalozzian expression, the A. B. C. of sensation” (3: p.
407). The child is to learn to clearly perceive and distinguish the
various sensations which he experiences, and to express them, each in
distinction from others. Impressions at first produce a chaos in the
infant, but by learning to discriminate them he comes to perceive the
objects impressed upon him: thus from the A. B. C. of sensation he is
led to the A. B. C. of perception. Language should not be imparted
from outside as a mere symbol, but should develop in the child as
the progressively differentiating expression of his inner self or
subjective experience. In this way knowledge and speech become living
things and parts of the child’s own being.
Together with these there must be training in the A. B. C. of bodily
faculty--i. e., motor activity. Pestalozzi calls attention to this
training, but the plan for it has not yet been fundamentally and
systematically worked out. “To do this, it needs a man who is equally
well acquainted with the anatomy of the human body and scientific
mechanics, combining with these a high degree of philosophical insight”
(3: p. 410). By such a man alone, the complete method, not only of
maintaining, but also of strengthening and elevating health, the beauty
of body, and the vitality of mind can be devised. Fichte emphasizes
“the unnegligibility of this factor for an education that pretends
to form the whole man, and which is especially intended for a nation
whose independence is to be regained and maintained” (3: pp. 410-411).
His suggestion was taken up by Jahn and his followers, and the German
gymnastics arose in an endeavor to realize this hope, which has not
only played a not inconsiderable part in the independence and uplifting
of his people, but has been a great incentive to a world-wide movement
toward a systematic building up of the perfect physique which alone can
be the temple of the perfect soul.
Thus “the training of the child to clarify first his sensations, then
his perceptions, together with an orderly motor culture of his body,
are the first essentials of the new education of the German nation” (3:
p. 411). But the second yet more important factor is moral education.
Fichte, in his “Characteristics of the Present Age,” characterized the
spirit of the age as self-seeking, eudemonistic individualism, and
saw the root of its final depravity and sinfulness in this erroneous,
self-destructive principle of social life. Nay, the defeat and
subjugation of the German nation by a foreign power is due to this
egoistic individualism. Its independence will be lost forever unless
the moral principle of the people is fundamentally changed. In the
moral regeneration of the people alone lies the hope of Germany.
According to Fichte, the child naturally has respect for the right,
the good, and the true. “The basis of all moral education is to know
and firmly presume that there is such an instinct in the child, so
that its manifestation may be recognized and developed higher and
higher, through proper stimulation and the presentation of materials
to satisfy it” (3: p. 417). Express instruction, admonition, and
consciously directed and purposive discipline have no place; nay, such
a course will only “kill the inner moral sense and form the heartless
hypocrite” (4: p. 358). In the hidden depth of the child’s own heart,
without being self-conscious, must morality spring forth by itself
and gradually grow up and irradiate, as external relations increase
and become clearer to him. This should be so and will be so, without
any purposive interference from outside at all, so long as only pure,
good examples surround the child, and all the bad, mean, and low ones
are kept far from his eyes. “Beside this protective care, an educator
has only to set forth a few self-evident and easily observable positive
rules--such as, not to tell a lie, not speak or act voluntarily against
one’s own conscience.” Conscience, the inner voice of conscience--here
the universal laws of the moral world reveal themselves. Act always
according to your conscience--this is the golden rule of morality.
“According to all experience, this law takes hold upon the child’s
mind with a wonderful power; it elevates him, gives him an internal
stronghold, and becomes for him an inexhaustible fountain of inner
integrity, which is the mother of all virtues, and which, being once
acquired, one will never fall into a helpless depravity” (4: pp.
358-359).
Fichte follows his master in saying that we have to perform duty
simply because it is duty, and not from any calculation of personal
pleasure. But he would not exclude from morality all feeling elements,
as Kant did. For Kant, even liking or inclination of heart was a
motive extraneous and even antagonistic to true morality. Fichte, on
the contrary, thinks that we ought to advance in our morality so
as to love the good from our innermost, necessary inclination or
disposition. This alone will be the sure and stable basis of virtue
and character. Instinct had no place in Kantian ethics; all must have
come from reason--i. e., the enlightened will. But Fichte recognizes
the existence of the moral instinct, and wants simply to develop it.
Spontaneity and habituation were despised by Kant as mere mechanism
unworthy of a rational creature, but for Fichte these are the highest
goal of morality. Here, freedom and necessity are one; _ought_
is _must_. The aim of moral education is to establish firmly the
inner necessity of morality, in the depths of the ego, so that the will
wishes only the good and right, and cannot wish anything but the good
and right.
Considered in its social relation, “the root of all morality is
self-mastery, the conquering of the individual self, the subordination
of one’s self-seeking instincts under the idea of the whole” (3: p.
417). How can this social consciousness be cultivated? Not by precepts,
catechism, nor discipline, but by providing the child an environment
in which he will spontaneously live, learn, love, and accustom himself
to a perfect, organic mode of life. Consequently, Fichte proposes his
plan of an educational community. This man of will, who aimed, first of
all, to form a strong and noble will in the soul of the new generation,
unlike that man of heart, who wanted to cultivate a pure, simple, and
loving heart in degraded and neglected humanity, insisted on the entire
separation of children from their home. For, “the pressure and care
of daily occurrences, the parents’ petty exaction and eagerness for
gain which attach to the home, especially of the working classes, will
necessarily distract and hinder the child from making a free flight
into the world of thought” (3: pp. 406-407). He is, moreover, to be
separated from society at large, which is, at present, fundamentally
corrupted, and to reform which is the aim of the new education. So the
whole new generation is to be secluded in an independent institution or
community, entirely of their own and for themselves, therein to grow
up, under the sole sway of the new education, into the ideal citizens
of the coming ideal state. This community is to rest on the principles
of self-activity and cooperation, instead of passive slavishness and
egoistic individualism. Let us see more in detail what was the nature
of Fichte’s proposed institution.
It is in its general character more a sort of children’s communistic
colony than a school. It is to embody the ideal of a perfect social
organism.
“The organization must be so regulated that an individual shall not
be simply subordinated to the whole, but he shall be enabled to act
and work for the whole.--It should be a fundamental rule of the
organization that everyone who excels in any line should help in
teaching others, and share in various responsibilities; that everyone
who finds the way for any improvement, or understands first and most
clearly the things presented by the teacher, should carry them on with
his own labor; that everyone should satisfy these demands voluntarily
and not from compulsion; that he should expect no reward, for it
must be the ruling spirit of the community that each does simply his
own duty and enjoys purely the pleasure of doing and working for the
whole, and succeeding in the work which falls in his lot” (3: 294-295).
The organization is to be not only a cultural community, but also
an industrial and economic one. “Besides the mental development
in learning there should be bodily exercise, and mechanized yet
spiritualized labor of farming and varied manual work carried on” (3:
p. 294). “Learning and work should go together” was his motto (3: p.
423).
The institution is to be self-supporting; at least, should appear so to
the pupils.
“No article of food or clothing nor any implement, so far as possible,
should be used which is not produced or manufactured in it. If its
finance needs help from outside, it should be only in the form of
objects of Nature.... For this independence and self-sufficiency of
the whole each individual works with all his might, without settling
any account with the institution, and without making any claim for his
personal possession. Each is aware that he is entirely responsible to
the whole, and enjoys or suffers only with the whole. By this means
the honorable independence of state and family, of which he should one
day become a member, will be secured; by this means the relation of
the individual to these institutions will be comprehended in a living
manner, and take root in his very soul, never to effaced” (3: p. 425).
In this “Economic Education” the child acquires his vocational training
through his economic activities, and his vocational training under
these systematized and regulated conditions provides him, at the same
time, a mental and moral culture. He is equipped with the fundamental
knowledge of, and skill in, various branches of productive industry. In
him the love of self-activity, of work, of study are established. He
is habituated to the living laws of coöperative social life. “Such a
child alone will be the one whom the educator can safely send out into
society as its true citizen. Such will be the limit which an education
can demand from any child in the name of the world.”
Fichte stands for the coeducation of the sexes; since “the separation
of sexes in a special institution for each would be unreasonable, and
destroy many essentials of education for the complete man.” In his
proposed institution the subjects of instruction are to be the same for
both sexes, while the distinction is to be made as to the kind of work.
The most important thing is that “both should learn early to recognize
and love the common humanity in the other, and make friends among the
opposite sex as well as those of their own before attention is directed
to the sex difference.” Moreover, “the mutual relation of both sexes
in one whole will develop within the institution and in the mind of
children manly protection on the one hand, and loving assistance on the
other” (3: p. 422).
Here ends the education of the child as the future citizen of the
world. But there is still another and a higher thing, which can, in
special cases, be done by the educator of the people. He may lead the
child to a life higher than that of this visible world. This life in
religion is the deeply-seated source of true morality. “The child
of the new education is not only a member of human society in this
visible world, and for a short span of life, but he also is, and will
no doubt recognize himself to be, a link in the eternal chain of the
spiritual life in general. One who has penetrated the whole essence of
his being and recognized the ethical world which has never existed,
yet eternally should be, will also recognize or produce in his thought
the transcendental world-order, which eternally exists” (3: p. 297).
He shall come to seek such a world of ideas and ideals, and live in
it, as his only real life, light, and blessing, considering all else
as mere death, darkness, and misery. This life in the transcendental
world--namely, religion--is not a life beyond the grave, but is life
immanent in our earthly existence and extending to eternity.
“To find heaven right on this earth, and let it flow perpetually in
his daily work; to implant and to cultivate the immortal in the mortal
itself--not merely in the mystical and unintelligible way, but in the
visible way--this is a natural and ever-working instinct of man, which
is absent only under the pressure of necessity” (3: p. 376).
To develop this instinct in the child, and lead him to the ever higher
life of true religion, is the last task of the new education.
The above is a brief sketch of Fichte’s plan of the new education
for the people, by means of which he hoped to revive and regenerate
the sunken and ruined nation. Fichte, like Rousseau and Pestalozzi,
sanguinely had confidence in the power of a new form of education
to bring about an immediate reconstruction of the existing society,
against which they each raised the voice of protest. But while Rousseau
wanted to build a new society on the basis of his new _natural
man_, who is to be educated solely through the nature of his
individual self, and Pestalozzi of his new _home man_, who shall
essentially grow up in and through the normal home, for Fichte, the
foundation of the new nation rested on the new _social man_, who
is trained in, through, and to an ideal social life specially provided
to secure his best growth.
However, his hope for Germany was much larger than the mere restoration
of her independence and solidarity. It was his firm conviction that
his people, as the parent stock of the Teutonic race, with an original
language and a passionate idealism, should and will lead the whole
world in the progress of science and culture. And with this vision,
he conceived a new plan for a special scholarly education, which we
find as radical as his scheme for the common people’s education. He
presents to us two totally different forms of education--an extremely
anti-academic education for the common people and a highly academic
education for the intellectual classes.
The intellectual classes comprise those whose vocation is to be
the leaders of the race in its upward and forward march. They are
represented by the rulers, legislators, administrators, academic
teachers, scientific writers, artists, and preachers. We may divide
them into two categories: those who strive to elevate society into an
ideal condition which is realizable at the present time, and others who
always seek after a better, higher, and clearer ideal, and to impart
it to the contemporary and succeeding generations. The function of the
latter is the enrichment and enlargement of the domain of culture;
that of the former is the realization of the cultural ideals already
attained in the world of actuality, which can be fulfilled perfectly
only when one has acquired it in his own person. Therefore, according
to Fichte, rulers and statesmen must be scholars and must have received
thorough academic training. To see the scholar at the head of every
department of national activity was his dream. What kind of being,
then, should this glorified scholar be?
He is to inspire and guide an ever-progressing movement of mankind
toward freedom from the bondage of Nature, of ignorance, and of
barbarism, toward its ever-increasing self-activity and supremacy.
He must rouse men to the feeling of their true wants and make them
acquainted with the means of satisfying these. “He sees not merely the
present, he sees also the future; he sees not merely the point which
humanity now occupies, but also that to which it must next advance.”
He must endeavor to have the most widely extended survey of the
actual advancement of culture, and to extend its domain further. And
since “the ultimate purpose of each individual man, as well as of all
society, and consequently of all the labors of the scholar in society,
is the moral elevation of all men ... he ought to exhibit in himself
the highest grade of moral culture then possible” (5: pp. 191-193).
To make the university “the free nurse, in every sense and in its
widest meaning,” of such scholarship was the essential aim, for which
Fichte made the plan for the national university which was soon to be
established in Berlin.
This academic training was to be special and universal at the same
time. It is special in admitting “only those who show the special
endowment for learning, and conspicuous inclination to the world
of ideas,” yet is universal in taking in “everyone who shows the
qualifications, without making any exception or having any regard
to the distinctions of parentage.” It was to be supported and
conducted by the hand of the nation, “for scholarship is not for one’s
individual satisfaction, and every talent for it is an invaluable
property of a nation” (3: p. 426). The student should be freed from
every outside care by means of a sufficient support for the present,
and the guarantee of a proper position in the future. On the other
hand, he should be completely secluded from all other activities and
distractions of life in order to devote his whole soul to his purpose.
The child destined to be a scholar is, in his early years, to be
educated differently from others. Thus, in the general scheme of the
people’s education, the time which is spent by others in their economic
activities is to be devoted in his case to the intellectual work of
self-active learning and solitary thinking, although he shares with
the rest in bodily exercises and in acquiring a general knowledge of
various industries. For him the study of language and acquiring the
power of speech is necessary and important. The classics, especially
Greek, should come earlier than the modern languages, because Fichte
thought the former have more unity and harmony between the form and the
content than have the latter, thus favoring the development of vital
speech-power in the child.
A university is “the school for the art of scientific use of
intellect.” To implant the lofty sense of academic dignity, to
cultivate the unceasing love for higher culture, to train the power
of independent creative thinking, are the essential things aimed at.
Here the student educates himself, professors being nothing but his
assistants or else elder fellow-scholars. Lectures should be given,
both in spirit and content, as a form of answer to the questions
previously raised by the student, or as the presentation of a new
problem which shall be the topic of the next hour. Besides the lecture,
the following practices are recommended:
1. “_Examina._”--These are not given for testing how far the
student can reproduce what he has read or heard, but for inducing him
to make the questions presented by his learned master the premises from
which to deduce his own answers.
2. “_Conversatoria_,” in which the student asks questions freely,
and the master requestions upon them--a sort of Socratic dialogue.
3. Written research work assigned to the student on a certain problem.
The advanced student is encouraged to offer it to himself and also to
others. Then, since books constitute the main resource of accumulated
knowledge, the student should be taught and accustomed to use them
methodically and skilfully. Thus everything goes simply to arouse the
self-activity of the student, and to provide the materials for it.
On the part of the academic teacher the university is not to be looked
upon as the place for merely communicating book contents in a slightly
modified form; the university stands for the advancement of science and
the scientific spirit; not mere repetition nor a little trimming up of
the old and known, but the bringing forth of the new, and the extension
of the frontier of knowledge. The academic teacher must always be an
investigator and producer. Fichte advises that no one should stay in
that calling “in which the fountain of youth does not still flow on
with an unimpaired vigor.” “Let him,” he says, “faithfully intrust
himself to its current so long as it will bear him forward; when it
leaves him, then let him be content to retire from this ever-shifting
scene of onward movement--let him separate the dead from the living”
(5: p. 307). Readiness of communication, on the one hand, and
plasticity to foreign modes of thought and new ideas, on the other, is
required of him.
Fichte’s schemes both for popular education and the university were
too Utopian to be immediately adopted. Actual reforms were carried out
by those of more practical talents, and according to more practical
conceptions. But the world is now coming to realize the worth of the
vision embodied in his “economic” or “citizenship” education; and as to
his high academic ideal, it has gradually won the victory in the most
advanced universities of to-day.
REFERENCES
1. +Barnard, Henry.+ Pestalozzi and His Educational System.
Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y., 1906. 751 pages.
2. +Duproix, Paul.+ Kant et Fichte et le Problème de
l’Education. Second edition. Alcan, Paris, 1897. 260 pages.
3. +Fichte, Johann Gottlieb.+ Reden an die deutsche Nation.
Sämtliche Werke. 8 vols. Veit, Berlin, 1845-1846. Vol. VII, pp.
259-499.
4. ---- Aphorismen über Erziehung aus dem Jahre, 1804. Sämtliche
Werke. Vol. VIII, pp. 353-360.
5. ---- Vocation of the Scholar. On the Nature of the Scholar. Popular
Works of J. G. Fichte. 2 vols. Trübner, London, 1889. Vol. I, pp.
149-317.
6. ---- Deducirter Plan zu Berlin zu errichtenden höheren Lehranstalt.
Sämtliche Werke. Vol. VIII, pp. 97-219.
7. +Gutmann, S. Hirsch.+ J. G. Fichte’s soziale Pädagogik.
Scheitlin, Bern, 1907. 100 pages.
8. +Heman, Friedrich.+ Geschichte der neueren Pädagogik.
Zickfeldt, Osterwieck, 1904. 436 pages.
9. +Keferstein, Horst.+ J. G. Fichte’s pädagogische Schriften
und Ideen. Richler, Wien, 1883. 238 pages.
10. +Rein, Georg Wilhelm+, editor. Encyklopädisches Handbuch
der Pädagogik. 8 vols. Beyer, Langensalza, 1895-1906. Vol. II.
11. +Scherer, Heinrich.+ Die Pädagogik in ihrer Entwicklung
im Zusammenhange mit dem Kultur- und Geistesleben und ihrem Einfluss
auf die Gestaltung des Erziehungs- und Bildungswesens. Vol. II. Die
Pädagogik als Wissenschaft von Pestalozzi bis zu Gegenwart. 3 parts.
Brandstetter, Leipzig, 1897-1908.
12. +Sieler, Albien.+ Darstellung der Volkschulpädagogik. J. G.
Fichte’s im Zusammenhange mit ihren individuellen, historischen und
philosophischen Voraussetzungen. Siegismund, Leipzig, 1895. 75 pages.
13. +Strümpell, Ludwig H.+ Die Pädagogik Kant’s und Fichte’s.
Pädagogische Abhandlungen. Diechert, Leipzig, 1894. Part II.
14. +Ziegler, Theobald.+ Geschichte der Pädagogik mit
besonderer Rücksicht auf das höhere Unterrichtswesen. Beck, München,
1895. 361 pages.
CHAPTER VIII.
FRIEDRICH FROEBEL
(1782-1852)
James Munroe writes in his “The Educational Ideal”: “Practical yet
dreamy, scientific yet credulous, analytic yet mystical, filled with
fancies, symbols, extravagances, exuberant in thought and speech,
the new-born German nation was like a child, with a child’s surplus
of strength, a child’s ill-balanced imagination, a child’s elastic
vision, limited to self, yet with a sudden illuminating glimpse into
eternity. Froebel was the embodiment of this _Zeitgeist_, this
exaggeration of yearning, this overestimate of self-promise, this
glamour of existence, which characterized the Germany of sixty years
ago” (15: p. 198). He was born the son of a pious, rigorous, and active
orthodox Lutheran minister, who “never succeeded in understanding
this troublesome, dreamy, and neglected child” (2: p. 7). Having lost
his mother some four months after his birth, and having had an unkind
stepmother, a mother’s love and care were practically unknown to him.
Thus, as he writes, “unceasing self-contemplation, self-analysis, and
self-education have been the fundamental characteristics of my life
from the very first and have remained so until these later days” (7: p.
11). These circumstances of his age and his own childhood not only give
us the key to his whole life, but also to his whole philosophy. His
precocious and all-pervading religiosity, his passionate affection for
Nature, were simply natural. From a lifeless and affectionless home he
fled to the bosom of animated Nature, and thus to his mystic pantheism.
He writes, in his recollections, of one of the incidents of his early
childhood:
“I now had what I needed: to the Church was added the Nature-Temple;
to the religious Christian life, the life of Nature; to the passionate
discord of human life, the tranquil peace of plants. From that time it
was as if I held the clew of Ariadne to guide me through the labyrinth
of life. From that time humanity and Nature, the life of the soul and
the life of the flower, were closely knit together in my mind; and I
can still see my hazel buds, like angels, opening for me the great
God’s temple of Nature” (7: p. 12).
His craze for unity we can largely explain as the result of the longing
of his restless soul and hungry heart for peace. Naturally he found
a predetermined fascination in Schelling’s “Identity Philosophy,” in
which the subjective and the objective worlds are identified in one
principle. On the other hand, self-analysis necessarily leads one to
the desire of self-perfection and self-education; thus his incessant
thirst for “higher culture.” So it came that “I carried my own world
within me, and it was that for which I cared and which I cherished” (7:
p. 107).
One thing saved him from falling into a life of pure reflection. It was
the early habit of engaging in manual occupations around the home. This
he was partly forced to do in accordance with the wish of his rigorous
father, but he did it also from his own inclination. In fact, this was
another refuge for him. Probably his restless soul, oppressed by the
indifference and misapprehension of his parents, as also by isolation
from his playmates, herein found its free expression.
Thus, religion, Nature, and manual work were the three great agents of
his own education, which he later believed also to be the essential for
all others. He calls the love of Nature, the instinct of workmanship,
and religious feeling “the primitive and natural inclinations of every
human being” (7: p. 5). And all these were for him the manifestations
of a restless, incessant desire and endeavor for unity and harmony,
which he asserts is “the basis of all genuinely human development and
cultivation.”
“The Education of Man,” the most important of his writings, opens with
the following passage:
“In all things there lives and reigns an eternal law.... This
all-controlling law is necessarily based on an all-pervading,
energetic, living, self-conscious, and hence, eternal unity.... This
unity is God. All things live and have their being in and through the
Divine Unity, in and through God.... It is the destiny and lifework
of all things to unfold their essence, ... and, therefore, the Divine
Unity itself” (5: pp. 1-2).
Thus, according to Froebel, a living, energetic, self-conscious unity
is both the metaphysical reality and the human ideal, and “_Education
consists in leading man to, ... pure and unsullied consciousness and
free representation of the inner law of Divine Unity, and in teaching
him ways and means thereto_” (5: p. 2). From the Living Unity of all
existence, the living Unity of every human being is self-evident. And
here lies the real foundation stone of his philosophy of education. He
writes in his autobiography: “Mankind as a whole, as one great Unity,
had now become my quickening thought. I kept this conception constantly
before my mind” (7: p. 84). So each new-born child not only “should be
viewed and treated as a manifestation of the Divine Spirit in human
form,” but, “as a necessary essential member of humanity,” he should be
viewed and treated “in his obvious and living relations to the present,
past, and future development of humanity, in order to bring the
education of the child into harmony with the past, present, and future
development of humanity and of the race” (5: pp. 16-17).
