§ 1. The science of Pedagogics cannot be derived from a simple principle
with such exactness as Logic and Ethics. It is rather a mixed science
which has its presuppositions in many others. In this respect it
resembles Medicine, with which it has this also in common, that it must
make a distinction between a sound and an unhealthy system of education,
and must devise means to prevent or to cure the latter. It may therefore
have, like Medicine, the three departments of Physiology, Pathology, and
Therapeutics.
§ 2. Since Pedagogics is capable of no such exact definitions of its
principle and no such logical deduction as other sciences, the treatises
written upon it abound more in shallowness than any other literature.
Short-sightedness and arrogance find in it a most congenial atmosphere,
and criticism and declamatory bombast flourish in perfection as nowhere
else. The literature of religious tracts might be considered to rival
that of Pedagogics in its superficiality and assurance, if it did not
for the most part seem itself to belong, through its ascetic nature, to
Pedagogics. But teachers as persons should be treated in their
weaknesses and failures with the utmost consideration, because they are
most of them sincere in contributing their mite for the improvement of
education, and all their pedagogic practice inclines them towards
administering reproof and giving advice.
§ 3. The charlatanism of educational literature is also fostered by the
fact that teaching has become one of the most profitable employments,
and the competition in it tends to increase self-glorification.
--When "Boz" in his "Nicholas Nickleby" exposed the horrible mysteries
of an English boarding-school, many teachers of such schools were, as he
assures us, so accurately described that they openly complained he had
aimed his caricatures directly at them.--
§ 4. In the system of the sciences, Pedagogics belongs to the Philosophy
of Spirit,--and in this, to the department of Practical Philosophy, the
problem of which is the comprehension of the necessity of freedom; for
education is the conscious working of one will on another so as to
produce itself in it according to a determinate aim. The idea of
subjective spirit, as well as that of Art, Science, and Religion, forms
the essential condition for Pedagogics, but does not contain its
principle. If one thinks out a complete statement of Practical
Philosophy (Ethics), Pedagogics may be distributed among all its grades.
But the point at which Pedagogics itself becomes organic is the idea of
the Family, because in the family the difference between the adults and
the minors enters directly through the naturalness of spirit, and the
right of the children to an education and the duty of parents towards
them in this respect is incontestable. All other spheres of education,
in order to succeed, must presuppose a true family life. They may extend
and complement the business of teaching, but cannot be its original
foundation.
--In our systematic exposition of Education, we must not allow
ourselves to be led into error by those theories which do not recognize
the family, and which limit the relation of husband and wife to the
producing of children. The Platonic Philosophy is the most worthy
representative of this class. Later writers who take great pleasure in
seeing the world full of children, but who would subtract from the love
to a wife all truth and from that to children all care, exhibit in their
doctrine of the anarchy of love only a sickly (but yet how prevalent an)
imitation of the Platonic state.--
§ 5. Much confusion also arises from the fact that many do not clearly
enough draw the distinction between Pedagogics as a science and
Pedagogics as an art. As a science it busies itself with developing _a
priori_ the idea of Education in the universality and necessity of that
idea, but as an art it is the concrete individualizing of this abstract
idea in any given case. And in any such given case, the peculiarities of
the person who is to be educated and all the previously existing
circumstances necessitate a modification of the universal aims and ends,
which modification cannot be provided for beforehand, but must rather
test the ready tact of the educator who knows how to make the existing
conditions fulfil his desired end. It is exactly in doing this that the
educator may show himself inventive and creative, and that pedagogic
talent can distinguish itself. The word "art" is here used in the same
way as it is used when we say, the art of war, the art of government,
&c.; and rightly, for we are talking about the possibility of the
realization of the idea.
--The educator must adapt himself to the pupil, but not to such a degree
as to imply that the pupil is incapable of change, and he must also be
sure that the pupil shall learn through his experience the independence
of the object studied, which remains uninfluenced by his variable
personal moods, and the adaptation on the teacher's part must never
compromise this independence.--
§ 6. If conditions which are local, temporal, and individual, are fixed
as constant rules, and carried beyond their proper limits, are
systematized as a valuable formalistic code, unavoidable error arises.
The formulæ of teaching are admirable material for the science, but are
not the science itself.
§ 7. Pedagogics as a science must (1) unfold the general idea of
Education; (2) must exhibit the particular phases into which the general
work of Education divides itself, and (3) must describe the particular
standpoint upon which the general idea realizes itself, or should become
real in its special processes at any particular time.
§ 8. The treatment of the first part offers no difficulty. It is
logically too evident. But it would not do to substitute for it the
history of Pedagogics, simply because all the conceptions of it which
appear in systematic treatises can be found there.
--Into this error G. Thaulow has fallen in his pamphlet on Pedagogics as
a Philosophical Science.--
§ 9. The second division unfolds the subject of the physical,
intellectual and practical culture of the human race, and constitutes
the main part of all books on Pedagogy. Here arises the greatest
difficulty as to the limitations, partly because of the undefined nature
of the ideas, partly because of the degree of amplification which the
details demand. Here is the field of the widest possible differences. If
e.g. one studies out the conception of the school with reference to the
qualitative specialities which one may consider, it is evident that he
can extend his remarks indefinitely; he may speak thus of technological
schools of all kinds, to teach mining, navigation, war, art, &c.
§ 10. The third division distinguishes between the different standpoints
which are possible in the working out of the conception of Education in
its special elements, and which therefore produce different systems of
Education wherein the general and the particular are individualized in a
special manner. In every system the general tendencies of the idea of
education, and the difference between the physical, intellectual and
practical culture of man, must be formally recognized, and will appear.
The How is decided by the standpoint which reduces that formalism to a
special system. Thus it becomes possible to discover the essential
contents of the history of Pedagogics from its idea, since this can
furnish not an indefinite but a certain number of Pedagogic systems.
--The lower standpoint merges always into the higher, and in so doing
first attains its full meaning, e.g.: Education for the sake of the
nation is set aside for higher standpoints, e.g., that of
Christianity; but we must not suppose that the national phase of
Education was counted as nought from the Christian standpoint. Rather it
itself had outgrown the limits which, though suitable enough for its
early stage, could no longer contain its true idea. This is sure to be
the case in the fact that the national individualities become
indestructible by being incorporated into Christianity--a fact that
contradicts the abstract seizing of such relations.--
§ 11. The last system must be that of the present, and since this is
certainly on one side the result of all the past, while on the other
seized in its possibilities it is determined by the Future, the business
of Pedagogics cannot pause till it reaches its ideal of the general and
special determinations, so that looked at in this way the Science of
Pedagogics at its end returns to its beginning. The first and second
divisions already contain the idea of the system necessary for the
Present.