Читать книгу Outlines of Educational Doctrine - Johann Friedrich Herbart - Страница 6

Table of Contents

20. It is an error, indeed, to look upon the human soul as an aggregate of all sorts of faculties; but this error only becomes worse when, as is usually done, the statement is added that faculties are after all at bottom one and the same active principle. The traditional terms should rather be employed to distinguish mental phenomena that present themselves to experience as successively predominant. In this way we get the leading features of soul-life, which reminds us sufficiently of psychology for our immediate purpose.

21. The stage of predominant sense-activity is followed by that of memory in the sense of exact reproduction of series of percepts previously formed. Traces of higher activities are as yet absent. The only thing to be noted is that the series, unless rendered long by frequent repetition, are generally short; necessarily so, since while forming they are exposed to continual disturbances caused by great sensitiveness to new impressions.

22. Even very young children betray at play and in speech that form of self-activity ascribed to imagination.

The most insignificant toys, provided they are movable, occasion changes and combinations of percepts, attended even with strong emotion, that astonish the mature observer, and perhaps excite anxiety lest some of these motley fancies should become fixed ideas. No evil after effects are to be feared, however, so long as the emotional excitement does not threaten health, and passes over quickly. A strong play impulse is, on the contrary, a promising sign, especially when it manifests itself energetically, though late, in weak children.

23. Soon there follows a time when the observation of external objects prompts the child to ask innumerable questions. Here that activity which is called power of judgment begins to stir in conjunction with reasoning. The child now strives to subsume what is new under conceptions already in his mind, and to affix their symbols, the familiar words. He is still far, withal, from being able to follow an abstract train of thought, to employ periodic sentences, and to conduct himself rationally throughout. The slightest occasions will prove him a child still.

24. In the meantime, the child manifests, besides the physical feelings of pleasure and pain, affection for one person and aversion to another; furthermore, a seemingly strong will, together with a violent spirit of contradiction, unless this is suppressed in time.

25. On the other hand, the ethical judgment as a rule shows itself at first very seldom and transiently—a foreshadowing of the difficulty of securing for it later, in spite of obstinacy and selfishness, the function of control, on which control depend both morality and the higher sense of art.

26. The boy asks fewer questions, but tries all the more to handle and shape things. He is gaining knowledge by himself and acquiring dexterity. Gradually his respect for his elders increases; he fears their censure and stands in awe of their superiority. At the same time he attaches himself more closely to other boys of the same age. From now on it becomes more difficult to observe him. The teacher who has no previous knowledge of boys who have reached this age, may long deceive himself in regard to them and will seldom obtain complete frankness.

This reserve is indicative of more or less self-determination, which is commonly attributed to pure reason.

27. The names for the mental faculties acquire renewed importance with the beginning of systematic instruction. Their import, however, shows a marked difference. Now memory is relied on for the acquisition, without additions or omissions, of prescribed series, the order being fixed or not, as the case may be; usually there is a slight connection with older ideas. Imagination is called for to lay hold of the objects of distant lands and ages. The understanding is expected to derive general notions from a limited number of particulars, to name and to connect them. The development of the ethical judgment teachers rarely wait for; obedience to commands is demanded. Obedience of this kind depends chiefly on the ease with which antecedent ideas are revived and connected in response to, but not beyond, a given stimulus. In extreme cases the fear of punishment effectively takes the place of all other motives. But often not even the usual memory-work can be successfully exacted through fear, much less obedience without oversight.

28. Many pupils reveal a curious contrast. In their own sphere they display a good memory, a lively imagination, keen understanding; by the teacher they are credited with little of all these. They rule perhaps over their playmates because of their superior intelligence, or possess at least the respect of the latter, while in their classes they show only incapacity. Such experiences suggest the difficulty of making instruction take proper hold of the inner growth of the pupil. It is evident, at the same time, that what is customarily ascribed to the action of the various mental faculties takes place in certain groups of ideas.

29. The grown man has one group of ideas for his church, another for his work at home, a third for society, and so on. These groups, though partially interacting and mutually determinant, are far from being connected at every point. This is true as early as boyhood. The boy has one set of ideas for his school, another for the family circle, still another for the playground, etc. This fact explains better than intentional reserve the observation that a boy is one being at home or at school and quite another among strangers.

30. Each body of ideas is made up of complications of ideas, which, if the union is perfect, come and go in consciousness as undivided wholes, and of series, together with their interlacings, whose members unfold successively, one by one, provided they are not checked. The closer the union of parts within these complications and series, the more absolute the laws according to which ideas act in consciousness, the stronger is the resistance against everything opposing their movement; hence the difficulty of acting upon them through instruction. They admit, however, of additions and recombinations, and so may in the course of time undergo essential changes; up to a certain point they even change of themselves if repeatedly called into consciousness by dissimilar occasions, e.g., by the frequent delivery of the same lecture before different audiences.

The general notions of things are complexes or complications of their attributes. Other examples of complexes important to instruction are furnished by logical concepts and words. But since words of several languages may be perfectly complicated or bound together with the same concept, without being just as intimately connected with one another, it should be noted that when the object or concept comes up at different times, it will be joined now with this and next with another language. Yet the repeated perception of the object is not quite the same perception as before, although earlier ideas mostly coalesce so fully with later homogeneous ideas that the difference makes itself felt but little.

31. The inner structure of groups of ideas becomes discernible in a measure when thoughts are bodied forth in speech. Its most general aspect is disclosed in the construction of a period. Conjunctions particularly are important in that they, without denoting a content of their own, serve as hints to the listener. They point out to him the connection, the antitheses, the positiveness, or the uncertainty of the speaker’s utterances; for the meanings of conjunctions can be traced back to the series-form, to negation and certitude. It should be noted that want and refusal are related to negation; expectation, together with hope and fear, to uncertainty, so that the consideration of thought masses must also include emotional states. Children possess the structure of thought just as they experience the emotional states, long before they know how to embody the same in words with the help of conjunctions. Certain conjunctions, such as, to be sure, although, on the contrary, either—or, neither—nor, etc., are not adopted by children until late.

32. Of equal importance with the inner organization of the pupil’s ideas are, for the teacher, the degree of ease or difficulty with which a given mass of ideas is called into consciousness, and its relatively long or brief persistence in consciousness. Here we are face to face with the conditions of efficient instruction and training. The most necessary statements relative to this subject will be made under the head of interest and character-building.

33. The capacity for education, therefore, is determined not by the relationship in which various originally distinct mental faculties stand to one another, but by the relations of ideas already acquired to one another, and to the physical organism. Every pupil must be studied with reference to both.