The germ of the evolutionary idea had already been floating in the
air of the pedagogical world; we see it in Rousseau, in Kant, in
Pestalozzi, but it found its richest soil in the mind of our incessant
self-educator. Humanity, he says:
“... should, therefore, be looked upon not as perfected and developed,
not as fixed and stationary, but as steadily and progressively
growing, in a state of ever living development, ever ascending from
one stage of culture to another toward its aim, which partakes of the
infinite and eternal. It is unspeakably pernicious to look upon the
development of humanity as stationary and completed, and to see in
its present phases simply repetitions and greater generalizations of
itself. For the child, as well as every successive generation, becomes
thereby exclusively imitative, an external dead copy--as it were, a
cast of the preceding one--and not a living ideal for its stage of
development, which it had attained in human development as a whole, to
serve future generations in all time to come. Indeed, each successive
generation and each successive individual human being, inasmuch as he
would understand the past and present, must pass through all preceding
phases of human development and culture, and this should not be done
in the way of dead imitation or mere copying, but in the way of
living, spontaneous self-activity. Every human being should realize
in him these phases spontaneously and freely.... For in every human
being ... there lies and lives humanity as a whole; but in each one it
is realized and expressed in a wholly particular, peculiar, personal,
unique manner” (5: pp. 17-18).
Only this large and comprehensive view of man “can enable true genuine
education to thrive, blossom, bear fruit, and ripen.” Now, then, the
destiny of the child as a member of the family and of humanity is to
unfold and realize in him the tendencies and forces of the family and
of humanity as a whole, in their harmony, all-sidedness, and purity.
The parental character, “their intellectual and emotional drift, which,
indeed, may as yet lie dormant in both of them as mere tendencies
and energies,” are to harmonize in his development and culture. “The
natural and the divine, the terrestrial and the celestial, the finite
and the infinite,” are to be realized in him “in harmony and unison.”
This will be done “if each unfolds and realizes his own essence as
perfectly, purely, and universally as possible; and, on the other
hand, as much as possible in accordance with his own individuality and
personality.” Therefore, no constraint nor too much assistance should
be given. “The child should learn early how to find in himself the
center and fulcrum of all his powers and members, to seek his support
in this, and, resting therein, to move freely and be active, to grasp
and to hold with his own hands, to stand and walk on his own feet, to
find and observe with his own eyes, to use his members symmetrically
and equally” (5: pp. 19-21). Thus, in the “free, all-sided use” of
one’s powers, in the self-active, unhindered unfolding of every
potentiality, Froebel saw the equal fulfillment of all the claims both
of individuality and of humanity.
Rousseau fought against sacrificing the present for the future; Froebel
made it clear that the perfect fulfillment of the present is, at the
same time, the guarantee of the future. He says:
“The vigorous and complete development and cultivation of each
successive stage depends on the vigorous, complete, and characteristic
development of each and all preceding stages of life!... _The child,
the boy, the man, indeed, should know no other endeavor but to be at
every stage of development wholly what this stage calls for._ Then
will each successive stage spring like a new shoot from a healthy bud,
and at each successive stage he will with the same endeavor again
accomplish the requirements of this stage” (5: pp. 28-30).
For Rousseau the developmental stages in the child’s life were
somewhat like a succession of changes; Froebel conceived them as the
gradual unfolding of the one organic principle which underlies all
manifestations of physical and mental life. So for Froebel very many
things in the life of childhood are symbolic and point to the higher
possibilities of manhood, and he saw, in thus viewing the matter, our
best guidance for directing the child in his destiny.
“How salutary would it be for parents and child, for their present
and future, if the parents believed in this symbolism of childhood
and boyhood, if they heeded the child’s life in reference to this.
It would unite parents and children by a new living tie. It would
establish a new living connection between their present and future
life” (5: pp. 18-19).
But
“To see and respect in the child and boy the germ and promise of the
coming youth and man is very different from considering and treating
him as if he were already a man; very different from asking the child
or boy to show himself a youth or a man; to feel, to think, and
conduct himself as a youth or man” (5: p. 29).
Then what are the nature and requirements of each successive stage?
Froebel teaches us that the child is the only teacher as to his
nature and requirements. Go and observe him, then you will learn,
is his motto. But his own child psychology was as much the product
of self-introspection as of objective observation. He read his own
mentality into every child. Yet we cannot but discern the gems of
immortal insight shining from among the rubbish of obsolete speculation
and magnified symbolism.
Infancy is God in slumber. The eyes of consciousness have not yet
opened. “The external world comes to the child at first out of its
void--as it were, in misty, formless indistinctness, in chaotic
confusion--even the child and the outer world merge into each other”
(5: p. 40). Senses and limbs are the organs by which we determine the
nature and relationship of external objects. Yet, “at this stage of
development the young, growing human being cares for the use of his
body, his senses, his limbs, merely for the sake of their use and
practice, but not for the sake of the _results_ of their use.” He
simply “_plays_ with his limbs--his hands, his fingers, his lips,
his tongue, his feet, as well as the expression of his eyes and face”
(5: p. 48). Therefore education at this stage is merely to offer to him
various objects to “secure occupation for the senses and mind,” and to
prevent mental enervation and weakness.
Development of the speech function marks an epoch. “With language, the
expression and representation of the internal begin; with language,
organization, or a differentiation with reference to ends and means,
sets in.” Speech for an infant is the immediate expression of his
being. “He does not, as yet, know or view it as having a being of its
own. Like his arm, his eye, his tongue, it is one with him, and he is
unconscious of its existence.” Mental education now begins when this
instinct of self-expression manifests itself and instruction of an
informal type is now in order. “The child at this stage should see
all things rightly and accurately, and should designate them rightly
and accurately, definitely and clearly, and this applies to things
and objects themselves, as well as to their nature and properties. He
should properly designate the relations of objects in space and time,
as well as with one another; give each its proper name or word, and
utter each word in itself clearly and distinctly, according to its
constituent vocal elements” (5: p. 50-51).
Play is another form of self-expression. It is “the highest phase of
child development--of human development at this period; for _it is
self-active representation of the inner--representation of the inner
from inner necessity and impulse_.” Indeed, play is the corner-stone
of the kindergarten, and no one had before shown the inherent value of
play to child life in such strong and beautiful words as did Froebel.
“Play is the purest, most spiritual activity of man at this stage,
and, at the same time, typical of human life as a whole--of the inner
hidden natural life in man and all things. It gives joy, freedom,
contentment, inner and outer rest, peace with the world.” “Cultivate
and foster it, O mother!” exclaims he; “protect and guard it, O
father!” For “the plays of childhood are the germinal leaves of all
later life, and a child that plays thoroughly, with self-active
determination, perseveringly until physical fatigue forbids, will
surely be a thorough, determined man, capable of self-sacrifice for
the promotion of the welfare of himself and others. Is not the most
beautiful expression of child life at this time, a playing child--a
child wholly absorbed in his play--a child that has fallen asleep while
so absorbed?” (5: pp. 54-55).
Thus “play and speech constitute the element in which the child lives,”
and he animates the whole world, organic and inorganic, with his newly
awakened soul, full of self-expressing activity.
“The child at this stage imparts to each thing the faculties of life,
feeling, and speech. Of everything, he imagines it can hear. Because
the child himself begins to represent his inner being outwardly, he
imputes the same activity to all about him, to the pebble and chip of
wood, to the plant, the flower, and the animal” (5: p. 54).
In the emphasis Froebel laid on this animistic or anthropomorphic
communion of the child with Nature lies another great merit.
Rhythm as an important educational factor of early childhood is another
discovery of his. Froebel sees the natural operation of this in the
mother’s dandling of the child up and down on her hand or arm in
rhythmic movements and with rhythmic sounds. He writes:
“An early pure development of rhythmic movement would prove most
wholesome in the succeeding life periods of the human being. We
rob ourselves as educators, and we still rob the child as pupil by
discontinuing so soon the development of rhythmic movements in early
education.... Much willfulness, impropriety, and coarseness would be
taken out of his life, his movements, and actions. He would secure
more firmness and moderation, more harmony; and, later on, there would
be developed in him a higher appreciation of Nature and art, of music
and poetry” (5: pp. 70-71).
He goes even so far as to say that “for early youth, language
representation should assume a rhythmic form, for this is its first
form in the early youth of mankind.” He thinks that “all primitive
language expressions, as representations of active inner and outer
life, are necessarily rhythmic,” and “the loss of this has deprived him
and mankind as a whole of one of the foremost, most primitive, and most
natural means of elevation” (5: p. 218).
Drawing as a means of the child’s self-expression, his natural
language, is yet another discovery of Froebel. He says:
“The faculty of drawing is, therefore, as much innate in the child,
in man, as is the faculty of speech, and demands its development
and cultivation as imperatively as the latter; experience shows
this clearly in the child’s love for drawing, in the child’s
instinctive desire for drawing.” “The word and drawing belong together
inseparably, as light and shadow”; they are “mutually explanatory
and complementary; for neither one is, by itself, exhaustive and
sufficient with reference to the object represented” (5: p. 79).
His observation of the development of this drawing instinct in the
child is keen and suggestive.
“Give the child a bit of chalk or the like, and soon a new creation
will stand before him and you. Let the father, too, in a few lines
sketch a man, a horse. This man of lines, this horse of lines, will
give the child more joy than an actual man, an actual horse would do”
(5: p. 77).
This linear representation of objects
“opens to the child on the threshold of boyhood a new world in various
directions. Not only can he represent the outer world in reduced
measure, and thus comprehend it more easily with his eyes; not only
can he reproduce outwardly what lives in his mind as a reminiscence or
new association, but the knowledge of a wholly invisible world, the
world of forces, has its tenderest rootlets right here” (5: p. 76).
The beneficial effects of drawing are “more than I can enumerate--a
clear conception of forms, the power to represent the forms
independently, the fixing of the forms as such, strengthening and
practice of the arm and hand”; it “increases knowledge, awakens the
judgment and reflection, which avoids so many blunders, and which,
_in a natural way_, cannot be aroused too soon” (5: pp. 76-79).
Counting is also looked upon by Froebel as an instinct springing from
the nature of the child--“an essential need of his inner being, a
certain yearning of his spirit which should be given due expression”
(5: p. 80). “Mathematics is,” he thinks, “neither foreign to actual
life nor something deduced from life; it is the expression of life
as such: therefore its nature may be studied in life, and life may
be studied with its help” (5: p. 206). Therefore the conception of
number should not be forced in abstract form. It originates from the
reappearance of similar objects, and, according to Froebel, “the
drawing of the object leads to the discovery of number” (5: p. 80).
As to the child’s participation in the domestic activities, Froebel
lays great stress upon this since he regards it as a great source of
knowledge, the basis of the family and social bond, the soil in which
the habit of work and industry grows. Do not impose any domestic or
professional tasks upon the child for the sake of the results, but
allow his meddling with them for the sake of the activity in itself.
“The child--your child, ye fathers--feels this so intensely, so
vividly, that he follows you wherever you are, wherever you go, in
whatever you do. Do not harshly repel him; show no impatience about
his ever-recurring questions. Every harshly repelling word crushes a
bud or shoot of his tree of life. Do not, however, tell him in words
much more than he could find himself without your words.... To have
found one fourth of the answer by his own effort is of more value and
importance to the child than it is to half hear and half understand
it in the words of another; for this causes mental indolence. Do
not, therefore, always answer your children’s questions at once and
directly; but _as soon as they have gathered sufficient strength and
experience_, furnish them with the means to find them answers in
the sphere of their own knowledge” (5: pp. 86-87).
This early childhood is essentially the period of growth, of life, of
nursing, and thus its education is the duty of parents. A child’s life
at this stage is already rich and real; our task is “to guard, nurse,
and develop the inner germ of his life” by quickening all his powers
and natural gifts and to enable all his members and organs to fulfil
the requirements of these. Many “suppose the child to be empty, wish to
inoculate him with life, make him as empty as they think him to be, and
deprive him of life, as it were” (5: p. 70).
Now we come to another epoch of childhood, which Froebel calls the
stage of boyhood. The preceding period was “preëminently the period of
development of the faculty of speech” (5: p. 90). Whatever the child
perceived was designated by the word. It was the period for naming.
“Every object, everything became such, as it were, only through the
word; before it had been named, although the child might have seemed
to see it with the outer eyes, it had no existence for the child. The
name, as it were, created the thing for the child; hence, the name and
the things seemed to be one.”
But now sets in the separation between speech and the speaking
subject, the name and the object; language at last “is externalized
and materialized in signs and writing, and begins to be considered as
something actually corporeal” (5: pp. 91-93). This new period, thinks
Froebel, is preëminently the period for learning, for schooling, for
instruction proper. In the preceding stage everything was considered
as the expression of the child’s own being; the spontaneous activity
springing from his inner life was the starting-point and center of his
education; its process was the externalization of the internal. That
process is now reversed; it is the internalization of the external; we
start from the outer world and unite with it in the inner world of the
child.
“The consideration and treatment of individual and particular things,
as such, and in their inner bearings and relationships, constitute
the essential character and work of instruction.... This instruction
is conducted not so much in accordance with the nature of man as in
accordance with the fixed, definite, clear _laws_ that lie in
the nature of things, and more particularly the laws to which man and
things are equally subjected.... This implies knowledge, insight, a
conscious and comprehensive view of the field.... With this period
school begins for him, be it in the home or out of it, and taught
by the father, members of the family, or a teacher. School, then,
means here by no means the schoolroom or school-keeping, but _the
conscious communication of knowledge, for a definite purpose and in
definite inner connection_” (5: pp. 94-95).
By this it seems clear that Froebel distinguished the character and
function of the school from those of the kindergarten. He explicitly
states this in one of his letters (2: p. 155).
But the education of the efferent side of the human soul should never
be neglected. It is the inner life of a man, and its development
and cultivation must “constitute an unbroken whole, steadily and
continuously progressing, gradually ascending.” It begins with “the
feeling of community awakened in the infant, becomes in the child
impulse, inclination; these lead to the formation of the disposition
and of the heart and arouse in the boy his intellect and will” (5: pp.
95-96). Now “_to give firmness to the will, to quicken it, and make
it pure, strong, and enduring, in a life of pure humanity, is the chief
concern, the main object in the guidance of the boy_.” To attain
this aim “the starting-point of all mental activity in the boy should
be energetic and sound; the source whence it flows, pure, clear, and
ever-flowing; the direction simple, definite; the object fixed, clear,
living and life-giving, elevating, worthy of effort, worthy of the
destiny and the mission of man, worthy of his essential nature, and
tending to develop it, and give it full expression.” But the source of
the will is in the disposition and heart. Therefore “instruction and
example alone and in themselves are not sufficient; they must meet a
good, pure heart”; “activity and firmness of the will rest upon the
activity and firmness of the feelings and heart.” This latter is best
secured in the child by “the complete enjoyment of play,” yet above all
by participation in the domestic life.
“Family life alone secures the development and cultivation of a good
heart and of a thoughtful, gentle disposition in their full intensity
and vigor, also incomparably important for every period of growth,
nay, even for the whole life of man” (5: pp. 96-97).
Now in the period of boyhood the child’s play should become vigorous
and even venturesome. “He never evades an obstacle, a difficulty, nay,
he seeks it.” “Hence the daring and venturesome feats of boyhood; the
exploration of caves and ravines; the climbing of trees and mountains;
the reaching of heights and depths; the roaming through fields and
forests” (5: p. 102). And every adventure widens his scope of life,
means to him “the discovery of a new world.” Athletic games and sports
are recommended by Froebel as a means of character-building as well as
physical exercise, but the excursion was a chief educational feature
of his institute at Keilhau; he thought that every teacher ought to
conduct an excursion party at least once a week.
As to participation in the domestic occupations, it should become wider
and more real than before. In the former period it was mere imitation,
but now it is a voluntary share; formerly it was a part of play, but
now it begins to become work. “What formerly the child did only for the
sake of the activity, the boy does now for the sake of the results or
products of his activity; the child’s instinct of activity has, in the
boy, become a formative instinct, and this occupies the whole outward
life, the outward manifestation of boy-life in this period” (5: p.
99). This creative instinct is, for Froebel, the pledge of the divine
essence of the human soul, and its exercise secures the child the best
development of his spirituality and the highest felicity.
“We become truly Godlike in diligence and industry, in working and
doing, which are accompanied by the clear perception, or even by the
vaguest feeling, that we thereby represent the inner in the outer;
that we give body to spirit, and form to thought; that we render
visible the invisible; that we impart an outward, finite, transient
being to life in the spirit. Through this Godlikeness we rise more and
more to a true knowledge of God, to insight into His Spirit; and thus,
inwardly and outwardly, God comes ever nearer to us. Therefore, Jesus
so truly says in this connection of the poor, ‘Theirs is the kingdom
of heaven’ if they could but see and know it and practice it in
diligence and industry, in productive and creative work. Of children,
too, is the kingdom of heaven; for, unchecked by the presumption
and conceit of adults, they yield themselves in childlike trust and
cheerfulness to their formative and creative instincts” (5: p. 31).
Froebel pictures what a variety of materials a country home presents
for the strengthening and developing of this instinct, and how these
various occupations again stimulate our intellectual activity.
“The son accompanies his father everywhere--to the field and to the
garden, to the shop and to the counting house, to the forest and to
the meadow; in the care of domestic animals and in the making of small
articles of household furniture; in the splitting, sawing, and piling
of the wood; in all the work his father’s trade or calling involves.
Question upon question comes from the lips of the boy thirsting for
knowledge--How? Why? When? What for? Of what?--and every somewhat
satisfactory answer opens a new world to the boy” (5: pp. 101-102).
Froebel’s insight is confirmed by modern child-study, as in many other
points, in the emphasis which he laid on stories, legends, and fairy
tales as necessary food for a boy’s inner being. He says:
“There is developed in the boy at this age the desire and craving
for tales, for legends, for all kinds of stories, and later on for
historical accounts. This craving, especially in its first appearance,
is very intense; so much so that, when others fail to gratify it, the
boys seek to gratify it themselves, particularly on days of leisure
and in times when the regular employments of the day are ended” (5:
pp. 115-116).
He thinks that this is the dawn of historical interest, the longing to
know the past, and he notices the strange or almost mystic harmony or
communion between the figures and events in these stories of the past
and the children’s own inner thoughts and feelings.
Another side of the boy’s story interest is his anthropomorphism. This
has already existed during the earlier period, but it develops with the
growth of the child’s soul. Froebel says:
“There is developed in him the intense desire for fables and fairy
tales which impart language and reason to speechless things--the one
within and the other beyond the limits of human relations and human,
earthly phenomena of life.... If here, too, the boy’s desire is not or
cannot be gratified by his attendants he will spontaneously hit upon
the invention and presentation of fairy tales and fables, and either
work them out in his own mind alone or entertain his companions with
them” (5: pp. 116-117).
Boyhood is preëminently the age of day-dreams and story-telling. Again,
boyhood is the period of song. The juvenile flow of the life tide finds
its outlet in the living waves of rhythm.
“How the serene, happy boy of this age rejoices in song! He feels, as
it were, a new, true, life in song. It is the sense of growing power
that in his wandering from the valley to the hill and from hill to
hill, pours forth the joyous songs from his throat” (5: p. 118).
Songs are enjoyed by him when put into the mouths of others, because
they express the stirring of his own soul in the way he wishes.
“Whatever his mind vaguely apprehends fills his heart with joy and
pleasure, as the sense of the power and the feeling of spring, he
would fain express in words; but he feels himself unable to do so.
He seeks for words, and as he cannot yet find them in himself, he
rejoices intensely to hear them from others” (5: p. 117).
As to the subsequent stages of human life, Froebel never fulfilled his
promise to write about them. The attention and efforts of his later
years were entirely concerned with a plan for the education of early
childhood. And thus he is remembered and is to be remembered forever as
the founder of the kindergarten system. The idea of the kindergarten
rests on the belief that on the complete unfolding of the inner power
of childhood in its all-sidedness, on the full gratification of its
peculiar needs and requirements, depends the normal development of
boyhood, of youth, of man--the entire destiny of human life. This
has been recognized by every educator, but never before so keenly
and clearly as by Froebel. Moreover, for Rousseau, early childhood
was looked upon as purely a physical stage, when education should
be purely negative. “Stand aside and let Nature herself work” was
his motto. But Froebel saw plenty of room here for human coöperation
with the working of Nature. Not “Stand aside,” but “Come, let us live
with and for our children,” was what he exclaimed (5: p. 89). He saw
that the school cannot do much with the spoiled and neglected child
sent from the imperfect home, and that the present home does not well
understand nor provide sufficiently for the nature and requirements
of the child’s soul as well as body. Thus he proclaimed: “All school
education was yet without a proper initial foundation, and that,
therefore, until the education of the nursery was reformed, nothing
solid and worthy could be attained” (2: p. 35). The kindergarten
movement was originally a movement for nursery reform. It was intended
to show mothers an ideal nursery, and also to supplement, where needed,
the work of the home. It is evident that he had a sort of education of
parents in view when he first started the kindergarten. “He repeated
this again and again,” Baroness von Marenholz-Bülow, the champion of
the kindergarten movement, tells us. “‘The destiny of nations lies far
more in the hands of women--the mothers--than in the possessors of
power, or of those innovators who for the most part do not understand
themselves. We must cultivate women who are the educators of the human
race, else the new generation cannot accomplish its task.’ This was
almost always the sum of his discourse” (14: p. 4). Certainly his
kindergarten was set as the model for mothers to copy in their homes.
We find the following passage in one of his letters:
“Let young women go there and see the development of child life going
on before their eyes, noticing and understanding the laws and working
of it.” “There is little hope for improvement until mothers will begin
to educate themselves. Let them attend kindergarten and study the
system themselves” (8: p. 64).
He did “not call this by the name usually given to similar
institutions, that is, _Infant Schools_, because it is not to
be a school, for the children in it will not be schooled, but freely
developed” (2: p. 33). To use his favorite allegory, children are to be
in it like _plants_, and the attendants are like the gardeners.
The character of the kindergarten was essentially to be distinct from
that of the school. Yet in the initial motive and conception of the
kindergarten there lies the elements which allow his followers to make
the two different interpretations of the nature of the kindergarten.
One is to consider it simply as the place “to provide a condition of
life for childhood that renders it pure and beautiful,” as Herr von
Arnswald tells us--“a social nursery _par excellence_.” He says:
“The gifts and games were offered by Froebel for the purpose of
satisfying and directing the spontaneous impulse to work, but not as
a sort of nourishment to feed the mind of the child. He preferred
open pasture to stable feeding. In other words, the direction, ‘Come,
let us live for our children,’ does not mean that we shall teach
children by playing, but that we shall play with them in a sensible
way. According to this view the original idea of the kindergarten can
and should be realized in every family. It is not enough for parents,
that have neither sense nor inclination to assimilate the principle of
the Froebel system, to send their children to the kindergarten for no
other purpose than that of keeping the little ones from home.... The
transformation of the kindergarten into a children’s refuge with the
appearance of a school would surely be a crime against the nature of
the child” (8: pp. 23-24).
He even goes so far as to say:
“That a child, when watched over and cared for sympathetically, will
develop more rapidly, may be an effect, but it is not the end of the
kindergarten” (8: p. 23).
The other interpretation is represented by Arnold H. Heinemann. He
says: “It was his intention to make the kindergarten not only a, but
the sole, ‘preparatory institution for the public school’” (8: p.
27). An English writer, Boardman, counts among the advantages of the
kindergarten that it “increases their (the children’s) aptitude for
the studies of later school life,” and that it “fosters a liking for
school work.” According to him, everything should be disciplinary,
educative, and carried out with “direct aim toward intellectual, moral,
and physical development,” through “the strictly correct mode of
procedure.” He understands that:
“Unlike Pestalozzi, who believed the mother to be the chief agent
in directing the child’s education, Froebel considered that the
mother should partially relinquish the charge of the child at three
years of age, delivering him over more or less to the society of
others, who would exert a somewhat different, though still beneficial
influence over his character, by which means also his limited sphere
of experience would be gradually extended, and scope given for daily
strengthening his mental and physical powers” (1: p. 40).
