Читать книгу Outlines of Educational Doctrine - Johann Friedrich Herbart - Страница 13

56. Instruction furnishes a part of those occupations which lie at the basis of government; how large a part depends on circumstances.

Children must be kept employed at all events, because idleness leads to misbehavior and lawlessness. Now if the employment consists of useful labor, say in the workshop or on the farm, so much the better. Better still, if the work teaches the child something that will contribute to his further education. But not all employment is instruction; and in cases where the mere government of children is a difficult matter, lessons are not always the most adequate employment. Many a growing boy will be taught orderly conduct much sooner when placed with a mechanic or merchant or farmer than in school. The scope of government is wider than that of instruction.

Teachers of manual training everywhere testify to the quieting effect of directed physical labor upon stormy spirits. Even a truant school or a school for incorrigibles becomes an attractive place to the inmates when adequate provision is made for the exercise of the motor powers. Most children can be controlled through mental occupation, but there are some to whom motor activity is indispensable. That a judicious apportionment of sensory and motor activity would favorably affect the development of all children is not to be questioned.

57. Instruction and training have this in common, that each makes for education and hence for the future, while government provides for the present. A distinction should, however, be made here. Instruction is far from being always educative or pedagogical. Where acquisition of wealth and external success or strong personal preference supply the motives for study, no heed is paid to the question: What will be the gain or loss to character? One actuated by such motives sets out, such as he is, to learn one thing or another, no matter whether for good or bad or for indifferent ends; to him the best teacher is he who imparts tuto, cito, jucunde, the proficiency desired. Instruction of this kind is excluded from our discussion; we are concerned here only with instruction that educates in the moral sense of the term.

58. Man’s worth does not, it is true, lie in his knowing, but in his willing. But there is no such thing as an independent faculty of will. Volition has its roots in thought; not, indeed, in the details one knows, but certainly in the combinations and total effect of the acquired ideas. The same reason, therefore, which in psychology accounts for considering the formation of ideas first, and then desire and volition, necessitates a corresponding order in pedagogics: first the theory of instruction, then that of training.

Note.—Formerly, strange to say, no distinction was made between government and training, although it is obvious that the immediate present demands attention more urgently than does the future. Still less was instruction given its true place. The greater or smaller amount of knowledge, regarded as a matter of secondary importance in comparison with personal culture, was taken up last. The treatment of education as the development of character preceded that of instruction, just as though the former could be realized without the latter. During the last decades, however, a demand has arisen for greater activity on the part of schools, primarily the higher schools. Humanistic studies are to bestow humanity, or culture. It has come to be understood that the human being is more easily approached from the side of knowledge than from the side of moral sentiments and disposition. Furthermore, examinations might be set on the former, but not on the latter. Now the time for instruction was found to be too limited—a want that the old Latin schools had felt but little. This led to discussions as to the relative amount due each branch of study. We shall treat chiefly of the correlation of studies, for whatever remains isolated is of little significance.

59. In educative teaching, the mental activity incited by it is all important. This activity instruction is to increase, not to lessen; to ennoble, not to debase.

Note.—A diminution of mental activity ensues, when, because of much study and of sitting—especially at all sorts of written work, often useless—physical growth is interfered with in a way sooner or later to the injury of health. Hence the encouragement given in recent years to gymnastic exercises, which may, however, become too violent. Deterioration sets in when knowledge is made subservient to ostentation and external advantages—the objectionable feature of many public examinations. Schools ought not to be called upon to display all they accomplish. By such methods instruction not only works against its own true end, but also conflicts with training, whose aim for the whole future of the pupil is—mens sana in corpore sano.

60. If all mental activity were of only one kind, the subject-matter of instruction would be of no consequence. But we need not go beyond experience to see that the opposite is true, that there is a great diversity of intellectual endowment. 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 functions would be wholly neglected and perhaps suppressed. Instruction must rather be manifold, and its manifoldness being the same for many pupils in so far as it may help to correct inequalities in mental tendencies.

Not only is subject-matter to be varied on account of mental diversity, but also for social reasons as well. For an enlargement of this theme, see the annotation to paragraph 65.

61. What is to be taught and learned is, accordingly, not left for caprice and conventionality to decide. In this respect instruction differs in a striking manner from government, for which, if only idleness is prevented, it hardly matters what work children are given to do.

Note.—Children are sent to school from many homes simply because they are in the way and their parents do not wish them to be idle. The school is regarded as an institution whose chief function is to govern, but which incidentally also imparts useful knowledge. Here there is a lack of insight into the nature of true mental culture; teachers, on the contrary, sometimes forget that they are giving pupils work, and that work should not exceed reasonable limits.