That both these interpretations contain a partial truth is clear from
the following quotation from Froebel’s “Prospectus of an Institution
for the Training of Nurses and Educators of Children.” He states:
“The institution intends to render generally accessible an education
in agreement with the nature of the child and of man, and satisfying
the demands of the age, and to show how such an education can be
carried on in the family. This can only be done by preparing young
ladies for the business of nursing, developing, and educating a child
from its birth until it can go to school. The course will also qualify
its pupil to prepare children for the first grade of the elementary
course of the public school” (8: pp. 71-72).
Further, he writes:
“A complete preparation for bringing up and educating children ought
to make the pupil theoretically and practically conversant with all
the requirements of the child concerning its bodily (dietetic) and
mental (pedagogic) needs from the cradle to school age. But that is
not enough: the normal school pupil ought also to be enabled to impart
a good preparation for the first grade of the elementary classes of
the public school” (8: p. 74).
These “child nurses” and “child guides” were to go out as professional
women, and “provide kindergarten training within the family” as
mother’s helpers. “But since every family cannot afford to do this
individually, it should be carried out as a problem of general
coöperation, to be solved by and for all the people.” In his invitation
to form a “General German Educational Union,” Froebel had spoken as
follows: “The improvements of education ought to begin in the home
circle, starting with the groundwork necessary for every education,
namely, the careful development of children previous to their reception
into the public school,” and “when kindergarten training is not within
reach, the union ought to devise means for procuring the necessary
help for the introduction of such training into the family circle or
otherwise” (8: p. 39). But, under the circumstances of the age, and in
the course of time, the domestic aspect of the kindergarten receded
into the background, and the institutional aspect developed, with its
natural consequence of systematization and formalization.
The original spirit of the kindergarten training was the careful
fostering and the full gratification of all the instinctive,
spontaneous activities of the child’s body and soul. The free and
complete unfolding and development of his life and being was its sole
aim. All the plays and occupations of the child were considered simply
as the free, spontaneous expression of his instinctive activities,
springing from the necessity of his inner being--the externalization
of the internal. But, gradually and unconsciously, the means and
inventions to supply the demands of this child nature became end in
themselves; the plays and occupations became the instruction and the
schooling; it came to be that the child was treated as if he lived in
order to learn these things; the “gifts,” which were invented only as
one of thousands of means to aid the child’s development, came to be
almost the whole business of the kindergarten. Let it liberate itself
from “the increasing worship of the baggages of his pedagogy,” and
return to the never-dying spirit of its originator. “Let us learn from
our children. Let us give heed to the gentle admonitions of their life,
to the silent demands of their minds” (5: p. 89).
As to the estimation of Froebel’s pedagogy there is a great disparity
of opinions. James Munroe thinks that, “without being a psychologist,
he gave a psychologic twist to all his theories, and complacently
esteemed his will-o’-the-wisp of fancy to be the beacon lights of
progress” (15: p. 200). Compayré’s criticism is no less unfavorable
when he says: “An impartial and thorough study of Froebel’s work
will abate rather than encourage this excessive infatuation and
this somewhat artificial enthusiasm.” In his opinion, “like most of
the Germans of this century, he has ventured on the conception of a
nebulous philosophy, and, following the steps of Hegel, he has too
often deserted the route of observation and experiment, to strike
out into metaphysical divigations.” “But,” he adds, “his practical
work is worth more than his writings, and he cannot be denied the
glory of having been a bold and happy innovator in the field of early
education” (4: p. 447). Quick considers his “Education of Man” as “a
book with seven seals,” and confesses that “at times he goes entirely
out of sight, and whether the words we hear are the expression of
deep truth or have absolutely no meaning at all, I for my part am at
times totally unable to determine” (17: p. 397). Yet he says: “All
the best tendencies of modern thought on education seem to me to
culminate in what was said and done by Friedrich Froebel, and I have
little doubt that he has shown the right road for future advance”
(17: p. 384). G. Stanley Hall, whose educational ideas have much in
common with Froebel, says: “His was one of the deepest, truest, and
most intuitive of minds,” and “his heart was one of the most devoted
to be found in the whole history of education” (11: p. 579). But he
regrets that “unfortunately his schematizations and applications were
not only premature but overdone.” Froebel, as a man and a thinker,
was a mystic, a pantheistic or theosophic mystic; in his training and
vocation he had been a civil engineer before he became a teacher.
This strange combination is reflected upon his kindergarten pedagogy,
ingenious schemes and devices dignified by esoteric speculations. Yet
behind these unworthy “pedagogic scarecrows” one cannot but discern
the immortal starlight of his genius brightening the highway of future
education.
The great idea of developmental stages introduced into the educational
world by Comenius was chiefly in the line of instruction, and rather
artificial. Rousseau’s great genius made it more vital and real, but
he viewed it chiefly from the standpoint of training. Froebel took a
more comprehensive and philosophical view of the matter, and combined
the tendencies of both. And while the Frenchman excels in his treatment
after the age of the teens, the German confines his study to the age of
childhood, best supplementing the former. Rousseau as a Romanticist,
unfettered by the conventions of society, called to us: “Give back to
the child its world.” Froebel, whose childhood was a life misunderstood
and mistreated, says: “Find the child’s soul and restore it to him.”
Pestalozzi wanted to restore home to the child and make it its school.
Froebel wanted to make it the ideal nursery by organizing all the
educative forces in and around it into a unity or system. Pestalozzi
tried to systematize the groundwork of sense-education, Froebel that of
instinct-cultivation. For Pestalozzi the domestic life was the chief
agent of the child’s natural development; Froebel added to it free play
in the lap of nature. For Pestalozzi, education was the development of
man by the exercise of his powers; for Froebel it was the unfolding of
the germinal spirit by self-active creation. Fichte’s creative soul
formed the cosmos within itself; it was mainly the creation of the
world of ideas; but Froebel’s produces its creation in the world of
objects. Pestalozzi became an educator by the way of a social reformer;
Froebel, by the way of a teacher. The former aimed to unite education
with society; the latter aimed to unite instruction with education.
Pestalozzi’s heart throbbed for degraded humanity as a whole, and
wanted to make out of it a people with economic independence, political
equality, enlightened intellect, and pure, loving, and pious heart;
Froebel’s eyes penetrated to the ungratified longings of an individual
soul, not understood even by itself, and “sought to give to man
himself” (7: p. 49) by leading him to what his inner nature craves to
be. If Pestalozzi was the greater educator, Froebel was the greater
teacher.
To leave these summary comparisons, Froebel is the best and truest
successor of Pestalozzi, the more so from the very fact that he
differed from the latter in many respects. By his clearer and more
comprehensive understanding of the child’s nature and wants, by his
enlarging the means to meet these, by his extending the scope and stage
of educability of the child, he best complements the work begun by his
predecessor. We may say with Carl Cassau: “He has regained for the
child its paradise, and thus crowned the work of Pestalozzi” (18: p.
464).
REFERENCES
1. +Boardman, J. H.+ Educational Ideas of Froebel and
Pestalozzi. Second edition. Normal Press, London. (Normal Tutorial
Series.) 190-. 76 pages.
2. +Bowen, Herbert Courthope.+ Froebel and Education by
Self-Activity. Scribner, New York, 1897. 209 pages.
3. +Cole, P. R.+ Herbart and Froebel: an Attempt at Synthesis.
Teacher’s College, Columbia University, New York, 1907. 116 pages.
4. +Compayré, Jules Gabriel.+ History of Pedagogy. Translated,
with an introduction, notes, and an index, by W. H. Payne. Heath &
Co., Boston, 1903. 597 pages.
5. +Froebel, Friedrich Wilhelm August.+ Education of Man.
Translated and annotated by W. H. Hailman. (International Education
Series.) Appleton, New York, 1887. 332 pages.
6. ---- Mother Songs, Games, and Stories. Translated by Francis and
Emily Lord, containing original illustrations and the music. New and
revised edition. Rice, London, 1890. 36 + 212 + 75 pages.
7. ---- Autobiography. Translated and annotated by E. Michaelis and H.
K. Moore. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y., 1889. 167 pages.
8. ---- Letters. Edited by A. E. Heinemann. Lee & Shepard, Boston,
1903. 182 pages.
9. ---- Letters on the Kindergarten. Edited and annotated by E.
Michaelis and H. K. Moore. Sonnenschein, London, 1891. 331 pages.
10. ---- Pedagogics of the Kindergarten; or His Ideas Concerning the
Play and the Playthings of the Child. Translated by Josephine Jarvis.
Appleton, New York, 1895. 37 + 337 pages. (International Education
Series.)
11. +Hall, Granville Stanley.+ Some Defects of the Kindergarten
in America. _Forum_, January, 1900. Vol. XXVIII, pp. 579-591.
12. +Hanschmann, Alexander Bruno.+ Friedrich Froebel, die
Entwicklung seiner Erziehungsidee in seinem Leben. Bacmeister,
Eisenach, 1874. 480 pages.
13. +MacVannel, John Angus.+ The Educational Theories of
Herbart and Froebel. Teacher’s College, Columbia University, New York,
1906. 120 pages.
14. +Marenholz-Bülow, Bertha Maria.+ Reminiscences of Friedrich
Froebel. Translated by Mrs. Horace Mann. With a sketch of the life
of Friedrich Froebel by Emily Schirreff. Lee & Shepard, Boston;
Dillingham, New York, 1895. 359 pages.
15. +Munroe, James Phinney.+ The Educational Ideal: an Outline
of its Growth in Modern Times. Heath & Co., Boston, 1896. 262 pages.
16. +Portugall, Adele von.+ Friedrich Froebel, sein Leben und
Wirken. Teubner, Leipzig, 1905. 154 pages.
17. +Quick, Robert Hebert.+ Essays on Educational Reformers.
Appleton, New York, 1890. 560 pages. The same (International Education
Series), 1903. 568 pages.
18. +Rein, Georg Wilhelm.+ Encyklopädisches Handbuch der
Pädagogik. 8 vols. Beyer, Langensalza, 1895-1906. Vol. II.
19. +Scherer, Heinrich.+ Die Pädagogik in ihrer Entwicklung
im Zusammenhange mit dem Kultur- und Geistesleben und ihrem Einfluss
auf die Gestaltung des Erziehungs- und Bildungswesens. Vol. II. Die
Pädagogik als Wissenschaft von Pestalozzi bis zur Gegenwart. 3 parts.
Brandstetter, Leipzig, 1897-1908.
20. +Schmid, Karl Adolf.+ Geschichte der Erziehung vom Anfang
an bis auf unsere Zeit. 5 vols. Cotta, Stuttgart, 1884-1902. Vol. III.
CHAPTER IX.
JOHANN FRIEDRICH HERBART
(1776-1841)
Pestalozzi found the most original successor of his educational reform
in the intuitive mind of Froebel; the work of education as a benevolent
and intelligent assistance to the natural evolution of the child-soul
was carried on further by the latter. But the successor most competent
to systematize and complete his pedagogical ideas was found in the
analytical mind of Herbart; Pestalozzi’s innovations in the field of
elementary instruction underwent a careful working over by this keen
and comprehensive intellect of thorough academic training. To bring
about psychological unity and sequence in school instruction was one
of the life aims of Froebel, but he stopped short at the kindergarten,
and, moreover, left us no scientific theory. Herbart, on the contrary,
not only aimed at the same, but worked out a system on the broadest
scientific and philosophic basis which his age permitted him. According
to Herbart, “to discover this sequence is Pestalozzi’s chief effort and
likewise my own great ideal.” He found the solution in the principle
of the A. B. C. of perception, “that grand idea of its discoverer,
the noble Pestalozzi,” as he called it. But “Pestalozzi has only
worked out the application of the principle within the narrow sphere
of elementary instruction. It belongs, in truth, to education as a
whole, though it needs for that a further development” (6: p. 178).
This Pestalozzian principle, interpreted by Herbart, probably means the
systematic building up of the entire mental mechanism of the pupil from
its simplest and fundamental elements or constituents, in the necessary
psychological order and with mathematical exactness.
These two German educators, Froebel and Herbart, who both may be called
the contemporary disciples of the great Swiss reformer, have much in
common in their pedagogical ideas, but they were totally different in
temperament, training, metaphysical conceptions, and practical careers.
They do not seem even to have known each other. Herbart reminds me,
more than anyone else, of Kant, of whom he was a great admirer and
to whom he seems to owe much. In his rather stoical physiognomy,
in his perfect poise and well-balanced personality, in his sharp
analytic intellect, in his instinct for schematic systematization and
elaboration, in his comprehensive, all-sided view of problems, in
his scholarly sincerity, in his combination of speculativeness and
empiricism, of theoretical and practical interest, he is the second
Kant in the history of philosophy. There is a still more interesting
comparison. As Kant endeavored to clear away all the one-sided
dogmatic views of preceding metaphysics by the standard of his
analytic epistemology and to establish in their place a new system of
philosophy, upon the unshakable basis of the _a priori_ categories
of knowledge, so Herbart tried the same in the field of pedagogy, using
his analytical psychology as the dissecting knife for the “vulgar”
theories of his forerunners and the basis of his own “scientific”
pedagogy. “The _a priori_ possibility of all the activities of the
human mind” shows him the only means of promoting the aims and removing
the hindrances of education. All the educational ideals, theories, and
practices, however beautiful and ingenious they sound, must be judged
by this standard. If Kant’s philosophy is the critical philosophy,
Herbart’s pedagogy is the critical pedagogy. And if Kant, coming after
Rousseau, succeeded in opening a new era in the schoolmen’s philosophy,
so Herbart was an epoch-maker in the history of the schoolmen’s
pedagogy. But the name of the father of modern education will ever
remain Pestalozzi, as the honor of the creator of modern tendencies of
thought will be conferred upon Rousseau instead of Kant, if one looks
at things from a broad, human, cultural standpoint rather than the
narrow, academic one.
Kant saw the necessity and possibility of scientific pedagogy, and
had an unrealized dream of establishing a pedagogical system as the
culmination of all the philosophical branches. This, Herbart worked
at with painstaking effort, and thought he succeeded in it. Professor
Rein is justified in saying that, “without doubt, Herbart, among all
German philosophers, made the greatest and most thorough investigation
in this field.... He is the only one among the original thinkers of
modern times who not merely casually touched, but directed the whole
force of his theoretical and practical knowledge upon the question of
pedagogy” (16: p. 462). Kant recommends, in his pedagogical lectures,
the establishment of experimental schools for the advancement of
educational art. Herbart realized the idea by organizing a pedagogical
seminary with a practice school in connection with the University
of Königsberg, where he was invited in 1809 to fill the chair once
occupied by Kant, and long desired by him. And to-day we see, thanks
to this impetus, similar institutes established in many German
universities.
A German writer has called Pestalozzi the Kant of pedagogy and
didactics, but to me no one seems better to suit the name than
our philosopher-pedagogist. But we must not overlook an important
difference which exists between the two philosophers: Kant stood
more under the influence of natural science, while Herbart remained
more under the influence of the classics. So the former is the more
naturalistic, and the latter more humanistic, in his educational
standpoint. This may be partly due to the difference of the times in
which they lived, partly to that of their training, and also of their
personalities. While they resemble each other in their intellectuality,
there seems to be more iron in Kant and more warmth in Herbart;
certainly the latter had more appreciation of the æsthetic aspect of
things than the former.
No education without instruction, no instruction without education,
is the keynote of the whole Herbartian pedagogy. From Locke down,
the essential trend of educational reforms has been in the direction
of exalting discipline and training, natural growth and experience,
thrusting instruction into the background. Not knowledge, not
intellect, but the virtues, character, will, heart, man himself,
was the fundamental aim of education, and instruction was accounted
as only contributing to it in a secondary or tertiary way. Herbart
agreed with his predecessors in seeing the main purpose of education
in the formation of character; but, according to him, instruction
was the chief means for attaining this end, and consequently it was
the essential business of educators. To him, “to present the whole
treasure of accumulated research in a concentrated form to the youthful
generation is the highest service which mankind at any period of his
existence can render to his successors” (9: p. 81). And herein lies
the inspiration of the teacher’s calling. However, he regained this
importance for the function of instruction by giving it a higher
meaning than the mere imparting of miscellaneous knowledge. In order
to see this we must go a little into his psychology, upon which his
pedagogy rests.
The new departure which Herbart made in psychology was that he
dispersed the ghost of “faculties,” which had been attributed to an
entity called soul, and substituted in its place the manifold images
or representations as the phenomena of our psychic life. He argues:
“It is an error indeed to look upon the human soul as an aggregate of
all sorts of faculties” (8: p. 15). And to reduce these to one and the
same active principle is to make the theory still worse. “The soul is a
simple essence, not merely without parts, but also without any kind of
multiplicity in its quality” (11: p. 119).
“The soul has no innate dispositions (_Anlage_), nor faculties
(_Vermögen_) whatever, either for the purpose of receiving or
for the purpose of producing. It is, therefore, no _tabula rasa_
in the sense that impressions foreign to itself may be made upon it;
moreover, in the sense indicated by Leibnitz, it is not a substance
which includes within itself original self-activity. It has originally
neither concepts nor feelings nor desires. It knows nothing of itself
and nothing of other things; also in it lie no forms of perception
and thought, no laws of willing and action, and not even a remote
predisposition to any of these” (11: p. 120).
As to the metaphysical question, “What is the soul in its essence?”
Herbart endeavors to give no answer. It “is totally unknown, and will
forever remain so. It is as little an object of speculative as of
empirical psychology” (11: p. 120).
Now, soul is entirely deprived of all content, qualities, attributes,
and tendencies, and reduced to a sort of mathematical point, or
something like the Kantian _Ding-an-sich_. It is a “_Real_,”
he says. But its entity is equal to nonentity. A way is opened when he
tells that there is one original power possessed by the soul. This is
the reaction to external stimuli, or the power of “self-preservation,”
as he calls it. By this reaction representations are produced, and when
once produced they stay in the mind, ready to be reproduced and develop
through the process of mutual interaction into concepts and higher
forms of thought.
Thus, representations or ideas constitute the primary content of
soul. However, from the contrast or counter reactions of these ideas
there result secondary states, which are what we call feelings or
volitions. These three phases of our soul life--ideation, feeling, and
volition--“are constantly to be found in combination,” and they are
together “in a constant change.” The “heart (_Gemüth_), however,
has its source in the mind--in other words, feeling and desiring are
conditions, and for the most part changeable conditions of concepts”
(11: p. 26). The fundamental points in all this are that a soul is what
it itself builds up by experience, namely, by its relation to external
stimuli; that ideas constitute the primary and constant part of the
soul, while feeling and volition are only the outcome of the various
relations between these ideas.
Now the ultimate aim of education is the formation of character.
Character means the stability of will, or “the inner freedom” of will.
When will always chooses the good by its self-determination it is said
to have freedom. This means that each individual act of willing works
in harmony with the already existing system of wills; and in the full
attainment of this freedom or harmony lies the perfection of will or
character; morality means our striving toward this perfection. But,
according to Herbart, the source of will is the idea. “The circle
of thought contains the store of that which by degrees can mount
by the steps of interest to desire, and then by means of action to
volition.... The whole inner activity, indeed, has its abode in the
circle of thought. Here is found the initiative life, the primal
energy; ... Clearness, association, system, and method must rule here”
(9: p. 213) in order to secure a free, easy, energetic, and steady
activity of the will; and since meagerness of the store of ideas means
meagerness of interests, of motives, consequently, of the directions
of will activity, we must endeavor to enrich the circle of thought
as well as to make it clear and coherent. The help we extend to this
enrichment and systematization of ideas we call instruction. Our
ideas come from two main sources--experience of the objective world
and human intercourse. From the former develops the “empirical,”
the “speculative,” and the æsthetic interests; from the latter the
“sympathetic,” the social, and the religious interests. These are six
divisions of interest, according to Herbart. All of these interests
must be aroused and harmoniously developed in order that the child
may have a rich and coherent circle of thought. This is called, in
the Herbartian terminology, “many-sidedness of interest.” Many-sided
interest prevents one from falling into egoism; it provides the basis
for social bond and cooperation. By having a wide range of motives, and
consequently a balance of the will, one will find in it a “protection
in the future from the yoke of the desires and the passions. It will
arm him against fortune’s changes, and will make life worth living,
even when a cruel fate has robbed him of his dearest. It will guard him
from all errors which spring from idleness, and will provide him with a
new calling when the old has been closed to him. It will raise him to
the level from which earthly possessions and the successes of worldly
efforts seem but accidents which cannot touch the true self, for above
them stands the moral character, grand and free” (6: p. 96). Thus, as
the end of education is character, so the direct aim of instruction
is many-sided interest. Consequently, instruction should be, first of
all, manifold, and not one-sided. “Every avenue of approach should be
thrown open.” The apperceptive capacity of the child should be moved in
all directions. Of course we must accommodate the subject-matter to the
great variety of endowments the child presents. “Yet while instruction
must thus be differentiated, it should not be made so special as
to cultivate only the more prominent gifts; otherwise the pupil’s
less vigorous mental faculties would be wholly neglected and perhaps
suppressed” (8: p. 42).
Instruction should always follow the gradual progress of interest in
the pupil. A new apperception, a new interest is invariably to be
grafted upon the already existing ones. “When interest has not been
aroused, compulsory acquisition is not only worthless, leading as
it does to soulless, mechanical activity, but positively injurious,
because it vitiates the pupils’ mental aptitude and disposition” (8:
p. 290). Not mastery of a certain skill or thoroughness in any one
of the branches of knowledge, but fondness for these, accompanied
by the desire to further them, is the main thing, especially in
the early stages of instruction. “Interest means self-activity.
The demand for a many-sided interest is, therefore, a demand for a
many-sided self-activity” (8: p. 60). Herbart condemns the “_a
priori_ assumptions that certain subjects must be taught.” “The
intellectual self-activity of the pupil,” this is the end of “educative
instruction.” “This, and not mere knowledge, any more than utility,
determines the point of view with regard to the instruction material”
(8: p. 97).
Attention is another aspect of interest. It “may be broadly defined
as an attitude of mind in which there is readiness to form new ideas”
(8: p. 62). There are two kinds of attention--voluntary or forced,
and involuntary or spontaneous. The latter is “far more desirable and
fruitful,” for “forced attention does not suffice for instruction,
even though it may be had through disciplinary measures” (8: p. 135).
The involuntary attention is again divided into the primitive and the
apperceiving. “Primitive or original attention depends primarily upon
the strength of the sense impressions,” and the pleasure it affords (8:
p. 64). This signifies the same thing as momentary interest. We must
secure this in order to render instruction effective. “_Tediousness
is the greatest sin of instruction_” (5: p. 82). Apperceiving
attention feeds on the primitive attention; it is the outcome of
cultivated or permanent interest, and the expression of our whole
accumulated experience of the world and life.
The function of instruction is, we have been told, to systematize
the child’s thought as well as to enrich it. We are not only to pile
up the materials in his mind, but to construct them into a solid,
planful structure. Facts need a methodical treatment, Herbart claims,
in order that they may ever enlarge the scope of our mental activity.
This process of methodical treatment is called by the Herbartians “the
formal steps of instruction.” The perception or the idea of a thing
must be first made clear, then associated with the perception or the
idea of other things; thirdly, systematized with the whole previous
experience or stock of knowledge; and, lastly, made a living knowledge
by practical application.
In the process of instruction we may distinguish three modes or
phases--the purely presentative, the analytic, and the synthetic
instruction. The purely preservative or descriptive method aims to
produce results akin to an extension of the pupils’ range of actual
experience. Although it can only be applied to concrete matters, “skill
in this direction is the surest means of securing interest.” Free oral
presentation produces an effect that reading never does. To secure
success in this, “a cultivated style of speaking,” “adaptation of the
vocabulary employed, both to the subject-matter and to the intelligence
of the pupils, and adjustment of the phraseology to the pupils’ stage
of culture” and careful preparation are essential requisites. The aim
“should be to make the pupil realize events and objects as vividly as
if they were actually present to his eye and ear” (8: pp. 107-108).
But without previous experience, or at least a sufficient basis for
imaginative construction on the part of pupils, this would naturally
fail. Therefore we must endeavor to enlarge his apperceptive mass by
the aid of frequent excursions, by plentiful exhibitions of objects and
pictures, by giving the child a wide acquaintance with sense material.
Children in their natural experience or learning gather only a crude
mass of facts, resulting often in a chaotic apprehension. These facts,
therefore, must be worked over and rearranged in their minds in order
to become true knowledge. The instruction which aims at this is called
“Analytic” instruction. It is “awakening attention and reflection
through instruction, or exercise in thinking”; it is a sort of mental
cud of the whole stock of children’s direct and reproduced experience.
It consists in pointing out the main facts of a given whole, their
relations, the size, form, weight, number, attributes, uses of things,
in comparing, discriminating, generalizing, and classifying them; and
it may further involve the consideration of natural or artificial
origin and development of things.
“Analytic instruction” must depend on the materials already existing in
the pupil’s mind, and is thus limited by them. These are, of course,
insufficient for the rearing of his mental structure which may serve
his varied life-purposes. Something new and strange must be brought
in from outside his immediate environment. This is the function of
“synthetic instruction.” The quarry from which the materials come is
coextensive with the cultural history of the human race, including
the whole stock of literature and science. Synthetic instruction is
thus cultural instruction _per se_. It “builds with its own
stones,” the teacher himself determining directly the sequence and
grouping of parts of the lesson. Although interest partly depends on
the native capacity and inclination of the pupils, yet the choice of
the subject-matter and the manner of its presentation can to a large
extent determine it. “Synthetic instruction must offer subjects capable
of arousing lasting and spontaneously radiating interest.... The first
place belongs rather to those studies which appeal to the mind in a
variety of ways and are capable of stimulating each pupil according to
his individuality. For such subjects ample time must be allowed; they
must be made the object of prolonged diligent effort” (8: p. 127). For
the treatment of the subject the general order is, of course, “the easy
before the difficult, or, more specifically, that which prepares the
way, before that which cannot be firmly grasped without preliminary
knowledge”; things naturally must be brought down within the reach of
the pupils’ understanding, yet not made so easy as to exclude effort on
his part.
But Herbart shows his genuine pedagogic insight in warning against a
too strict adherence to logical sequence, or a too exacting insistence
upon perfect mastery in preliminary knowledge, as “equivalent to
scaring away interest.” He says:
“To make the road so level as to do away entirely with the necessity
for occasional leaps, means to provide for the convenience of the
teacher rather than for that of the pupils. The young love to climb
and jump; they do not take kindly to an absolutely level path” (8: p.
128).
Eager as he was in his advocacy of methodical instruction, yet he did
not overlook the greater importance of the pupil’s interest in the
content of subject-matter taught. After calling cursory reading the
worst method of beginning the study of languages, he adds:
“Even cursory reading, however, produces good results under one
condition, namely, the existence of a lively interest in the contents”
(8: p. 132).
As Herbart’s desire and attempt to bring about sequence and order in
instruction became schematized by some of his followers, the most
prominent of whom are Ziller and Rein, into “formal steps,” so his
endeavor to introduce unity and harmony into education was attenuated
by them into the doctrines of “culture stages” and “concentration
center.” The doctrine of “culture stages” is stated by Ziller as
follows:
“The mental development of the child corresponds, in general, to the
chief phases in the development of mankind. It therefore cannot be
better furthered than when he receives his mental nourishment from
the general development of culture as it is found in literature and
history. Every pupil should accordingly pass successively through
each of the chief epochs of the general mental development of mankind
suitable to his stage of development. The material of instruction,
therefore, should be drawn from the thought material of that stage of
historical development in culture which runs parallel with the present
mental state of the pupil” (6: p. 122).
In accordance with this theory, Ziller selected the following topics
which, he thought, would fit respectively the developmental stages
of children in the eight years of the school course: (1) Epic fairy
tales, (2) Robinson Crusoe, (3) History of the Patriarchs, (4) Judges
in Israel, (5) Kings in Israel, (6) Life of Christ, (7) History of
the Apostles, (8) History of the Reformation. And parallel to the
history of the Israelites, literature taken from German history was
to be taught. Not being satisfied with this artificial matching and
grading, Ziller wanted further to make the above-mentioned materials
the center of all instruction, connecting with them the teaching not
only of language, but of arithmetic, drawing, geography, and science.
With Professor Rein this idea was more reasonably modified. He also
uses these historical-humanistic studies as the “concentration-center,”
but other materials are only to be coördinated with them so far as
possible, not entirely absorbed into them.
Instruction, although it is the main part of education, must be
assisted by two other functions in order to be effective; namely,
government and discipline. The function of government is to keep
the pupils in order, in quiet, and in abeyance to the will of the
teacher. It is mere, though necessary, preparation for instruction and
discipline. It concerns itself only with the present of the pupil,
while instruction and discipline look to his future. Government
involves keeping children in constant occupation suitable to their
age and individuality, supervision, with numerous commands and
prohibitions, and certain rewards and punishments.
Instruction aims at the formation of character through the formation
of a system of sound judgments and clear insights, which motivate the
good will. It is discipline that completes the work of instruction by
the habituation of the will in the direction of virtue. Its task is
to harmonize and unify the manifold acts of will by subordinating
single momentary volitions to the moral ego which is gradually to
be formed in the mind of the child. As the object of instruction is
to give moral illumination to the will, so that of discipline is to
develop “moral strength of character.” Discipline is distinguished from
government by its being chiefly concerned with inner volition, while
the latter mainly deals with outward action. So it is not applied,
like government, by enforcement, but consists in reciprocal personal
reaction between the teacher and the pupil. Without the voluntary
reaction or willing coöperation on the part of the latter, discipline
is futile. Certain personal attitudes, sympathy and helpfulness on
the part of the teacher, confidence and dependence on the part of the
pupil, are the first requisites of training.
Thus we see that Herbart brought about, in his own way, a
reconciliation between the exclusive resort to formal discipline in
contempt of instruction, by means of which the source of rich and
refined motives is supplied, and the over-exaltation of impartment
of knowledge to the neglect of training, by which alone it becomes
power and life--giving also a due importance to the preliminary and
supporting function of supervision or government. In instruction
itself, also, the two opposite tendencies, the humanistic and the
empirical, find a higher unity. The humanistic school claimed the
knowledge stored in the history and literature of the race alone as
worth imparting, while the empirical asserted that the knowledge coming
from immediate personal experience alone deserves the name. Herbart
takes individual experience as the leading-string of instruction, and
unites with it the experience of the whole human race, incorporated in
culture and science.
In regard to the relation of the state and the home as educational
agencies, again, he gives a harmony to the one-sided views held by his
predecessors by making clear the particular positions occupied by both.
The state requires from its citizens their social and professional
efficiency. Hence it gives the best possible education to them to
produce this efficiency. Thus, the advancement of technical knowledge
and the multiplication of specialized scholarships are well secured
in the hand of the state. But it is not concerned so much with the
particular needs, nor the proportional development of the individual as
an individual, as with his serviceability to itself in his particular
line or sphere of work. “The state applies its test to what can be
tested, to the outward side of conduct and of knowledge. It does not
penetrate the inner life. Teachers in public schools cannot penetrate
much farther; they, too, are more concerned with the sum total of the
knowledge imparted by them, than with the individual and the way in
which he relates his knowledge to himself” (8: p. 318).
“The family, on the other hand, interested as it is in the individual,
must take the pedagogical point of view, according to which every human
being is to realize the best of which he is capable. It is essential
that families should grasp this distinction and accordingly, concern
themselves not with the greatness of particular achievements, but with
the totality of culture possible for the individual” (8: pp. 289-290).
As to moral discipline, the very nature of family organism requires
it to go deeper than the state does or ever can. “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.”
However, the family as it is has its drawbacks. Its 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” (8: p. 318).
So Herbart advocates that, “as much as possible, education must return
to the family,” provided “that sound pedagogical views have been
arrived at in the home and that the place is not occupied by absurd
whims or half knowledge” (8: pp. 319-320). For the present the work of
education should be carried on by the harmonious coöperation of the
state and the family, the school and the home. Private institutions
have their special place as the best experimental station for the art
of education, when provided with a picked set of pupils and teachers
and well-regulated environment.
“With the exception of Pestalozzi,” says Spielmann, “Herbart has
exercised the most important influence upon pedagogy.” Pestalozzi
gave the first impetus to “psychologizing” the process of education;
Herbart, continuing this movement, tried to make a science of it,
and became the father of the great school of pedagogy which bears
his name, and is represented by such renowned pedagogues as Mager,
Strümpell, Story, Waitz, von Sallwürk, Ziller, Vogt, Willmann, Rein,
Just, Dörffell, Frölich, Leutz, Frieck, and Helm. No academic pedagogy
probably has exerted such a wide and systematic influence upon the
field of education, especially of school instruction, as the Herbartian
school has. No such technicality and doctrination has, with the
probable exception of the Froebelian pedagogy among kindergartners,
ever so ruled the thought and practice of school teachers. Yet it has
received at the same time a strong and healthy opposition, chiefly
directed against its overdone methodization and schematization
carried on by his disciples rather than by Herbart himself. “Return
to Pestalozzi,” is the cry we have been hearing in some quarters from
German pedagogues. But though for the impartial learner no system of
pedagogy is absolutely binding authority, yet at the same time every
original thinker is to be our teacher, guide, and benefactor. When we
go back directly to him we find him speaking with the living power of
his personal experience and insight; it is the blind followers who kill
him by idolizing him.
Herbart indeed advocated making a scientific pedagogy the basis of
the practice of education. Yet he admits that “long will it be before
we have it, longer still before we can expect it from teachers.”
Moreover, even when this is reached, “it can never be a substitute for
observation of the pupil; the individual can only be discovered, not
deduced” (9: p. 83). As to his own system of pedagogy, it certainly
“affords an opportunity for estimating the breadth and the sphere of
education and the vastness of problems lying before it” (9: p. 77), and
also for seeing the exceeding complexity of every apparently simple
matter in it. He and his school unquestionably deserve an important
place in the history of pedagogy. But we must remember that psychology,
which is, according to him, the foundation of pedagogy, has made
progress by leaps and bounds since his day; that the social conditions
and needs also have seen a considerable change. Therefore, to those who
are disposed to linger at the starting-point of the great road opened
by him, instead of marching on along it with the same eagerness and
pioneering spirit which inspired Herbart himself, we offer the words
which he wrote to Herr von Steiger in reference to “the most abiding
of all the rules I send you”: “Remember, you must not be in the least
slavishly bound by them; I mean them rather as hints” (9: p. 8).
REFERENCES
1. +Achelis, Thomas.+ Die Wandlungen der Pädagogik im 19.
Jahrhundert. Cronbach, Berlin, 1901. 204 pages.
2. +Adams, John.+ The Herbartian Psychology Applied to
Education. Being a series of essays applying the psychology of Johann
Friedrich Herbart. Ibister, London, 1897. 279 pages.
3. +Böhmel, Otto.+ Der principielle Gegensatz in den
pädagogischen Anschauungen Kant’s und Herbart’s. Koch, Marburg, 1891.
31 pages.
4. +De Garmo, Charles.+ Herbart and the Herbartians. Scribner,
New York, 1895. 268 pages.
5. +Engel, Moriz Emil.+ Grundsätze der Erziehung und des
Unterrichts nach Herbart, Ziller und A. Diesterweg. Weidmann, Berlin,
1887. 176 pages.
6. +Felkin, Henry M.+ and +Mrs. E.+ An Introduction to
Herbart’s Science and Practice of Education. Heath & Co., Boston,
1900. 193 pages.
7. +Heman, Friedrich.+ Geschichte der neueren Pädagogik.
Zickfeldt, Osterwieck, 1904. 436 pages.
8. +Herbart, Johann Friedrich.+ Outlines of Educational
Doctrines. Translated by A. F. Lange, annotated by C. De Garmo.
Macmillan Co., London and New York, 1901. 334 pages.
9. ---- The Science of Education. Translated by Felkin. Sonnenschein,
London, 1892. 268 pages.
10. ---- The Application of Psychology to the Science of Education.
Translated and edited by B. C. Mulliner. Scribner, New York, 1898. 231
pages.
11. ---- Text-book in Psychology. Translated by M. K. Smith. Appleton,
New York, 1894. 200 pages. (International Education Series.)
12. ---- A. B. C. of Sense Perception and Minor Pedagogical Works.
Translated with introduction, notes, and commentary by W. J. Eckoff.
Appleton, New York, 1896. 288 pages. (International Education Series.)
13. ---- Letters and Lectures on Education. Translated and edited by
H. M. and Mrs. E. Felkin. Sonnenschein, London, 1901. 295 pages.
14. +Lang, Ossian, H.+ Outlines of Herbart’s Pedagogics; with
Biographical Introduction. Kellogg, New York, 1894. 72 pages.
15. +Rein, Georg Wilhelm.+ Outlines of Pedagogics. Translated
by C. C. and J. J. Van Liew. Sonnenschein, London, 1893. 199 pages.
16. ---- Encyklopädisches Handbuch der Pädagogik. 8 vols. Beyer,
Langensalza, 1895-1906. Vol. III.
17. +Sallwürk, Ernst von.+ Gesinnungsunterricht und
Kulturgeschichte; zu pädagogischen Kritik. Beyer, Langensalza, 1887.
103 pages.
18. +Scherer, Heinrich.+ Die Pädagogik in ihrer Entwicklung
im Zusammenhange mit dem Kultur- und Geistesleben und ihrem Einfluss
auf die Gestaltung des Erziehungs- und Bildungswesens. Vol. II. Die
Pädagogik als Wissenschaft von Pestalozzi bis zur Gegenwart. 3 parts.
Brandstetter, Leipzig, 1897-1908.
19. +Schmid, Karl Adolf.+ Geschichte der Erziehung vom Anfang
an bis auf unsere Zeit. 5 vols. Cotta, Stuttgart, 1884-1902. Vol. IV.
Part II.
20. +Spielmann, C. Christian.+ Die Meister der Pädagogik nach
ihren Leben, ihren Werken und ihrer Bedeutung. Heufer, Neuwied,
1904-1905. 365 pages. Part VI.
21. +Strümpell, Ludwig H.+ Das System der Pädagogik Herbart’s.
Part III. Pädagogische Abhandlungen. Dichert, Leipzig, 1894.
22. +Wiget, Theodor.+ Die formalen Stufen des Unterrichts; eine
Einführung in die Schriften Zillers. Seventh edition. Rich, Chur.,
1901. 117 pages.
23. +Ziegler, Theobald.+ Geschichte der Pädagogik mit
besonderer Rücksicht auf das höhere Unterrichtswesen. Beck, München,
1895. 361 pages.
CHAPTER X.
HERBERT SPENCER
(1820-1903)
Spencer introduces no new ideas into the history of pedagogy. His
treatise is little more than a new version of the Rousseauean and
Pestalozzian ideas. But foreign ideas, as such, seldom penetrate the
English soil, and the Anglo-Saxon mind naturally rebels against a
man of Rousseau’s type. Thus the realistic, psychological tendencies
in education which had been conquering the Continent needed their
English translator. He was found in the person of the greatest English
philosopher of the nineteenth century. What Rousseau grasped by the
bold flight of his poetic genius, Spencer brought down to the earthly
level by scientific evidence and arguments; what Pestalozzi uttered
in the inspiration of his prophetic vision, Spencer reiterated in the
words of common sense. Thus the Anglo-Saxon world listened to the
messages of the two great continental prophets through the voice of the
apostle of her own production. So it came about that the pedagogical
stream which had taken its rise in the island empire through Bacon and
Locke, and flowed out into the Continent, becoming ever deeper and
deeper, now streamed back to its original source.
Nevertheless, Spencer was by no means an expounder of foreign thoughts
in the ordinary sense of the term; he was the last man for that. “He
was at no time a great reader. The influence of other thinkers did
not come to him through books, but their ideas were picked up by the
wayside, so to speak, or rather imbibed from the air in which they
floated, without his being aware of it” (5: p. 210). He was one of the
most independent and original thinkers; he was so aloof and isolated
from the preceding and current history of thought that his critics
account this the weakness of his philosophy in general. Yet if he was
independent of the history of thought embodied in books, he was not
and could not be so of its living current. We see a new widening of
scientific outlook and a great upheaval of the realistic spirit in
the first half of the nineteenth century, of which England was again,
as three centuries before, the harbinger. This new _Zeitgeist_
of the nineteenth century England was provided with a mouthpiece in
this independent, “fully self-governed and habitually self-sufficing,”
self-educated philosopher. He it was that in the nineteenth century
England wielded the first axe to break down her most obstinate
conservatism in the field of education. True, he was not the only one
to be called for this work, but his blows were the boldest and the most
systematic.
Spencer’s first attack was directed against the fortress of the
exalted “classics” or “cultural studies.” The positive aspect of
this was the claim for a higher, nay, the highest place for science
in the school curriculum. This battle had, indeed, been waged since
the time of Bacon, but the development of the new sciences had only
made the English schools close their gates tighter. “Science was
tabooed in most schools and frowned upon in innumerable pulpits.” “The
attitude of the universities toward natural science has been that of
contemptuous nonrecognition. College authorities have long resisted,
either actively or passively, the making of physiology, chemistry,
geology, etc., subjects of examination” (9: p. 375). Here came Spencer,
the nonconformist of nonconformists, and poured cold water over the
long-established dignity of “the education of the gentleman,” saying:
“Men dress their children’s minds as they do their bodies, in the
prevailing fashion. As the Orinoco Indian puts on his paint before
leaving his hut, not with a view to any direct benefit, but because
he would be ashamed to be seen without; so a boy’s drilling in Latin
and Greek is insisted upon, not because of their intrinsic value, but
that he may not be disgraced by being found ignorant of them--that he
may have ‘the education of a gentleman’--the badge marking a certain
social position, and bringing a consequent respect.... Not what
knowledge is of most real worth, is the consideration; but what will
bring most applause, honor, respect--what will most conduce to social
position and influence--what will be most imposing. As, through life,
not what we are, but what we shall be thought, is the question, so in
education the question is not the intrinsic value of knowledge so much
as its extrinsic effects on others” (7: pp. 23-26).
Thus Spencer proposes the determination of the comparative, intrinsic
value of different kinds of studies as the matter of first importance
in putting education on a surer foundation. “This is,” he says, “the
question of questions, which it is high time we discussed in some
methodical way.” “What is the use of it?” was the question repeatedly
raised by every educational reformer from Bacon down. But Spencer would
settle the question once for all in the light of a standard which
should be rationally established as universal and necessary. What,
then, is this standard?
Any value of an object which is intrinsic is determined by its bearing
upon our life. Life--this is the ultimate test to which all must appeal
either directly or indirectly. Anything which does not serve our
individual and social life has no value whatever. “How to live” is the
fundamental problem for us all. Every special problem of mankind is
comprised in this one problem.
“In what way to treat the body; in what way to treat the mind; in
what way to manage our affairs; in what way to bring up a family;
in what way to behave as a citizen; in what way to utilize all the
sources of happiness which Nature supplies--how to use all our
faculties to the greatest advantage of ourselves and others--how to
live completely? And this being the greatest thing needful for us to
learn, is by consequence the great thing which education has to teach.
To prepare us for complete living is the function which education has
to discharge; and the only rational mode of judging of any educational
course is to judge in what degree it discharges such function” (7: pp.
30-31).
Human life is constituted of various activities which can be classified
into:
“1. Those activities which directly minister to self-preservation;
2. Those which by securing necessaries of life indirectly minister
to self-preservation; 3. Those which have for their end the rearing
and discipline of offspring; 4. Those which are involved in the
maintenance of proper social and political relations; 5. Those
miscellaneous activities which make-up the leisure part of life,
devoted to the gratification of the tastes and feelings” (7: p. 32).
The above stand, considered from the biological and anthropological
point of view, “in something like their true order of subordination.”
Spencer takes each of these departments of human activities one by one
and tries to convince us of how necessary is the knowledge of hygiene
and physiology for our self-preservation; nothing less than that of
mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and social sciences for
our economic activities; that of physiology, hygiene, psychology,
anthropology, and pedagogy for the performance of the parental
function; that of sociology, which, according to him, must comprise a
study of the laws of social organism, as well as its description in
its political, economical, religious, social, and cultural growth, for
the fulfilment of the duties of citizenship. Even in the domain of our
æsthetic life, he thinks, a systematized knowledge of facts and laws
concerning natural and psychic worlds will increase the power of both
æsthetic production and enjoyment.
Then Spencer turns to the value of the sciences for the training of
the mental powers. First of all he refers us to “the beautiful economy
of Nature,” according to which “everywhere throughout creation we find
faculties developed through the performance of those functions which it
is their office to perform; not through the performance of artificial
exercises devised to fit them for these functions” (7: pp. 84-85). So
we may be certain _a priori_, he thinks, that also in education
the acquirement of the valuable facts must involve the best mental
exercise. Then he shows us, taking up different sciences one by one,
how, through the systematic pursuance of the facts and laws of Nature
and life which they present, we are better trained in our power of
memory, of judgment, of reasoning, in our moral character, and even
in our religious sentiments, than through linguistic studies, which
largely consist, in fact, of “lexicons and grammars.”
Spencer’s next plea is for a freer education, as opposed to the
prevailing one of coercion. The nineteenth century was the age for
the triumph of individual freedom. The infallible authority of the
Church, of monarchs, of the head of the family, were thrown down, one
after another, through revolution and through development. Society
became free and democratic in its every phase and department. Thus
it was quite natural that the systematic revaluation of educational
spirit and method, on the basis of changed conditions of society,
should be reiterated by him in whom the individualism of the
nineteenth-century culminates in respect to personality as well as
philosophy. Liberty for the nature of the educated, for his spontaneous
activities and enjoyments, encouragement of his self-instruction and
independent thinking; none of the unnecessary and harmful restraints,
authoritative commands and rote learning--this must be the principle
of reform toward “modern modes of culture corresponding to our more
liberal religious and political institutions.” Indeed, the above
is nothing but the principle advocated so forcibly by Rousseau and
Pestalozzi. The ice was already broken by them, and on the Continent,
especially in Germany, their followers marched on far along the
opened course. But England needed an apostle of her own before she
would accept this gospel of psychological naturalism. And what had
appeared in Rousseau as educational Romanticism, and in Pestalozzi
as educational Humanitarianism, took in Spencer the form of what we
might call educational Liberalism and Evolutionism. In his emotional
motive, Spencer’s theory is based on his political Liberalism; in his
intellectual ground, on his conception of psychic and social evolution.
He writes:
“Thus, then, we are on the highway toward the doctrine, long ago
enunciated by Pestalozzi, that alike in its order and in its
methods, education must conform to the natural process of mental
evolution--that there is a certain sequence in which the faculties
spontaneously develop, and a certain kind of knowledge which each
requires during its development; and that it is for us to ascertain
this sequence and supply this knowledge” (7: p. 110).
Success in every educational effort depends upon “rendering our
measures subservient to that spontaneous unfolding which all minds
go through in their progress to maturity” (7: p. 111). This natural
sequence in the spontaneous unfolding of faculties Pestalozzi
endeavored to find empirically in observing the individual minds of
children. Spencer, on the contrary, would search for it in the course
of the race development. This idea of general parallelism between
the development of the individual and the race had already been held
by Rousseau and the Herbartians. But Spencer seems to be ignorant
of this: he only cites Comte as having reached the same view, in
believing “that, rightly conducted, the education of the individual
must have a certain correspondence with the evolution of the race.”
The fundamental principle of Spencerian education is to “carry each
child’s mind through a process like that which the mind of humanity
at large has gone through.” The principle rests on two grounds: one
is the law of hereditary transmission of acquired tendencies or
qualities, and the other the necessary relationships, common to all
ages, between the mind and its objects. From the former “it follows
that if there be an order in which the human race has mastered its
various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude
to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order. So that, even
if the order were intrinsically indifferent, it would facilitate
education to lead the individual mind through the steps traversed by
the general mind.” The latter teaches us that the order of racial
development has not been intrinsically indifferent, but “was in its
main outlines a necessary one”; that “as the mind of humanity, placed
in the midst of the phenomena and striving to comprehend them, has,
after endless comparisons, speculations, experiments, and theories,
reached its present knowledge of each subject by a specific route, it
may rationally be inferred that the relationship between the mind and
phenomena is such as to prevent this knowledge from being reached in
any other route; and that, as each child’s mind stands in the same
relationship to phenomena, they can be accessible to it only through
the same route” (7: p. 123). Thus, according to Spencer, anthropology
or developmental sociology as well as psychology are necessary bases
for education, for lack of which our school curricula are burdened with
useless learning.
“Humanity has progressed solely by self-instruction,” so we must
develop ourselves also by self-education. This is the central plea of
our self-made philosopher. He writes:
“Those who have been brought up under the ordinary school drill, and
have carried away with them the idea that education is practicable
only in that style, will think it hopeless to make children their own
teachers. If, however, they will call to mind that the all-important
knowledge of surrounding objects which a child gets in its early
years is got without help--if they will remember that the child is
self-taught in the use of its mother tongue; if they will estimate
the amount of that experience of life, that out-of-school wisdom,
which every boy gathers for himself; if they will mark the unusual
intelligence of the uncared-for London gamin, as shown in all the
directions in which his faculties have been tasked; if further, they
will think how many minds have struggled up unaided not only through
the mysteries of our irrationally planned curriculum, but through
hosts of other obstacles besides--they will find it a not unreasonable
conclusion, that if the subject be put before him in right order
and right form, any pupil of ordinary capacity will surmount his
successive difficulties with but little assistance” (7: p. 125).
Thus, his much-quoted phrase:
“Children should be led to make their own investigations and to
draw their own inferences. They should be _told_ as little as
possible, and induced to _discover_ as much as possible” (7: p.
124).
From this point of view the rejection of hasty and indiscriminate book
instruction is simply a necessary consequence.
Interest is to be the guide and criterion of all instruction or culture.
“A child’s intellectual instincts are more trustworthy than our
reasonings. In respect to the knowing faculties, we may confidentially
trust in the general law, that under normal conditions, healthful
action is pleasurable, while action that gives pain is not healthful”
(7: p. 127).
The result of thus making education a process of self-instruction will,
moreover, be to form a never-dying habit of progressive self-culture,
to cultivate courage in attacking difficulties, patient concentration
of attention, perseverance through failure, to give a good temper,
cheerfulness, and confidence, instead of a permanent moroseness,
timidity, and even depression; to establish a friendly, trustful, and
consequently influential relationship between the teacher and the pupil.
Here we need not stop to point out how thoroughgoing a Rousseauean
is Spencer in his view of intellectual training. He is equally, if
not more so, in his conception of the fundamental principles of moral
culture. Only the English Empiricist does not agree with the French
Romanticist in believing in the original goodness or innocence of the
child; nor can he idealize, with the Swiss enthusiast, the educational
capability of parental love; nor does he expect, with the German
idealist-patriot, to be able to produce a new species of humanity out
of the present imperfect society by the single instrument of a perfect
system of education. According to him, “no system of moral culture
can forthwith make children altogether what they should be; ... even
were there a system that would do this, existing parents are too
imperfect to carry it out; and even could such a system be successfully
carried out, its results would be disastrously incongruous with the
present state of society” (7: p. 171). Progress of the social organism
necessarily must be organic and evolutionary; the improvement of family
discipline must go together with that of every other institution
of society. Yet this does not prevent us from “elaborating and
recommending methods that are in advance of time.”
The human race has learned rightness or wrongness of conduct by its
total consequences, immediate and remote. “The happiness or misery
caused by it are the ultimate standards by which all men judge of
behavior” (7: p. 174). So in the case of individuals, their moral
insight can only be truly developed by their experiencing the full
bearing of each particular line of conduct. “Proper conduct in life
is much better guaranteed when the good and evil consequences of
actions are rationally understood, than when they are merely believed
on authority” (7: p. 185). The function of parents as “ministers and
interpreters of Nature” is to see that nothing more nor less than the
full weight of the true, natural consequences of their children’s
conduct should be always experienced by them.
“It is a vice of the common system of artificial rewards and
punishments, long since noticed by the clear-sighted, that by
substituting for the natural results of misbehavior certain threatened
tasks or castigations it produced a radically wrong standard of moral
guidance. Having throughout infancy and boyhood always regarded
parental or tutorial displeasure as the result of a forbidden action,
the youth has gained an established association of ideas between such
action and such displeasure, as cause and effect; and consequently,
when parents and tutors have abdicated, and their displeasure is not
to be feared, the restraint on a forbidden action is in great measure
removed; the true restraints, the natural reactions, having yet to be
learned by sad experience” (7: pp. 185-186).
In minor rules of moral training, too, Spencer follows Rousseau. In
his warning against the unwisdom of setting up a high standard for
children, which invites the detrimental results of moral precosity;
against the overregulation and constant admonition, which produces
nothing but “hothouse virtue” and “a chronic domestic irritation”; in
his advocacy of a due authority maintained with decision of character
and consistency of judgment, and the like, we have the reverberation
from “Émile.”
The aim of moral discipline, according to Spencer, is not so much
to turn out an obedient, well-behaved individual, as to produce “a
self-governing being,” which democratic society most needs. As to its
agent, he, without raising a question, intrusts the task solely to the
parents. At the same time, however, he wants to impress upon them the
extreme complexity and difficulty of the task, and the consequent need
of knowledge and self-culture, as well as vigilance, patience, and
ingenuity.
Spencer was one among the prophets who proclaimed the morality of
hygiene, which now has become a commonplace matter. He writes:
“Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as a physical
morality.... Disorders entailed by disobedience to Nature’s dictates
they regard simply as grievances, not as the effects of a conduct
more or less flagitious. Though the evil consequences inflicted on
their dependents and on future generations are often as great as
those caused by crime; yet they do not think themselves in any degree
criminal.... The fact is that all breaches of the laws of health are
physical sins. When this is generally seen, then, and perhaps not
till then, will the physical training of the young receive all the
attention it deserves” (7: pp. 282-283).
We should never forget that man is an animal. “The first requisite to
success in life is to be a good animal, and to be a nation of good
animals is the first condition to national prosperity” (7: p. 222).
In regard to the physical care of the child, Spencer is, unlike his
older compatriot Locke, an Epicurean, the scientific Epicurean, if you
please. He preaches the gospel of high feeding, of ample clothing,
and opposes strongly overeducation. The fundamental principle is that
“in proportion as growth and organization are incomplete, much must
be given and little required.” Spencer calls our present system of
overeducation vicious--“vicious, as giving knowledge that will soon
be forgotten; vicious, as producing a disgust for knowledge; vicious,
as neglecting that organization of knowledge which is more important
than its acquisition; vicious, as weakening or destroying that energy
without which a trained intellect is useless; vicious, as entailing
that ill-health for which even success would not compensate, and which
makes failure doubly bitter” (7: p. 278).
As to physical exercises, Spencer hated gymnastics. It is merely
“better than nothing”; it is the practice originated by warfare, which
has “remained congruous only with the militant type of society”; it
is simply the introduction of one artificiality to remedy the evils
of another; namely, the suppression of free, spontaneous play. It
being formal, and necessarily much less varied than plays and sports,
taxes heavily special parts of the body, and thus causes a quicker
fatigue and disproportionate development; being forced, it lacks the
spontaneous interest and accompanying pleasures, which serve as the
most healthful tonic for recreation and invigoration of our physical
organism; and when carried to excess it may develop an abnormal power
of muscles only at the cost of constitutional deterioration.
Spencer was probably among the first who advocated the essential
need of free outdoor games for girls as much as for boys, saying:
“Whoever forbids them forbids the divinely appointed means of physical
development” (7: p. 258). He asks:
“Why this astonishing difference? Is it that the constitution of a
girl differs so entirely from that of a boy as not to need these
active exercises? Is it that a girl has none of the promptings to
vociferous play by which boys are impelled? Or is it that, while in
boys these promptings are to be regarded as securing that bodily
activity without which there cannot be adequate development, their
sisters’ nature has been given to them for no purpose whatever--unless
it be for the vexations of schoolmistresses” (7: p. 254).
He thinks that the fear that unrestrained plays form unladylike habits
and manners is groundless.
“For if the sportive activity allowed to boys does not prevent them
from growing up into gentlemen, why should a like sportive activity
allowed to girls prevent them from growing up into ladies?... How
absurd is the supposition that the womanly instincts would not assert
themselves but for the rigorous discipline of schoolmistresses!” (7:
pp. 255-256).
Spencer, with his “constitutional disregard of authority,” and with his
personal experience of self-culture, is systematically opposed to the
policy of state education. In his mind, systematic school education
was synonymous with artificial culture and coercive discipline. The
most serious defect of it, however, is its necessary tendency toward
overintellectualization. And the current, undue exaltation of academic
training is based on the overestimation of the rôle of intellect at the
cost of our emotional nature.
“Sensations and emotions are parts of consciousness, and so far from
being its minor components, they are its major components.... Like
respirations and winkings of the eyes, their unceasingness makes us
oblivious of them. Yet every instant emotions are present. No movement
is made but what is preceded by a prompting feeling as well as a
prompting thought.... The emotions are master, the intellect is the
servant. The guidance of our acts through perception and reason has
for its end the satisfaction of feelings, which at once prompt the
acts and yield the energy for performance of the acts” (10: pp. 36-38).
But overemphasis on academic training, which is necessarily artificial
and intellectual, also tends to the neglect of emotional elements even
in art, whose proper domain is emotion. “Not the arousing of certain
sentiments, but the communication of certain ideas is thus represented
as the poet’s office.” “It is not enough for a picture to gratify the
æsthetic perceptions or raise pleasurable emotions” (10: pp. 44-45).
The drama or music is valued on the basis of its serviceability to
moral instruction or intellectual enlightenment, while the primary and
all-sufficient purpose of art is pleasure.
From this dislike of academic education, his opposition to compulsory
universalizing of this form of training by the power of authority
is only natural. His plea is for an educational individualism, that
each member of society should be “left to do his best for himself and
children.” It rests upon his two fundamental conceptions in regard
to the social organism. First, that the “social organism grows”; it
is not artificially formed. Secondly, that the law of its growth is
a progressive individualization. If his argument is now behind the
times, it is not without much historical interest for us. For he is
the best representative of that educational conservatism which has
long withstood, in Great Britain and America, the modern tide of
state education which started from Germany. Moreover, it is still a
strong voice deserving attention as a warning against the dangers and
defects of state education. The contention of the state educationists,
as Spencer understands, is that parents, and especially those whose
children most need instructing, lack knowledge and judgment in the
matter of education. But Spencer thinks that the implication that “the
interest and judgment of a government are insufficient security” is “a
very questionable assumption.” The government’s interest, according
to him, would necessarily tend to conservatism, and likewise the
school-teacher’s interest, while a true education must always be a
revolutionary force of society--“always fitting men for higher things,
and _un_fitting them for things as they are” (9: p. 373).
The state educationists ignore the educational significance of the
natural relationships between parent and children. “In these strong
affections and mutual dependencies observers believed they saw an
admirably arranged chain of influences, calculated to secure the
mental and physical development of successive generations; and in the
simplicity of their faith had concluded that these divinely appointed
means were fully sufficient for this purpose.” But, according to them,
“this combination of affections and interests was not provided for such
a purpose, or what is the same thing, that it has no purpose at all.
And so, in default of any natural provision for supplying the exigency,
legislators exhibit to us the design and specification for a state
machine, made up of masters, ushers, inspectors, and councils, to be
worked by a due proportion of taxes, and to be plentifully supplied
with raw material, in the shape of little boys and girls, out of which
it is to grind a population of well-trained men and women, who shall
be ‘useful members of the community’” (9: pp. 366-367). They forget
that “educational systems, like political and other institutions, are
generally as good as the state of human nature permits,” and that no
hasty reform in education, which is not coördinated with that of other
departments of life and the general elevation of the whole social
organism, can succeed. Any attempt at uniformatization, at the present
stage of progress, of educational system by an authoritative hand would
bring more harm than benefit. For “were we in possession of the true
method, divergence from it would, of course, be prejudicial; but the
true method having to be found, the efforts of numerous independent
seekers carrying out their researches in different directions
constitute a better agency for finding it than any that could be
devised” (7: p. 101).
Moreover, the use and function of government is, according to Spencer,
only negative. “To the bad, it is essential; to the good, not. It
is the check which national wickedness makes to itself, and exists
only to the same degree.” So the extension of government authority or
interference is rather a retrogression of society. “As civilization
advances does the government decay,” and ought to decay (9: p. 25).
Therefore, he concludes, let the spread of enlightenment be free
and spontaneous. “If supply and demand are allowed free play in the
intellectual sphere as in the economic sphere, ... education must
conduce to social stability as well as to the other benefits. For if
those of the lower ranks are left to get culture for their children
as best they may, just as they are left to get food and clothing
for them, it must follow that the children of the superior will be
advantaged: the thrifty parents, the energetic, and those with a high
sense of responsibility will buy education for their children to a
greater extent than will the improvident and the idle. And if character
is inherited, then the average result must be that the children of
the superior will prosper and increase more than the children of the
inferior. There will be a multiplication of the fittest instead of a
multiplication of the unfittest” (10: pp. 92-93).
Spencer’s treatise on “Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical,”
in which most of his pedagogical views are given, though a mere
collection of occasional magazine articles, is nevertheless a work into
which he put his heart and soul. When it appeared in 1860, in book
form, it carried his fame for the first time into the wide region of
the world; it has been translated into thirteen languages; in England
and America it has been used as a text-book, forming until recently an
important basis of popular pedagogic ideas. Probably no educational
treatise written in English has exerted a wider influence than
Spencer’s, and in spite of its obvious one-sidedness, it is certainly
one of the greatest works which has appeared in the pedagogic world on
Anglo-Saxon soil.
REFERENCES
1. +Compayré, Jules Gabriel.+ History of Pedagogy. Translated,
with an introduction, notes, and an index, by W. H. Payne. Heath &
Co., Boston, 1903. 598 pages.
2. ---- Herbert Spencer et l’Education Scientifique. Delaplane, Paris,
1901. 116 pages.
3. +Duncan, David.+ Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer.
Appleton, New York, 1908. 2 vols.
4. +Gaupp, Otto.+ Herbert Spencer. Frommann, Stuttgart, 1897.
160 pages. (Frommann’s Klassiker der Philosophie.)
5. +Royce, Josiah.+ Herbert Spencer, an Estimate and a Review
by Josiah Royce; together with a chapter of personal reminiscences by
James Collier. Fox, Duffield & Co., New York, 1904. 234 pages.
6. +Quick, Robert Hebert.+ Essays on Educational Reformers.
Appleton, New York, 1890. 560 pages. The same (International Education
Series), 1903. 568 pages.
7. +Spencer, Herbert.+ Education: Intellectual, Moral, and
Physical. Appleton, New York, 1900. 301 pages.
8. ---- Philosophy of Style. Appleton, New York, 1901. 55 pages.
9. ---- Social Statistics. Appleton, New York, 1882. 523 pages.
10. ---- Facts and Comments. Appleton, New York, 1902. 292 pages.
11. ---- An Autobiography. Appleton, New York, 1904. 2 vols.
12. Herbert Spencer. A Symposium by Harris, Cook, Sutton, Winship,
Rose. Proceedings of National Education Association, 1904. pp. 214-231.
CHAPTER XI.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
(1770-1831)
Hegel never actually wrote or lectured on education as such, although,
according to Rosenkranz, he intended to write what he significantly
called “_Staatspädagogik_.” This slowly matured genius, whose
interest was speculative more than practical, died too young to fulfill
this design. He had no pedagogic impulse such as is seen in Fichte or
Herbart. He was to the end essentially a learner rather than a teacher,
notwithstanding the fact that his whole life was spent in educational
work of various kinds. Nevertheless, he could not help but be touched
by the intense pedagogical spirit of his age. The collection of his
ideas on the problem of education, drawn from scattered sources,
was published in 1853 by one of his disciples, G. Thaulow. The
collaboration of them into a system on the basis of his philosophy
was made by his most faithful follower, K. Rosenkranz, whose work,
“Pedagogy as a System,” has had until recently a considerable influence
in the educational world.
Hegel was born the son of a government official and brought up in a
home which was in “direct and varied relation with many persons of
high official rank.” He did not, like Pestalozzi, share the lot of the
common herd. Nor did he taste such hardships of fate as did Fichte. He
lived, as a child, as a university student, as a family tutor, as a
school man, as a university professor, ever in the air of officialdom
and aristocracy.
Moreover, we are told that youth had but a short duration for him.
In his student days at Tübingen he gained the nickname of “the old
man.” Rousseau had once charmed the young Hegel, as he did every youth
of his time; Schelling had fascinated him; Fichte had inspired him
with enthusiasm; but Hegel outgrew quickly and abandoned all these
romantic tendencies. Heinrich Hotho, one of his pupils, writes in his
recollections:
“He was bitter against the demagogues who were ever seeking ‘new
things’ in statecraft. Against the caprice of personal opinion,
subjective fancy, arbitrary passion, he set himself, seeking to do
away with these from youth up, and to put in their place--to do away
by putting in their place--a just appreciation of the real, the
lawful, the substantial. The senses, sentiments, impulses, wishes,
and will were to be brought into free harmony with the necessary and
rational, and their accord made habitual” (3: p. 98).
Most geniuses are “youth, intensified, and prolonged,” but Hegel
shows his genius in maturity of insight and judgment. Not the fire
of prophetic spirit, not the flashes of poetic intuitions, but a
proportioned completeness of catholicism and classicism constituted the
type of his mental greatness.
Solger, visiting Hegel at the beginning of his Berlin career, writes
to Tieck: “I was curious to see what impression the good Hegel would
make here. No one talks of him, for he is quiet and busy” (3: p. 78).
Yes, “quiet and busy”--this characterizes his mental as well as public
life. Nothing like revelation, inspiration, sudden intuition, but only
a long, painstaking, methodical reasoning brought him truths. Not
only each of his thoughts, but also each of his phrases and words he
determined by laborious weighing and balancing. He despised the mere
expression of immediate feelings as a pseudo-philosophy, smacking
of the Romantic school. For him, “philosophy was to express ‘with
colorless words’ (_mit dürren Worten_) the clear, crystalline
outlines of thought--the cool judgment of the spirit” (3: p. 39).
Thus, according to his own characterization of the four traditional
classifications of temperament, he belongs preëminently to the
phlegmatic. His mind is objective, with little subjectivity; more
historical than prophetic, more discursive than intuitive, more
inclined to systematization than reformation, more conservative than
destructive.
This is Hegel. And in him Germany found a great counteracting agency
against the sweeping movement of educational reform, engendered by
the romantic and revolutionary spirit of the age. In this regard
Hegel reminds us of Herbart. The dawn of the new Germany needed such
prophetic men as Pestalozzi and Fichte, but her pacification and
solidarity required a more constructive genius. Pestalozzi and Fichte
stood as the champions of National Education. Hegel, “the official
philosopher,” as he is often called, would become the advocate of
“State Pedagogy.”
Hegel’s philosophy has been called the Objective Absolute Idealism as
opposed to the Subjective Absolute Idealism of Fichte, and the Logical
Pantheism as opposed to the Alogical Pantheism of Schopenhauer. The
logically minded Hegel saw methodical progressions of thought going on
everywhere in the life of nature and humanity. The universal Essence or
the Absolute was to him the mind, the intellect, or the reason. Every
existence or phenomenon is the manifestation of the eternal unfolding
of the Divine Reason. Everything in the world is “becoming,” is in the
process of evolution; this “becoming” is the only actuality and life.
This eternally progressive world-process is the education of universal
beings by and through the _Logos_ or the self-education of God.
Man takes part in the world-process of education, and realizes in
himself the end of this evolution by becoming a free, self-conscious
spirit--God attaining in him the consciousness of Himself.
The human share and endeavor in the universal “becoming,” or the
evolution of the _Logos_ in mankind, constitutes the history of
the race. Human history is, in general, the process of the liberation
of spirit or reason from its bondage--from all external and debasing
powers. By these not only political, social, and family despotism are
meant, but also one’s own passions, natural desires, inclinations,
willfulness, arbitrariness, etc. For freedom does not consist in
licentiousness; it is the unbounded self-activity of the Spirit
according to its own law. This law is given by reason. Thus freedom can
be regarded as lawful action according to rational insight. Therefore
the universal realization of self-conscious reason and freedom of the
spiritual nature is the teleology of human history. Education from this
standpoint means the progressive perfection of humanity from a naïve,
unconscious, primitive state of spirit or reason through the hard
discipline of slavery and bondage to the consciousness and exercise of
its freedom.
To share in this progressive perfection of the race and contribute to
its promotion is the destiny of individuals. The connection between
the culture of the race and the development of the individual is very
close. The latter can only grow in the breast of the former. And the
culmination of this close relationship between the whole and its
part is the state. It is the most highly developed and compact form
of society. History is the objectified, realized humanity, and its
attainments are embodied in the institutional life of the state. The
individual must take part in this life of the state and “live in the
spirit of the nation.” This is the free relation of give and take. But
the child cannot by himself enter into the free mutual relation of give
and take with society. He is not only incapable of giving his part to
society, but also of taking his share from it. Some one else must do
this for him. To do this is the duty of parents and teachers, and the
art of fulfilling this duty is education in its narrow sense.
For Hegel the child is no angelic being. Innocence as such has no
moral value, so far as it is ignorance of the bad and rests on the
lack of desire by which the bad can take place. Nor does he recognize
the morality of instincts and impulses. Moral freedom is won “through
the stern strife against the naïve subjectivity of life, against the
immediateness of arbitrary desire and passion” (3: p. 109). Childhood
in itself has no value for Hegel. It is not as it was for Rousseau and
Froebel, a state to be lived out, but a state to be outgrown. “The
child has a right to be educated,” only because it has the destiny to
become a man, and yet it is not and does not become so by mere natural
development.
“Education is the art of making men moral. It regards man as natural,
and points out how he may be born anew--how his first nature may be
changed to a second spiritual nature” (3: p. 107). Morality means the
mastery of reason over natural desires and inclinations. The child’s
undeveloped reason must be, at first, subjected to the developed
reason, which is “manifested in the will of his parents, in the
knowledge of his teachers, and in the surrounding world.” His growing
self must be set in the larger life of the whole, in which mature
reason, mature will, mature morality are realized.
“Education may be defined as the visible, progressive transcending
of the negative or subjective. For the child, as the form of the
potentiality of a moral individual, is a subjective and negative
being. His becoming a man is the outgrowing this form; and his
education is the discipline or process by which this is done. To gain
this positive and essential character he first must be nourished at
the breast of the universally moral; he must live as a stranger in
the absolute institution of that morality; he must make more and
more of it his own, and finally pass over into the universal spirit.
It is evident from this that the effort to be virtuous, to obtain
absolute morality through education, is not at all a striving after
an individual and separate morality. Indeed, such an effort after a
positive morality peculiarly one’s own, would be vain and in itself
impossible” (3: p. 107).
The educator, then, is no longer to be a mere jealous guardian of
Nature’s own developing and educating process, but he is the conscious
delegate of the mature generation or the state, whose office is to
unite and subordinate the child to the general culture already acquired
by them in the course of evolution.
Hegel’s pedagogical ideas are best seen in his delineation of the “ages
of man,” which Thaulow calls “an epitome of all pedagogy.”
“The development of the normal human being is made up of a series of
processes. These change in accordance with the changing relation of
the individual to the race and to the external world” (3: p. 118).
He divides childhood into three--including the fetus, four--stages.
But, since the “child before birth has no peculiar individuality,
none related in a particular way to particular objects,” there is no
education proper here. “At birth it passes from vegetative to animal
existence.” He has the most finely organized, infinitely adaptable body
of all animals. The growth is not only quantitative, but qualitative.
And together with its physical growth goes the mental development, this
first stage of infant life being “the time in which the human being
learns most. Now the child is made a confidant of all the senses. The
outer world becomes a reality to him. He advances from sensation to
perception.... He projects his world about himself” (3: pp. 119-120).
“The transition stage from infancy to boyhood has the following
characteristics: The child’s activity is directed more and more upon
the outer world; and along with his sense of the reality of the outer
world he begins to be a real person, and to feel himself as such. This
feeling is joined with the practical tendency to make all sorts of
experiments upon his surroundings. For this practical activity, the
child is fitted by the coming of his teeth, by his learning to stand,
walk, and speak” (3: pp. 120-121). Standing is the first requirement
by the exercise of volition. But “a still freer relation to the
outer world is attained by man through his power of walking.” The
development of speech, on the other hand, enables him to grasp things
in generalized concepts. It also leads him to the consciousness of his
own constant and total subject--to the “comprehension of his ego.”
The conscious independence of self from the nonself now dawns. “This
dawning independence first expresses itself in play with material
objects.” Hegel, however, does not like to linger long here, and
hastens to the next stage, boyhood, which constitutes “the passage of
the child from play to serious study.”
“In this transition stage children begin to be full of curiosity. They
especially delight in stories. They seek rare and strange ideas. Above
all is the awakening feeling that they are not yet what they are to
be, and the ardent wish to become like the grown-up people about them.
Out of this springs the child’s desire to imitate” (3: p. 121).
Now the child must be taught. This “feeling of dissatisfaction with
himself as he is,” this “personal aspiration for full development,”
this “wish to be ‘big’” is “the lever to be grasped by education.”
Therefore he condemns “the play education” which “meets children at a
low level,” which “looks upon what is childish as already something of
value in itself alone,” which, “attempting to make the incompleteness
of childhood seem as something complete, and to make the children
satisfied with it, casts down and tramples upon their own true better
wants.... It puts both itself and what is serious into a puerile form,
for which the children themselves feel contempt.” It also “may have
throughout the whole life of the pupil the baneful result of making him
account everything cheap.” Consequently, in learning, the child should
not be left to its own inclination or to anything like its spontaneous
interest. “What the boy is to learn must be set before him by authority
and example.” This is more according to his own nature, because his
ideal at this stage does not appear in any general or abstract form,
but is always represented by particular grown-up persons (3: pp.
121-122, 146-147).
In the Fichtean pedagogy the boy was encouraged to self-active learning
and thinking. But in the Hegelian pedagogy he is to be essentially
receptive. To talk to the boy about original thinking or independent
study is pure nonsense or tends to cultivate precocity. There is no
instruction without prescription. “Thought at the beginning, like
the will, should be obedient”; “willingness to yield one’s ideas is
the first necessity for a learner.” Thus: “The tendency of youth to
independent reflection or reasoning is one-sided. It should be indulged
in as little as possible.... For the chief end of education is to do
away with these personal ideas, thoughts, reflections of youth, and
their utterance. If the tendency toward self-reasoning be unchecked,
there is no discipline or order in thought, no coherent and consequent
knowledge” (3: pp. 140-141). Truth means objectivity. “We often
say that the understanding is developed by questioning, objecting,
responding, etc. But, in truth, the mind is not developed by these;
it is only made superficial. The inner nature of a man is broadened
by culture, and given him as a possession through self-restraint.
Thought is enriched, and the mind vitalized, by silence” (3: p. 140).
Silence (ἐχημυθία), the word borrowed from Pythagoras, is
the watchword of his instruction. Let us examine a little more fully
the content of this word. To say that it is a deepened receptivity,
an anticipatory interest, a worked out objectiveness of mind, a
self-forgetful absorption in matters presented, a preparedness to react
promptly in coming impressions, would be mere tautology. In other
words, it is nothing else than the height of disinterested attention.
Attention as understood by Hegel always involves voluntary control.
“It demands effort when one wishes to grasp one object rather than
another, to abstract himself from the thousand things moving through
his mind, from his other interests, and even from his own person; and
repressing the tendency to hasty judgment, to give himself up wholly
to the object” (3: p. 139).
From the emphasis laid on the receptivity, on strict obedience to
prescription, follows the emphasis upon order, regularity, and
punctuality, as the first requisites in instruction.
“There can be nothing worse than the evil of procrastination, of the
putting off or shirking of work, so that it is not pursued in all
earnestness and in an unchangeable order. What is undertaken to be
done at a set time should be accomplished as surely as the sun rises”
(3: p. 138).
With such an emphasis on receptivity one can easily imagine how Hegel
would regard the function of memory in learning. Although he thought
it the most difficult point in psychology “to state exactly the place
and significance of memory and its organic connection with thought,”
it was conceived as somehow opposed to subjectivity and reflection.
“Consciously or unconsciously it is ever in use.... It is busy filling
the soul with pure existences of outer space” (3: p. 135); “it is
mechanization of intelligence.” Thus better memory in youth than in
old age had, for Hegel, a certain teleological significance, and great
minds have generally good memories.
However, even for Hegel, receptive learning is not the ultimate end,
but is only propedeutic.
“It is most important to lead the boy from the state of mere
receptivity to that of personal effort. For learning, which is mere
taking in and remembering, is a very small part of education” (3: p.
144).
Again:
“If learning were to be limited to a mere taking in, its results would
be little better than writing upon the water, for it is not mere
receiving, but the self-activity of grasping, and the power to put in
use, that alone make knowledge our possession” (3: p. 141).
As to the comparative importance of various branches of study,
Hegel, as a champion of the New Humanism, opposed “the effort of
making mathematical exercises the chief subject of education” (as
the followers of Kant and Pestalozzi tried to do), considering it as
“putting the mind upon a rack in order to evolve a perfect machine,”
as “making the mind empty and dull” (3: pp. 154-155). Against mere
realistic study of natural science he exalted the value of the
classics, considering the classical worlds as the second paradise
of the human race, “the paradise of the spiritual man, who in his
beautiful spontaneity, freedom, depth, and joyousness stepped forth as
a bridegroom from his chamber”; praising their masterpieces as “the
spiritual bath, the profane baptism, which gives the soul its earliest
and most lasting taste for things of beauty and of knowledge” (3: p.
157).
As a means of cultivating abstract thinking--i. e., the power of
understanding and reasoning--Hegel exalts again, in opposition to the
preceding reformers, the study of logic and grammar, especially the
grammar of the ancient languages. “The value of grammatical study,” he
asserts, “can scarcely be overestimated, for it forms the beginning
of logical culture, a fact, however, that appears to be almost
overlooked.” He does not even hesitate to say that “careful grammatical
study is one of the most noble and universal means of culture” (3:
pp. 155-156). Various branches of philosophy, including the elements
of religion, law, ethics, and psychology, are also prescribed for the
gymnasium. Voice culture, public speaking, and the art of reading
are mentioned as the important factors in education. Instruction
in military drill is strongly advocated, as training alertness and
exact ideo-motor reaction; and consequently as “the most direct way
of counteracting a lazy absent-mindedness”; as the common ground of
pursuit which “best serves in leveling the partition wall that we
build around our callings”; finally and preëminently as “a reminder
that every man, whatever his position, should be ready to defend his
fatherland and his prince” (3: pp. 153-154).
In the notion of the school, too, Hegel takes us back to the official
and orthodox standpoint. It is simply preparation for the future life
of the matured man. It is a mere organ through which the essentials of
the acquired culture of the race are bequeathed to the new generation.
Nothing more can or should be hoped from it. “The sciences are not
enlarged by the school.... Its knowledge is old property of the
race. The work of the school has not its perfect end in itself. It
lays but the foundation for the possibility of other work, that of
real performance.... This preparation, this culture, can never be
‘finished.’ Only a certain stage of it may be attained” (3: p. 147).
School is not, like a Froebelian kindergarten, the children’s own
world. “It educates the individual to participate in the world life”;
it is “a secluded inner preparation.” This secluded period of mere
apprenticeship not only lacks such organic relation to the larger
life of the community or the warm, intimate air of family life, as
the school in the Pestalozzian conception, but it lacks, unlike
the people’s school of Fichte’s ideal, even its own completeness
and independence. Hegel complacently admits that “school life is
dispassionate; it lacks the higher interest and earnestness of real
life.” But, just the same, it is the necessary and best preparation
for life. He disapproves “the maxim that children are early to be
brought out into society.” For “men of world-wide fame have come from
the narrow gate of the monastery; while, on the contrary, men who have
grown-up amid all the externalities of life unfold little fruit of
inner worth” (3: pp. 147-149).
If silence was the first requisite of learning, so obedience is that of
morality.
“Obedience is the beginning of all wisdom. For by this the boy’s will
is brought under the reasonable will imposed from without. The boy’s
will is not yet fledged, not truly independent and free. It has not
learned to see the true, the objective, which makes for righteousness.
If children are permitted to follow their impulses, if their self-will
is unwisely yielded to, a most ugly habit of stubborn willfulness is
formed” (3: p. 122).
If our rationalistic philosopher does not put any faith in the
natural impulses of the child, he makes equally little of the child’s
individuality. He writes:
“The peculiarities of man must not be rated too highly. The assertion
that a teacher must carefully adjust himself to the individuality of
his pupil so as to develop it--this assertion is empty. The teacher
has no time for that. The individuality of the children is met in the
family. But with the school begins a life in accord with a general
order, after general rules for all. In school the spirit must be
brought to lay aside the peculiarities, it must know and will the
universal” (3: pp. 113-114).
The individual experience or consciousness never wholly reveals the
full content of the spiritual development or culture attained by the
race or the universal soul. The individual soul must, therefore, be
fed by the content of the racial soul in order to attain its fullness.
This, for Hegel, is done through the spoken word or writing. For him,
not the senses or personal experience, as the empiricists claimed,
but speech is the organ of learning. The letters of alphabets are the
beginning of instruction proper, and, “in general, speech is that airy
element, that material immateriality by means of which the widening
knowledge of the child is lifted more and more above the material and
particular to the universal, and so to thought” (3: p. 123). This
importance of instruction through speech in education applies also
to morality and religion. Unless we teach, the boy, left to himself,
would naturally gather erroneous and imperfect notions of things and
their relations. Therefore we need an early instruction in morality
and religion. Against the Rousseauean idea that children “cannot
understand them, and can gather from them only words for memory,” Hegel
asserts that they are “well understood by the child, by the boy, by the
youth, in proportion to their age.” Again:
“Our whole life is nothing else than a growing comprehension of their
range and significance. We see them exemplified in ever new cases, and
our knowledge of their many-sided meanings develops. In fact, were we
to put off the teaching of these moral ideas until a man is able to
grasp their whole meaning, very few persons need be taught, and these
not much before the end of life” (3: pp. 117-118).
Hegel had to say with Pestalozzi that “the feeling of immediate unity
with the parents is the spiritual milk upon which the children thrive”;
that “the mother should be the chief influence in early education,
for morality must be instilled into the child with his earliest
perceptions”; that she is entitled to this by her love, which alone
“flows with the whole current of her being.” This “is her highest
earthly vocation, in which her natural character and her holiest
calling are united” (3: pp. 145-146). Yet the parents are not the
all-sufficient agents for the education of the child: the school must
also have its part. As the parents have the duty and right of educating
it as a member of the family, so the state has its duty and right of
educating it as a member of society.
Now, to return to Hegel’s delineation of the stages of man, the next
stage is youth, which begins with puberty. Here “the life of the race
begins to stir within him and to seek satisfaction” (3: p. 124). The
accompanying phenomena are the sudden growth and intensification of
all his emotions and sentiments,--æsthetic, religious, and social.
“Particularly in youth do we feel ourselves related and in sympathy
with all nature. We and things about us seem alive with one soul. We
have a feeling of the world soul, of the oneness of spirit and nature,
and of the spirituality of nature” (3: p. 150).
As to personal relations, “friendship like that of Achilles and
Patroclus, or like that still closer friendship of Orestes and
Pylades, is chiefly the privilege of youth” (3: p. 151). Youth, with
its heightened sentimentality accompanied by the growing sense of the
independence of self, is preëminently the age of subjective idealism.
“His ideal no longer appears to him, as to the boy, in some person,
but is held by him as a universal, independent of such individuality.
But to the youth this ideal still has a more or less subjective form,
be it an ideal of love and friendship or one of general ambition” (3:
p. 124). In this lies the hope, inspiration, and power of the youth,
but at the same time his weakness, discouragement, and despair. “The
form of the ideal inspires the youth’s energy so that he dreams that
he is called and fitted to make the world over, or at least to turn it
back to its right course. The young man’s aspiring eye does not see
that the substantial universal contained in his ideal is already being
evolved and realized in the world. What is realized by the universal
seems to him far below the ideal. Accordingly he feels that the world
misunderstands both his ideal and himself. Thus the peace in which
the child lived with the world is broken for the youth. Because of
this turning to the ideal the youth seems to have a nobler outlook
and greater unselfishness than the man, who is interested in his
personal temporal affairs. But it must be remembered that the man is
not bound up in his personal inclinations and subjective opinions, nor
is he engaged solely in his personal advancement, but is one with the
reasonable realities about him and is active in the world’s behalf” (3:
pp. 124-125). This is the stage of objective idealism.
For Fichte, the creation of the ideal world by the power of the
subjective will, and the reshaping of actuality according to it, was
the noblest and highest destiny of man. But, according to Hegel,
this is only a transient phase of the youth, which he must outgrow,
if his growth is normal and unhindered. “The youth should shed his
horns and adjust himself, with his wishes and plans, to the actual and
rational relationships about him” (3: p. 151). This transition from
the subjective, abstract idealism of youth to the objective, concrete
idealism of manhood is often a painful process, and in many cases leads
one to an abject pessimism. “The later it is experienced the worse
are its symptoms.... He cannot conquer his repugnance to the actual,
and so finds himself relatively incapable, and may easily become so
altogether.” If, then, a man is not to succumb to the iron law of
actuality, he must recognize its independence and rationality. “He must
submit to the condition it imposes, and win from it, though it seems to
say him nay, what he will” (3: p. 125).
Thus the young man, finally coming down from his Utopian heaven,
“enters partnership with the world, and wins for himself adequate
standing room.” Although he gives up “his plan of making the world
anew,” still “there is room for honorable, far-reaching, creative
activity.” For the objective world with which he now identifies himself
is a life process, ever renewing itself and ever advancing. “The man’s
work is a part of this renewal and advancement. He grows more and more
at one with his objective relationships. He becomes accustomed to his
work.... In time he becomes perfectly at home in his calling, and gives
himself wholly to it. The essential in all the phases of his business
becomes a matter of course. Only the individual, the nonessential,
presents to him any novelty” (3: pp. 126-127).
We might deduce from this that manhood is the age for specialization,
for discovery and invention, and a man’s development should be in the
progressive specialization of his vocation. But Hegel, whose eye is
always directed to “the universal,” stops short at its attainment. In
the engagement in and the mastery of a vocation man completes himself,
fully realizes his personality. “He is then at one with himself, with
his environment, with his sphere. He is universal, a whole” (3: p.
153). “The antithesis between the subject and its object” being done
away with, “the interest in the latter is lost.” “Thus a man enters
old age not only by the running down of the vitality of his physical
organism, but also by the crystallizing of the spiritual life into
habits” (3: p. 127). But there is one virtue left to old age, that
is “to point out the way to the young” by the lessons of his past
experience, in the memory of which he now lives.
The Hegelian pedagogy may be called the orthodoxy of education. Like
his philosophy, the central conception of which is expressed in the
famous dictum, “all that is rational is actual; all that is actual is
rational,” it is the strongest defense of existing institutions; it
justifies all the traditional principles and methods of education and
gives them a rational ground. As conservatism is the self-preservation
of every social institution, Hegelianism enjoyed the natural result
of being welcomed by officialdom as the safest pedagogy to adopt. We
need in society both the visionary idealist and the cold calculator,
youthful enthusiasm and matured judgment. Although we must not forget
that there often lies a great danger in the very soundness and
all-roundness of opinions or precocious senility--a greater danger than
the youthful one-sidedness--Hegel will remain as he was, a beneficial
counteracting influence against the rashness and heat of a youthful
age, a voice calling halt to look back to the already attained values,
in the blind pursuit of the anticipated unknown quantity.
REFERENCES
1. +Bryant, William Mackendree.+ Hegel’s Educational Ideas.
Werner School Book Co., New York, 1896. 214 pages.
2. +Entner, Paul.+ Hegel’s Ansichten über Erziehung im
Zusammenhange mit seiner Philosophie dargestellt. XV. Jahres-Bericht
der 1. städtlichen Realschule. Hille, Dresden, 1905. 77 pages.
3. +Luqueer, Frederic Ludlow.+ Hegel as Educator. (Columbia
University Dissertation). Macmillan Co., New York, 1896. 185 pages.
4. +Raumer, Karl von.+ Geschichte der Pädagogik vom
Wiederaufblühen klassischer Studien bis auf unsere Zeit. 5 vols.
Bertelsmann, Gütersloh, 1882-1897.
5. +Rein, Georg Wilhelm+, editor. Encyklopädisches Handbuch der
Pädagogik. 8 vols. Beyer, Langensalza, 1895-1906. Vol. III.
6. +Rosenkranz, Johann Karl Friedrich.+ Philosophy of
Education. Translated by A. C. Brackett. Second edition, revised and
enlarged. Appleton, New York, 1903. 292 pages.
7. +Ziegler, Theobald.+ Geschichte der Pädagogik mit besonderer
Rücksicht auf das höhere Unterrichtswesen. Beck, München, 1895. 361
pages.
CHAPTER XII.
W. T. HARRIS AND G. STANLEY HALL
_William Torrey Harris_
(1835- )
In a country like America, where people have flocked from all corners
of the world, each with his own ideas, beliefs, and ambitions, it is
natural that the main concern of the leaders hitherto should have
been the unity and solidarity of the social structure. How to produce
self-governing yet law-abiding citizens in a free republic that has had
no choice of the materials, seems to have been _the_ educational
problem from the legislative standpoint. There has probably been more
necessity for counteracting new “isms” and reforms than encouraging
them. Just here the Hegelian pedagogy has an application, and it has,
in fact, well-nigh penetrated, through Dr. Harris, into the great
machinery of the public school.
That Dr. Harris is a most faithful disciple of Hegel no one, including
himself, will deny. If we are justified in calling Spencer the English
interpreter of Rousseauean pedagogy, we may call Dr. Harris the
American apostle of Hegelian pedagogy.
With the Hegelian philosophy of history on his banner Dr. Harris
stands, amidst all skeptics and reactionaries against the present
civilization, as its bold and even conventional advocate. This
civilization is the highest actual manifestation of the world-spirit or
Logos; so every individual must be educated for and through it. Social
institutions in which civilization is incorporated are to be the chief
agents of education. These social institutions are family, school,
church, and state. But the education of the family is essentially
physical and very limited; and, on the other hand, the educational
influence of the state is exerted mainly through the school. So the
school and the church are the main educational agencies, the former
ministering to the secular and the latter to the religious needs.
According to Dr. Harris, the function of the school is “to correlate
the child with the civilization into which he is born.” “The branches
to be studied, and the extent to which they are studied, will be
determined mainly by the demands of one’s civilization. These will
prescribe what is most useful to make the individual acquainted
with physical nature and with human nature so as to fit him as an
individual to perform his duties in the several institutions--family,
civil society, the state, and the church” (1: pp. 232-233). These
also will determine what interests in the child should be cultivated
and what interests be checked. To make the child’s nature or its own
spontaneous interest our guidance and standard is the suicide of
education. For “man reveals his true nature not as a child, but as
a mature man and woman in the process of making world history. In
the world history human nature is revealed in its height and depth”
(14: p. 492). Naturally it follows that psychology should hold only
a subordinate place for the art or science of education, and “no
philosophy of education is fundamental until it is based on sociology.”
Prescription is thus the great word in Dr. Harris’s pedagogy, which he
never tires of repeating. “The problem of prescription,” he says, “is
the profoundest and most important one in education, and without its
solution we continually drift in the eddies of fruitless experiments
and waste the energies and possibilities of the rising generation” (5:
p. 131).
Of course Dr. Harris would not, in the face of the modern consciousness
of individual freedom, advocate the tyranny of autocratic prescription.
Here he met an antimony of civilization and consequently of education.
“When we reflect that prescription comes in from the side of
realized reason, and consists in regulations found to be rational
by the experience of mankind and embodied in the institutions of
civilization, we must be convinced of the utter hopelessness of
eliminating this element from life.... On the other hand, that
self-activity or spontaneity, freedom of thought, the realization of
directive intelligence in each and every individual--that this shall
prevail more and more, is our deepest national conviction” (5: pp.
141-142).
The antinomy is solved by Dr. Harris in the Hegelian way. At first
these two “are opposed, and mutually limit each other; where one begins
the other ends.” However, “a mandate prescribed loses its external,
mechanical side just as soon as its necessary ground is seen and
comprehended” (5: p. 142).
To speak of the child’s instincts and natural powers as if they were
divine and all-sufficient in themselves is allowed only in poetry. “The
child begins life a savage, ignorant of civilization.” His impulses and
caprices have to be subjected to the reason of the matured spirit, and
his mind, empty of experience, has to be filled with the wisdom of the
race. “He must be taught everything: how to take care of his person,
how to behave in the presence of others, how to do his work in the
world and earn an honest living, how to observe and how to think. He
has to learn the view of the world which civilization has attained.”
The good mother is she who is “always alert to see to it that her child
learns to inhibit--learns self-control or self-restraint.” “Her chief
work is inhibiting this or that, and educating the child into the
practice of inhibiting constantly.” For “out of one thousand things he
may do, nine hundred and ninety-nine are improper to be done, and he
must refuse to adopt them. Passing by all these, he must do only the
one thing proper” (6: pp. 2-3).
The child who, under this maternal discipline, has acquired “a bundle
of personal habits and the use of language to communicate ideas and
receive them,” is taken next to the hand of the school-teacher. His
work is the continuation of that of the mother, and still preëminently
is in “the domain of prescription.” “The special work of the school
in the great process of education is that of giving the youth letters
and civil manners” (6: p. 4). By “civil manners,” “the habits of
acting according to the broad forms and conventionalities of rational
existence” are meant. These habits are not born with the child, they
are no innate inheritance that he brings with him into the world, but
have to be acquired by him. So the educator is not to minister to
the nature of the child, but to repress it. With all his vigilance
and self-control the teacher “applies a firm, steady pressure to the
material under his charge and molds it into form” (5: p. 128).
Family life can teach many good habits to the child, but it cannot
initiate him into social life quite as well as the school can. In order
to become a social man he must be educated out of the “clan feeling”
into civil relation. The school furnishes the best training for this:
for its order “presupposes independent interests combined with a common
interest,” and “the school pupil must learn how to behave towards
independent equals and towards those established in authority over him,
not by nature, like his father and mother, but by civic ordinances
appointed by his teachers” (6: p. 4). Then the implicit observance
of order, without which no function of school can be performed,
inculcates such virtues as regularity, punctuality, and silence, the
last mentioned of which Dr. Harris thinks to be the basis for the
culture of internality or reflection--the soil in which thought grows.
Moreover, the systematic work required in the school cultivates many
valuable virtues. He says: “Is there any better training yet devised
to educate youth into industry and its concomitants of sincerity,
earnestness, simplicity, perseverance, patience, faithfulness, and
reliability, than the school method of requiring work in definite
amounts and at definite times and of an approved quality?” (7: pp.
36-37). These mechanical or semimechanical duties which school
life imposes upon the pupils “constitute an elementary training in
morals without which it is exceedingly difficult to build up any
superstructure of moral character whatever,” and “are just what is
required to adapt the man to combine with his fellow man” (6: p.
5). Moral education, therefore, must begin with these and “develop
gradually out of this stage toward that of individual responsibility.”
In regard to the intellectual side of education, too, Dr. Harris
gives his defense to its traditional form. In his view, learning
proper is nothing else but the learning of books. The printed page is
“an instrumentality of intercommunication,” the storehouse of race
experience, the immortalized form of civilization. Thus training
in letters naturally should form the center of instruction in the
elementary school. Reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history,
and grammar are the first studies of the school, which have the
sanction of tradition and have stood the test of time. Natural science,
vocal music, drawing, gymnastics, and the like may be introduced
only as subordinate subjects. As to the disciplinary value of manual
training Dr. Harris is skeptical. Its possible use he recognizes only
as a preparation for productive industry. However, for this purpose he
does not see the wisdom or need of teaching it in the school. For, “if
youth can be taught to bring their powers to bear on such subjects as
arithmetic, grammar, history, and literature, they certainly can with
ease give their mind to any form of manual training or the work of
external observation, because the greater includes the less, and the
studies of pure science are far more difficult to carry on than studies
in applied science” (6: p. 16). Thus he disposes of the question
of pure “cultural” training _versus_ “practical” training by
saying: “Cultivate the humanities first, and afterwards the industrial
faculties” (6: p. 20). Dr. Harris does not see the inherent worth of
elementary education nor glorify its function, as Pestalozzi or Froebel
did. For him it is confessedly a “defective sort of education.” Not
only the knowledge it conveys is superficial and scanty, but the method
of instruction and training is “necessarily crude and inadequate.” To
speak of the spontaneous learning of the child is nonsense. In the
language of Dr. Harris, everything must be “served up” to him, and
this in a “fragmentary manner.” This, however, is “not an objectionable
feature”; “or if it is to be regarded as an evil, it is at least
a necessary evil” (5: pp. 144-145). It is in the second stage of
intellectual culture that larger facts are given in a systematic form
and mutual correlation; that the pupil’s own observation, reflection,
and “organic thinking” are encouraged and required. In a still higher
stage--i. e., in the university--original investigation and independent
thinking will have become its characteristic features. Dr. Harris fears
that these higher forms of education, which he terms “the system of
education by insight,” would foster an excessive conceit of self unless
it is built on the safe foundations of what he calls “the education
of authority,” or “the education by means of memory.” “There is this
danger,” he thinks, “in the system of education by insight, if begun
too early, that the individual tends to become so self-conceited with
what he considers knowledge gotten by his own personal thought and
research, that he drifts toward empty agnosticism with the casting
overboard of all authority” (4: p. 271).
Dr. Harris rests his defense of conservatism on the ground of national
psychology, saying that the pedagogy of a people is to be based on the
knowledge of their special aptitudes and “the consequent necessity of
inhibiting excesses.” According to him, the pedagogy emphasizing the
pupil’s self-activity is for the quiet, obedient, and knowledge-loving
Germans, and not for those vigorous nationalities which “love
adventure and the exercise of the will power far more than they love
science.” American children need rather the curbing and directing
of self-activity, of which they have enough without encouragement.
Consequently, discipline and drill, more than instruction, forms the
essential feature of their education. Recitation and the text-book
method is more fit for them than the oral method; because the
Anglo-Saxon teacher is to devote most of his time and energy to the
government and discipline of his class, and, besides, recitation
and the text-book method have many advantages peculiar to them. The
advantages of the text-book method are enumerated as follows:
“It has the advantage of making one independent of his teacher; you
can take your book wherever you please. You cannot do that with the
great lecturer, neither can you question him as you can the book, nor
can you select the time for hearing the great teacher talk as you
can for reading the book. And it is true that nearly all the great
teachers have embodied their ideas in books. The greatest danger of
text-book education is verbatim, parrot-like recitation; but even here
from the poorest text-book a great deal of knowledge can be gleaned.
Then there is the alertness which in any large class will necessarily
be engendered by an intelligent understanding and criticism of the
results arrived at by different pupils in discussing a certain piece
of work given in his own words. And then there is the advantage to be
found in the fact that with the text-book the child can be busy by
itself” (4. p. 272).
As to an estimate of Dr. Harris’s pedagogy little can be said beside
what has been said in respect to that of Hegel; only Dr. Harris goes
further than his master in outspoken advocacy of conservatism and
conventionalism. As a successful administrator he did a great deal for
the educational advancement of this country. His pedagogy also has
been an influential and acceptable one. But it seems to me that the
America for which his pedagogy was formulated is fast passing. For the
America of to-day, mere internal unity and solidarity is no longer the
chief object of national aspiration. She who now is striving for world
supremacy in every direction, with reasonable hope and confidence,
needs, and in fact already has, a new pedagogy.
_Granville Stanley Hall_
(1846- )
The new pedagogy which is gaining an increasing predominance is yet
a movement rather than a system. Although it is now entering its
productive and constructive stage, the light which it has hitherto
thrown upon educational work has been largely in the way of prophecy,
insight, and suggestions rather than a well-ordered philosophy, with
rules and methods. From Comenius down every great renovation in our
educational ideas and methods has been either caused or effected by
an ever fuller grasp of the nature of childhood and youth, to serve
which is the task of education. With Comenius and other pedagogical
writers who followed him, however, the study was individual, and
knowledge remained at best intuition. Limited observations were too
often made the basis of sweeping and one-sided generalizations. The
systematizations attempted were mainly in the direction of deductive
doctrination, but not of inductive synthesis of facts. These facts
cannot be gathered and established from any individual experiences,
however true and penetrating they may be, but only from the universal
experience and experiments of the race, past and present. For the
inductive synthesis of all the facts concerning the nature of childhood
and youth, which can possibly be gathered and established from all
sources, we are indebted to the so-called child-study movement. It
calls to its aid animal psychology, anthropology, and medical science
as well as all the branches of human psychology and physiology. It
not only avails itself of the anthology of folklore, myths, nursery
stories, and even superstitions, but also of the experience and
observation of individuals, great and small. The uniqueness of the
movement consists not only “in the new direction and focalization
of many scientific departments and methods upon one object, some of
which have never before had even this bond of union,” but also in
the intimate contact, understanding, and mutual helpfulness into
which it has brought experts and laymen, academic investigators, and
practical workers. As the originator and the foremost leader of this
movement stands Dr. Hall. In him America has first produced a pedagogic
writer whose originality is peculiarly her own, and whose influence
has extended far beyond the borders of the land. The new pedagogic
movement which Dr. Hall represents has a philosophic basis in “genetic
psychology,” which sees the essence of _psyche_ in its process of
becoming. It has been subject to the course of evolution as organic
matters have been. The human soul is merely a sort of “a species or a
stage of evolution” in the soul kingdom; it is “one of the many types
in the world,” and “at best it may be a transition from a lower to
a higher race to be evolved later” (1: vol. ii, p. 62). So our soul
life extends far back to the beginning of organic life, and inherits
in its pedigree the stored results of prehuman and human experience.
Education is to unfold all these latencies in the individual and the
race to their maximal maturity and strength. As a process considered
as internally taking place, it is nothing else than human evolution;
as a force or forces tending to growth, it is “almost as broad as what
biology calls environment”--a much wider conception than instruction
and discipline.
According to the genetic view of soul, consciousness is a late
product in the evolution of the soul kingdom, and thus constitutes
only a small and yet unstable upper story of our psychic structure.
Thus we must seek “the bearer of mental heredity” in the larger and
older basal structure of the soul, namely, in the motor habits,
feelings, instincts, impulses, and intuitions--which constitute the
unconscious part of our soul. It follows, then, that to secure a full
and unhindered unfolding of this unconscious basal part of our soul is
the first concern of education. Unless built on this foundation rock,
which is coextensive with the history of animal and human evolution,
the superstructure will not stand firm and secure. So Dr. Hall stands
as a vigorous protestant against the ultra-intellectualistic tendency
of prevailing education which neglects the culture of motor habits, of
instincts, and of emotions and pleads for the cultivation of the heart
as well as the head.
First, he is an ardent apostle of the education of and through
muscle, the growing recognition of which has been one of the most
conspicuous and hopeful tendencies of educational progress in recent
years. “Muscles are the vehicles of habituation, imitation, obedience,
character, and even of manners and customs.... Skill, endurance, and
perseverance may almost be called muscular virtues, and fatigue,
velleity, caprice, _ennui_, restlessness, lack of control,
and poise, muscular faults” (1: vol. i, p. 132). Thus the basis of
character building must be laid in motor training; will culture is
essentially muscle culture. Yet muscles are not only the organs of
will, but also of feeling and thought. Throughout animal and human
evolution, the development of intelligence went together with that
of the structure and function of muscles, and every change in our
emotional life is accompanied by change in internal or external muscles
of the body.
The first care in muscle culture must be to secure abundance and
diversity of kinetic energy. “Here, as everywhere, the rule holds that
powers themselves must be unfolded before the ability to check or even
use them can develop” (1: vol. i, p. 161). The vigorous spontaneity
of sporadic movements in young children should be cherished instead
of suppressed. The coördination of these purposeless activities into
higher compounds of habits should come only slowly and gradually, or
else it will cause either atrophy or disease of motor function. The
natural evolutionary course of muscular development has been from the
fundamental to the accessory; and early childhood is the period for the
development of larger basal muscles. Any fine work requiring accuracy,
taxing the tiny accessory muscles, either of the eyes, of the tongue,
or of the fingers should not be exacted. Training of the accessory
muscles ought to come between the ages of eight and twelve. This is
preëminently the period for drill, for mechanization.
Puberty is the stage of ill-balanced transition. The motor
coördinations are lost for a moment, all the ways of awkwardness,
mannerisms, and semi-imperative acts manifest themselves as a result.
“This is again the age of the basal--e. g., hill-climbing muscles
of leg and back and shoulder work, and of the yet more fundamental
heart, lung, and chest muscles” (1: vol. i, p. 165). As during early
childhood, now the danger is overemphasis upon the activities of
accessory muscles and overprecision. Now, again, book-studies,
class-lessons may become an evil. They constitute “not a liberal,
power-generating, but a highly and prematurely specialized, narrowing
and weakening education, unless offset by safeguards better than any
system of gymnastics, which is at best artificial and exaggerated” (1:
vol. i, p. 165).
For Dr. Hall, play presents the ideal type of exercise; he, like
Froebel, spares no words of praise for its merits. According to him,
in play we unconsciously rehearse the motor experience of the race.
The motor habits won by the long history of toil and pain, elaborated
in the life-and-death struggle for existence, now reappear in us by
impulse, as spontaneity and joy. And “pleasure is always exactly
proportional to the directness and force of the current of heredity”
(1: vol. i, p. 206). It is, therefore, his opinion that we should
direct the exercise of the young to these old basal activities handed
down from the distant past, which have built up the intellect and
character as well as the physique of the race, rather than insist upon
those arbitrary systems and methods invented to form a symmetrical body
according to our ideas. He thinks that “education perhaps should really
begin with directing childish sports aright” (1: vol. i, p. 231).
Dr. Hall sees in industrial training a motor education of more psychic
impulsion and generic ground than pure manual training artificially
designed. Adolescence is the golden period for it. “Industry has
determined the nature and trend of muscular development and youth who
have pets, till the soil, build, manufacture, use tools, and master
elementary processes and skills, are most truly repeating the history
of the race. This, too, lays the best foundation for intellectual
careers. The study of pure science as well as a higher technology
follows rather than precedes this” (1: vol. i, p. 174). The danger here
that should be guarded against is its tendency to narrow exclusiveness
and too early specialization. Health and free development of body as
well as of mind are apt to be sacrificed. However, utility is naturally
its essential aim, and maximal efficiency of productive power is the
standard of success; it ought to fit the pupil for the struggle of
life. Such “struggle-for-lifeurs,” sturdy in arms and spirit, not
“flabby, undeveloped, anæmic, easy-living city youth,” is the demand of
modern America. Real industrial training is a man-making education.
Thus, according to Dr. Hall, character is to be built not upon
Herbart’s coherent and compact system of ideas, but upon vigorous,
well-developed, and perfectly coördinated muscles. However, this is
not, of course, the whole of moral training. Will is to be made moral,
not only to be strong and healthy. This moralization of will is the
task of discipline.
Not unlike Dr. Harris, but more in the spirit of the father of English
pedagogy, he posits that about the only duty of small children is
habitual and prompt obedience. Nothing like the reasoning ground of
conduct, or the free self-determination of will, for them; the extent
of authority felt, revered, and depended upon is the measure of
success. He thinks that “if our love is deep, obedience is an instinct
if not a religion” for the child: “as the plant grows toward light, so
they unfold in the direction of our wishes, felt as by divination” (2:
p. 332).
Dr. Hall sees in the present trend of education more danger of becoming
oversentimental than of falling into brutality; so he recommends
“drastic reconstructions” of will, when habituation does not, as should
be expected, run smoothly. He likens the corporal punishment to a sword
in its scabbard: “it may be reserved, but should not get so rusted
that it cannot be drawn on occasion”; and believes that “will culture
for boys is rarely as thorough as it should be without more or less
flogging” (2: pp. 338-339).
External authority, however, must find response in the intellectual
motivation of the child as it grows, else it can avail but little
educationally. “The various stimuli of discipline are to enforce the
higher though weaker insights which the child has already unfolded,
rather than to engraft entirely unintuited good,” and “we must not
forget that even morality is relative, and is one thing for adults and
quite often another for children” (2: p. 335).
The transition from the morality of authority and coercion to that of
reason and free will may be bridged by simple, practical instructions.
These are to be given in the form of a few well-chosen mottoes,
proverbs, maxims, always clear cut, copiously illustrated, and well
familiarized. Philosophic morality should be deprecated both for
children and teachers. Every road of human activity leads to the great
Rome of character. For Dr. Hall, “the highest and also immediate
practical method of moral training” lies in intellectual work,
concentrated, sustained, and inspirited. Mental work, in order to be
serviceable to the production of healthy manhood, should be “a series
of acts, or living thoughts and not words.” The lack of volitional
initiative and reaction in the current form of mental training has
caused “the general paralysis of cultured intellect.” Learning should
be changed from a mere reception, as it is now, into the putting forth
of self-activity. “It is the way and not the goal, the work and not
the product, the acquiring and not the acquisition, that educates
will and character” (2: p. 346). Then the spirit of thoroughness is
the requisite for the intellectual training that at the same time
trains the will. “Smattering is dissipation of energy. Only great,
concentrated and prolonged efforts in one direction really train the
mind, because only _they_ train the will beneath it” (2: p. 349).
This is one of the educative forces of specialization.
To turn now to intellectual culture. In Dr. Hall’s opinion, the
school stands essentially for the prolongation of human infancy and
adolescence, and not so much for the initiation of the immature
generation into the world of grown-ups; it means “the perpetuation of
the primæval paradise created before the struggle for existence began”
(8: p. 475).
From this viewpoint the kindergarten needs reconstruction. Here “a
pound of health, growth, heredity is worth a ton of instruction.... Now
the body needs most attention and the soul least” (8: p. 476). Not in
the oversystematized and oversymbolized “occupations” and “games,” but
in free, natural play children must have their true life. “Imitation
should have a far larger scope” than at present, and precocious
exercise of reasoning and thinking a less. “Part of the cult here
should be idleness and the intermediate state of reverie” (8: p. 476).
At eight or nine the child enters a new period, lasting until puberty.
The bodily growth is relatively at rest, but vitality, activity, and
the power to resist disease and fatigue show an enormous increase. The
age of reason is only dawning, and imitation is yet a strong motive
power. “Demonstrate, show, envisage,” and not “explain” is to be the
motto. “Children comprehend much and very rapidly if we can only
refrain from explaining, but this slows down intuition, tends to make
casuists and prigs, and to enfeeble the ultimate vigor of reason. It
is the age of little method and much matter” (1: vol. ii, p. 452). A
beginning in the fundamentals of all learning and skill which need
technicalities is to be made; constant drill in these will form a
stable automatic basis of mind. The qualities required of the teacher
here are not so much those of the instructor as of “the captain of the
boy’s gang.” He or she is to be able to lead, drive, and discipline
more than to teach “the human colt, which is by nature in some sense
the wildest of all wild animals.”
But with the teens there must come a total change in the mode of
education. “Powers and faculties, essentially nonexistent before,
are now born, and of all the older impulses and instincts some are
reënforced and greatly developed, while others are subdued, so that
new relations are established and the ego finds a new center” (1: vol.
ii, p. 70). The child in the preceding period was well adjusted to his
environment; his development was proportionate and relatively slow;
and he lived content with himself in his own child world. He thus
“represents probably an old and relatively perfected stage of race
maturity”; which “stands for a long-continued one, a terminal stage
of human development at some post-simian point” (1: vol. ii, p. 71).
But with the advent of adolescence, this peaceful, primeval paradise
is lost forever. The youth with its all-sided mobilization and with
its intense enthusiasm enters into the conquest of a higher kingdom
of manhood. The individual is now recapitulating a long viaticum of
ascent which the race had to make with heat and ferment, with fight
and defeat, before it evolved its historic stage of civilization.
“Early adolescence is thus the infancy of man’s higher nature, when
he receives from the great all-mother his last capital of energy
and evolutionary momentum” (1: vol. ii, p. 71). “It is the most
critical stage of life, because failure to mount almost always means
retrogression, degeneracy, or fall” (1: vol. ii, p. 72). Indeed, one of
the greatest problems of civilization, therefore of education, is how
to make “the earlier stages of adolescence ever surer and safer, and
its later possibilities ever greater and prolonged.”
Coercion and prescription can be no longer imposed without serious
injuries. “Individuality must have a longer tether” (1: vol. ii,
p. 453). This is preeminently the period of variation, which means
nothing else than evolution. Each of the impulses, instincts, and
dispositions, which represent the voices of bygone generations, shall
have a free struggle for expression. “Its function is to stimulate the
next higher power that can only thus be provoked to development, in
order to direct, repress, or supersede it.” So-called lower faculties
or instincts, if artificially and prematurely suppressed, may “break
out well on in adult life, falsetto notes mingling with manly base as
strange puerilities” (1: vol. ii, pp. 89-90).
The educator is now essentially to be a teacher, not a drillmaster; he
must know plenty and teach plenty; he must be generous and indulgent
in his giving, and not exacting in requiring returns from the pupil.
“The teacher’s cue is now to graft the soul all over with buds and
scions, and not to try to gather a harvest” (8: p. 485). Recitation
and examination methods are harmful both to the intellect and the will.
Morselizing the knowledge and insisting upon methodical steps starve
the adolescent soul, which, being “all insight and receptivity,” wants
to devour great wholes.
Dr. Hall makes an ardent plea for the independence of the high school
from the control of the higher institutions, making it “the peoples’
college,” complete in itself. It stands to meet peculiar needs of the
unique stage of life, with a distinct function of its own. It “should
primarily fit for nothing, but exploit and develop to the utmost all
the powers” (1: vol. ii, p. 525).
The nineteenth year in boys marks an epoch. It is a time for adjustment
and rest after the rank growth. It is a period of systematic rounding
up, following the all-sided mobilization. The liberal education of the
college is provided here, for those who are favored by circumstances.
It is to be an essentially cultural and humanistic institution, broadly
propædeutic and preparatory to the career of mature manhood. Therefore,
college “should stand for extensive more than intensive study....
It implies knowing something of everything more than everything of
something” (1: vol. ii, p. 528). Not scientific or professional
acquirement, still less mastery, but training and discipline of mind
is the aim. The teacher “should address his efforts more to the upper
and less to the lower half of his class, forage widely and incessantly,
and bring everything within reach in his field to them.... Mental
awakening should be his goal, and he should inspire them to read for
pleasure, for the only real measure of culture is the number and kinds
of things done for the love of them.... The test of success here is the
number of interests and the intensity of curiosity aroused far more
than the size of the body of knowledge laid away in the memory” (1:
vol. ii, p. 530).
As to university education, the fundamental notions of Dr. Hall are
a clearer and more definite statement of those of Bacon and Fichte,
which the modern advancement of science and his own experience as a
university president have enabled him to make. The university stands
chiefly for specialization in scholarship. Its inspiration is the
conquest of truth, extension of the domain of human knowledge, and
consequently of human power. Its education is in and for and by a
free, though at first guided and assisted, investigation. Not merely
accumulating what has already been found and refined, but digging
out yet undiscovered mines of facts and laws, is its chief task. The
university in this sense is the culmination of adolescent education.
It cultivates in the youth the creative ability which does not, like
the mere carrying capacity, weigh down the possessor; the sense of
I-can-do-something-important, which gives one confidence, and poise, an
enthusiasm which is not fanatic, a genuine attitude of respect, even
of reverence for the efforts of all seekers for truth. It calls forth
“truthfulness, integrity, morality in every direction, self-sacrifice,
and what perhaps includes them all, enthusiasm for the highest ideals
of living and thinking,” by laying demands upon these best qualities in
man’s character.
The right of a larger manhood has been the claim of all the educational
reformers deserving the name. The unfolding of the total man has
been their repeated assertion. But they have always fallen into one
or another form of one-sidedness--mainly on account of their narrow
conception of the human soul. Here comes another renovator with his
“new psychology,” which he believes “will surely take the place of
the older concepts of soul, as the theory of evolution has taken the
place of those of life,” and claims for it the potency of bringing
about a total reconstruction of our educational spirit and methods.
His own pedagogy is a still incomplete, unfinished, and ever-enlarging
construction. But he opens the way for the philosophy of education,
which is to be “one with that of history and of life,” and predicts
with the zeal and vision of a prophet its future position:
“If evolution is true, the time will come, as certainly as the sun
will rise to-morrow, when it (pedagogy) will be the basis of a new
harmony, unity, and organization of the sciences, and instead of
being the Cinderella in their circle, it will supply the criterion by
which they are all judged; it will grade and evaluate each product of
culture” (4: p. 383).
REFERENCES
1. +Harris, William Torrey.+ Report of the Subcommittee on
the Correlation of Studies in Elementary Education. _Educational
Review_, Vol. IX, March, 1895, pp. 230-289.
2. ---- Social Culture in the Form of Education and Religion.
Proceedings of International Congress of Arts and Sciences. Houghton &
Mifflin Co., New York and Boston, 1907. Vol. VIII, pp. 1-16.
3. ---- Psychologic Foundations of Education; an Attempt to Show the
Genesis of the Higher Faculties of the Mind. (International Education
Series.) Appleton, New York, 1894. 400 pages.
4. ---- Lectures on the Philosophy of Education. Johns Hopkins
University Studies in Historical and Political Science. Supplementary
notes. Eleventh series, 1893, pp. 269-277.
5. ---- Prescription, its Province in Education. Proceedings of
American Institute of Instruction, 1871, pp. 127-151.
6. ---- Vocation _versus_ Culture. Proceedings of American
Institute of Instruction, 1891, pp. 1-20.
7. ---- Moral Education in the Common Schools. Proceedings of American
Institute of Instruction, 1884. Lectures, pp. 29-46.
8. ---- The Relation of School Discipline to Moral Education.
Herbartian Year Book, No. 3, 1897, pp. 58-72.
9. ---- Relation of Women to the Trades and Professions.
_Educational Review_, October, 1900, Vol. XX, pp. 217-229.
10. ---- The Use of Higher Education. _Educational Review_,
September, 1898, Vol. XVI, pp. 147-161.
11. ---- Educational Policy for Our New Possessions. _Educational
Review_, September, 1899, Vol. XVIII, pp. 105-118.
12. ---- The Future of the Normal School. _Educational Review_,
January, 1899, Vol. XVII, pp. 1-15.
13. ---- How the School Strengthens the Individuality of the Pupil.
_Educational Review_, October, 1902, Vol. XXIV, pp. 228-237.
14. Prof. John Dewey’s Doctrine as Related to Will. _Educational
Review_, May, 1896, Vol. XI, pp. 486-493.
REFERENCES
1. +Hall, Granville Stanley.+ Adolescence; its Psychology and
its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime,
Religion. Appleton, New York, 1905. 2 vols.
2. ---- Youth; its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene. Appleton, New
York, 1906. 369 pages.
3. ---- and Some of his Pupils. Aspects of Child Life and Education.
Ginn & Co., Boston, 1907. 326 pages.
4. ---- What is Pedagogy? _Pedagogical Seminary_, December, 1905.
Vol. XII, pp. 375-383.
5. ---- Confessions of a Psychologist. _Pedagogical Seminary_,
March, 1901. Vol. VIII, pp. 92-143.
6. ---- Moral and Religious Training of Children and Adolescents.
_Pedagogical Seminary_, June, 1891, pp. 196-210.
7. ---- Moral Education and Will Training. _Pedagogical
Seminary_, June, 1892, pp. 72-98.
8. ---- The Ideal School, as Based on Child Study. Proceedings
of National Education Association, 1901, pp. 475-488. (Also in
_Forum_, September, 1901, Vol. XXXII, pp. 24-39.)
9. ---- The High School or the People’s College versus the Fitting
School. Proceedings of National Education Association, 1902. (Also in
_Pedagogical Seminary_, March, 1902, Vol. IX, pp. 63-73.)
10. ---- What is Research in a University Sense and How May it Best be
Promoted? _Pedagogical Seminary_, March, 1902, Vol. IX, pp. 74-80.
11. ---- Pedagogy of History. _Pedagogical Seminary_, September,
1905, Vol. XII, pp. 339-349.
12. ---- How to Teach Reading and What to Read in School. Heath & Co.,
Boston, 1890. 40 pages.
13. ---- Coeducation in the High School. Proceedings of National
Education Association, 1903, pp. 446-460.
14. ---- The Question of Coeducation. _Munsey_, February, 1906.
Vol. XXXIV, pp. 588-592. (Also in _Bulletin of American Academy of
Medicine_, October, 1906, Vol. VII, pp. 653-656.)
15. +Russel, Elias Harlow.+ Biographical Sketch of President
Hall. (In _American Journal of Insanity_, October, 1896, Vol.
LIII, pp. 317-322.)
INDEX
Adolescence, 28, 82-89, 109-110, 262-264, 280-282, 284, 286-290.
Alsted, 19.
Andreä, 19.
Arithmetic, 135, 178.
Association, 52, 206.
Athenian education, 2-3.
Attention, 50-51, 129, 208-209, 233, 255.
Bacon, 12-15.
mentioned, 18, 30, 38, 39, 52, 54, 223, 225, 226, 289.
on higher education, 15.
on knowledge, 12-14.
Barnard, quoted, 146.
Basedow, 93-98.
fundamental principles of didactics, 96-97.
ideal education, 95.
influence of, 94, 97-98.
language instruction, 95-96.
mentioned, 103, 105, 113, 139.
“Philalethie,” 94.
physical culture, 95-96.
Bible, 8, 27.
Boardman, quoted, 189-190.
Bodily faculty, A. B. C. of, 151.
Boyhood, 28, 77-82, 179-186, 253-261, 270-274, 280, 283-286.
Browning, on Locke, 38.
on Rousseau, 61.
Campanella, 19.
Carlyle, on Rousseau, 59, 60.
Character. See Moral Training.
Child-study movement, 277-278.
Childhood, 28, 71-77, 133-137, 174-179, 252-253, 270, 280, 282-283,
285.
early, 28, 69-71, 173-174, 252.
Chinese, compared with Greeks, 1.
Christianity, influence of, on education, 3-12.
Church, education by, 4-5.
service of Catholic, 7.
Cicero, quoted, 3.
Circle of thought, 206.
Civilization and education, 268-269.
Classics, 5, 10, 14, 26, 39, 48-49, 94, 162, 225, 228, 257.
Coeducation, 157, 293.
Comenius, 18-31.
compared with Locke. See Locke.
early education advocated, 22-24.
existing schools criticised, 24-26.
“Great Didactic,” 20, 29, 35.
ideal of education, 20-21, 29, 35.
mentioned, 68, 89, 94, 96, 119-120, 138, 139, 194, 276-277.
on discipline, 25-26.
on function of school, 24.
on method, 26-28.
on necessity of education, 21-22.
on necessity of school, 23-24.
on school system, 28.
on subject-matter, 26.
“Orbis Pictus,” 96.
Compayré, on Froebel, 192-193.
on Greek influence on education, 1.
on Luther, 7.
Comte, 230.
Concentration-center, 213-214.
Coöperation, 155-156, 162-163, 216.
Corporal punishment, 43-44, 283.
Cosmopolitanism, 110.
Culture stages, 213-214.
Curiosity, 50, 253.
Dancing, 48.
Davidson, on Rousseau, 61.
Developmental stages, 68-69, 124, 169, 171-173, 213, 251-252.
Discipline, 10, 25-26, 42-46, 102-103, 152, 214-215, 234-236, 250-251,
259-260, 270-272, 282-283.
See also Moral Training.
Domestic work, 12, 129-130, 136-137, 178-179, 183-184.
Drawing, 177-178.
Education, academic, 15, 159-164, 239-240.
Athenian, 2-3.
by nature, 64-66.
early, 22-23, 69-77, 101-103, 133-137, 173-179, 252-253, 270, 280,
282-283, 285.
economic, 155-157.
efferent, 181-184.
elementary, 133-137, 272-274.
in middle ages, 4-5.
industrial, 137-139, 281-282.
intellectual, 10, 15, 25-28, 48-54, 66-68, 72-74, 76-77, 79-82, 87,
88, 95-96, 104-106, 133-136, 148-151, 159-164, 174, 178, 179, 180-181,
184, 185, 206-214, 225-233, 239-240, 254-259, 268, 272-275, 284-290.
liberal, 288.
man-making, 282.
moral, 10, 25, 42-46, 83-89, 106-110, 112-113, 132, 136-137,
152-155, 181-182, 205-207, 214-215, 236-238, 250-251, 259-261,
270-272, 279, 282-284.
national, 144.
of adolescents, 28, 82-89, 109-110, 262-264, 280-282, 284, 286-290.
of boys, 28, 77-82, 179-186, 253-261, 270-274, 280, 283-286.
physical, 1, 10, 40-41, 54, 65, 69, 71-75, 101, 103-104, 151,
173-174, 182-183, 236-238, 280-281.
private, 55-56, 217.
See also Home Training.
“psychologizing,” 124.
public, 2-3, 55-56, 101, 144, 216-217, 238-243, 268.
religious, 83, 110-113, 158-159, 260-261.
Roman, 3.
Spartan, 2-3.
uniform, opposed, 3, 240-243.
universal, advocated by Comenius, 22.
university, 15, 161-164, 289-290.
Educational ideals, 1-3, 4, 5, 6-7, 11-12, 15, 21, 24, 40, 63, 95,
99-100, 122, 146-147, 169, 203, 227, 250-251, 268, 278.
Emotion, 63, 84-85, 87, 128-129, 133, 153-154, 182, 204, 239, 261, 278.
Emulation, 23, 55, 109.
Evolutionary ideas, 169-170, 213, 230-232, 248-249, 278-279, 290.
Examination, 163, 288.
Fairy tales, 184-185, 213.
Family. See Home Training.
Fichte, 143-164.
“Addresses to the German Nation,” 145.
“Aphorisms on Education,” 147.
“Characteristics of the Present Age,” 152.
first essentials of new education, 152.
mentioned, 113, 195, 245, 246, 248, 259, 263, 289.
on moral training, 152-155.
on academic education, 159-164.
on coeducation, 157.
on home, 154-155.
on manual work, 156.
on Pestalozzi, 140.
on religious education, 158-159.
on university education, 161-164.
plan of an educational community, 154-157.
Formal steps of instruction, 209.
Formative instinct, 183-184.
Froebel, 166-196.
“Education of Man,” 168, 193.
evolutionary idea of education, 169-170.
mentioned, 199, 200, 250, 258.
on arithmetic, 178.
on education of boys, 179-186.
on domestic work, 178-179, 182, 183-184.
on drawing, 177-178.
on early education, 173-179.
on efferent education, 181-184.
on harmonious development, 171.
on ideal of education, 169.
on kindergarten, 180-181, 186-192.
on mathematics, 178.
on play, 174-175, 182-183.
on rhythm, 176.
on school, 181.
on songs, 185-186.
on speech, 174, 175-176, 179-180.
on stories, 184-185.
pedagogy of, characterized, 166-168, 192-196.
“Prospectus of an institution for the Training of Nurses and
Educators of Children,” 190.
Grammar, 54, 228, 257, 273.
Genetic psychology, 278.
Greek, language and culture, 14, 39, 162, 257.
Greek ideals of education, 1-3.
Gymnastics, 151, 237, 281.
Habit, 41, 49, 95, 101, 102-103, 105, 153-154, 157, 178, 270-271, 279.
Hall, G. Stanley, 276-290.
on adolescence, 282, 283, 286, 288.
on college education, 288-289.
on discipline, 282-283.
on education of boys, 282-283, 285-286.
on Froebel, 193.
on industrial education, 281-282.
on intellectual education, 284-290.
on kindergarten, 285.
on moral training, 279, 282-284.
on motor training, 279-282.
on play, 281.
on teachers, 286, 287-289.
on university education, 289-290.
on harmonious development, 287.
pedagogy of, characterized, 278-279, 290.
psychology of, 278-279.
Harmonious development, 1, 12, 21, 24, 40, 71, 94-95, 105, 121-123,
130-131, 136-137, 157, 170-172, 206-208, 227, 280, 287-288.
Harnisch, on Pestalozzi, 139.
Harris, William T., 267-276.
on elementary education, 273-274.
on higher education, 274.
on intellectual education, 268, 269, 272-275.
on manual training, 273.
on moral training, 270-272.
on school, 268, 271.
pedagogy of, characterized, 267-268, 276.
school and home compared, 271-272.
subject-matter, 272-273.
Hegel, 245-266.
“Ages of Man,” 251.
education defined by, 248-251.
mentioned, 267-268.
on adolescence, 262-264.
on classics, 257.
on early education, 252-253.
on education of boys, 253-261.
on grammar, 257.
on intellectual education, 254-259.
on logic, 257.
on manhood, 264.
on mathematics, 257, 259.
on memory, 256.
on moral training, 250-251, 259-261.
on old age, 265.
on school, 258-259.
on subject-matter, 257-258.
pedagogy of, characterized, 245-248, 265-266.
Heinemann, quoted, 189.
Herbart, 199-219.
end of education, 203.
mentioned, 119, 248, 265.
on attention, 208-209.
on discipline, 214-215.
on home training, 216-217.
on instruction, 206-214.
on interest, 206-209.
on moral training, 205-207, 214-215.
on state education, 216-217.
pedagogy of, characterized, 199-203, 215-216.
psychology of, 203-205, 218-219.
Heredity, 170-171, 278-279, 281, 282, 285, 286-287.
Herr von Arnswald, quoted, 188.
High school, 288.
Higher education, 15, 28, 161-164, 274, 288-290.
Home training, 3, 8, 12, 23, 55-56, 70, 100-101, 124-137, 155,
178-179, 182, 183, 184, 187-188, 216-217, 241, 261, 268, 271.
Honor, 45.
Hotho, quoted, 246.
Humanism, 5-6.
Infant schools, 188.
Institutions, private, 217.
Instruction. See Learning, Intellectual Education, and Subject-Matter.
analytic, 210-211.
presentative, 210.
synthetic, 211-212.
Interest, 27, 50, 51, 77-81, 104-105, 127, 147, 206-209, 233, 253-254,
255, 268-269, 289.
See also Natural Development, Spontaneous Activity.
Jahn, 96, 151.
Kant, 98-114.
compared with Locke, 102-103.
compared with Rousseau, 98-99.
mentioned, 41, 143-144, 153-154, 169, 200-203, 257.
on adolescence, 109.
on discipline, 102-103.
on emulation, 109-110.
on home training, 100-101.
on ideal of education, 99-100.
on manners, 106.
on mental culture, 104-106.
on moral education, 106-110, 112-113.
on physical culture, 103-104.
on play, 104-105.
on religious education, 110-113.
on sex pedagogy, 109-110.
on state education, 110.
on sympathy, 108-109.
pedagogy of, characterized, 98-99.
Kindergarten, 28, 180, 186-192, 258, 285.
Krüsi, on Pestalozzi, 116.
La Chalotais, 93.
Language, Bible as text-book of, 8.
instruction in, 10, 28, 54, 73, 95, 96, 151, 162, 176, 212, 228,
257, 272-273.
See also Speech and Vernacular.
Laurie, on Comenius, 19.
on Locke, 37.
Learning, discussed by Bacon, 12-15.
Comenius, 25-28.
Fichte, 147-151, 162-164.
Froebel, 174, 181.
Hall, 284-290.
Harris, 268-270, 272-275.
Hegel, 253-258.
Herbart, 206-212.
Kant, 104-106.
Locke, 48-55.
Pestalozzi, 131-137.
Rousseau, 65-68, 71-82, 87, 88.
Spencer, 225-228, 230-233.
Leibnitz, on Locke, 37.
Locke, 35-56.
compared with Comenius, 35-38, 54-56.
compared with Kant, 102-103.
influence on English education, 38.
mentioned, 59, 89, 94, 96, 99, 113, 139, 203, 224, 237.
on attention and association, 50-52.
on dancing, 48.
on discipline, 42-45.
on example and company, 45-46.
on Greek, 39.
on honor, 44-45.
on learning, 48-55.
on logic, 52.
on manners, 47-48.
on mathematics, 52.
on memory, 52-53.
on play instinct, 42-43.
on principles of hygiene, 40-41.
on punishment, 43-44.
on subject-matter, 54.
psychology of, 41-42, 52-53.
Logic, 52, 135, 257.
Luther, 7-12.
mentioned, 19, 145, 146.
on discipline, 9-10.
on home training, 8, 10, 12.
on relation of religion and
education, 8-9.
on school, 9-10, 12.
on subject-matter, 10, 12.
on teachers, 9-11.
Madame de Staël, on Rousseau, 59-60.
Mager, on Pestalozzi, 120.
Manhood, 264.
Manners, 47-48, 106, 270-271.
Manual training, 12, 54, 88, 94-95, 136-139, 155-157, 162, 168,
183-184, 273, 281.
Marenholz-Bülow, on Froebel, 187.
Mathematics, 52, 178, 257.
Memory, 52-53, 256.
Method, 26-28, 42, 242, 275.
Military drill, 258.
Montaigne, 39, 40.
Mother, 125-129, 134, 187-188, 190, 261, 270.
See also Parents.
Morley, on Rousseau, 62.
Motor training, 71-72, 74-75, 95-96, 103-104, 129, 136-139, 151,
155-157, 162, 168, 173-179, 181-184, 188, 237-238, 258, 279-282.
Munroe, on Froebel, 166, 192.
Muscles. See Motor Training.
Music. See Songs.
Natural development, 122-124, 229-231.
See also Spontaneous Activity.
Nature, 13, 27, 62-64.
Niemeyer, on “Émile,” 61.
Parents, 10, 23, 43, 46, 69-70, 100-101, 107, 129, 133, 171, 172, 179,
189, 216-217, 228, 234, 235, 242-243, 250, 261.
See also Home Training and Mother.
Perception of A. B. C. of, 150-151, 200.
Pestalozzi, 116-140.
“Christopher and Alice,” 125.
compared with Rousseau, 124-125.
elementary method of education, 133-137.
function of education, 123.
“How Gertrude Taught Children,” 131.
“Leonard and Gertrude,” 131.
mentioned, 149-151, 159, 169, 190, 194-196, 199-201, 218, 223, 229,
234, 257, 259, 273.
“New Year’s Address,” 121-122.
on harmonious education, 121, 123, 136.
on home, 126-132.
on ideal of education, 121.
on industrial education, 137-139.
on moral training, 128-129, 132, 133.
on motor training, 136-137, 138-139.
on nature’s method, 132-133.
pedagogy of, characterized, 117-120.
“Swan Song,” 132, 133.
Philanthropium, 94, 96, 98.
Play, 42-43, 103-105, 174-175, 182-183, 238, 281.
Prescription, 254, 269, 270-271, 287.
Protestantism, 6-7.
Psychology, genetic, 278.
national, 274-275.
of Hall, 278-279.
of Herbart, 203-205.
of Locke, 41-42, 52-53.
Puberty, 82-87, 109-110, 280-281, 286-287.
Public school versus private education, 55-56, 125-128, 216-217,
271-272.
Punishment, 43-44, 214, 235, 287.
Pythagoras, 255.
Quick, on Froebel, 193.
Rabelais, 19, 39.
Ratke, 19.
Recitation, 275, 288.
Reformation, 5-7, 11-12, 31.
Rein, 214.
on Herbart, 202.
Religion and education, relation of, 8-9, 19.
Renaissance, 5-6, 11-12.
Rhythm, 176.
Roman education, 3.
Rousseau, 59-90.
“Émile,” 61.
mentioned, 41, 93-94, 96, 97, 98-99, 103, 113, 119, 124, 159, 169,
171, 172, 186-187, 194, 201, 223, 229, 235, 250, 261, 267.
on adolescent education, 87-89.
on book study, 63-68, 72-73.
on duty of parents, 69-70.
on early education, 64-67, 70-71.
on education by activity, 64, 67-68, 71-72, 74-75.
on education by inaction, 65-66.
on education by nature, 63-65, 89.
on ideal boyhood, 81-82.
on ideal childhood, 76-77.
on the origin of intellectual interest, 78-79.
on preadolescent education, 77-82.
on puberty, 82-87.
on science instruction, 66-68, 79-81.
on work interest, 81.
pedagogy of, characterized, 59-62, 89-90.
sex pedagogy, 83-88.
social-settlement anticipated, 88-89.
stages of natural development, 68-69.
Rosenkranz, 245.
Scholars, vocation of, discussed by Fichte, 160-161, 163-164.
School, 9-10, 12, 24-26, 55-56, 181, 258, 268, 271, 272, 284-285.
See also teachers.
Schneider, on Pestalozzi, 139.
Science, instruction in, 66-68, 79-81, 282.
value of, 227-228.
Self-activity, 147-149, 155, 160-163, 171, 208, 254, 256, 269,
273-275.
See also Spontaneous Activity.
Self-expression, 174-175, 177.
Self-instruction, 232-235.
Sensation, A. B. C. of, 150-151.
Sex pedagogy, 83-88, 109-110.
Silence, 255, 272.
Social nursery, 188.
Solger, quoted, 247.
Songs, 10, 185-186.
Spartan education, 2-3.
Speech, 70, 133-135, 151, 174-176, 179, 180, 252-253.
See also Language.
Spencer, 223-243.
“Education, intellectual,
moral, physical,” 243.
mentioned, 267.
on aim of education, 226-227.
on classics, 225, 228.
on intellectual education, 225-233.
on method, 242.
on moral training, 233, 236.
on physical education, 236-238.
on state education, 238-243.
on value of science, 227-228.
pedagogy of, characterized, 223-224.
Spielmann, on Comenius, 30.
on Herbart, 217-218.
Spontaneous activity, 170-171, 180, 188, 192, 280.
See also Natural Development, Self-activity and Self-instruction.
State education, 2-3, 101, 144, 216-217, 238-243, 268.
Stoicism, 3.
Stories, 184-185.
Subject-matter, 10, 12, 26, 53-54, 208, 227-228, 257-258, 272-273.
Teachers, 9-11, 127-128, 203, 216, 250, 271.
Temming, on Kant, 113.
Text-books, 275.
Vernacular, 19, 26.
Vives, 19.
Work interest, 51, 81, 105, 253-254.
Youth. See Adolescence.
Ziegler, on Kant, 113.
Ziller, 213-214.
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