§ 1. Pedagogics is not a complete, independent science by itself. It
borrows the results of other sciences [_e.g._, it presupposes the
science of Rights, treating of the institutions of the family and civil
society, as well as of the State; it presupposes the science of
anthropology, in which is treated the relations of the human mind to
nature. Nature conditions the development of the individual human being.
But the history of the individual and the history of the race presents a
continual emancipation from nature, and a continual growth into freedom,
_i.e._, into ability to know himself and to realize himself in the
world by making the matter and forces of the world his instruments and
tools. Anthropology shows us how man as a natural being--_i.e._, as
having a body--is limited. There is climate, involving heat and cold and
moisture, the seasons of the year, etc.; there is organic growth,
involving birth, growth, reproduction, and decay; there is race,
involving the limitations of heredity; there is the telluric life of the
planet and the circulation of the forces of the solar system, whence
arise the processes of sleeping, waking, dreaming, and kindred
phenomena; there is the emotional nature of man, involving his feelings,
passions, instincts, and desires; then there are the five senses, and
their conditions. Then, there is the science of phenomenology, treating
of the steps by which mind rises from the stage of mere feeling and
sense-perception to that of self-consciousness, _i.e._, to a
recognition of mind as true substance, and of matter as mere phenomenon
created by Mind (God). Then, there is psychology, including the
treatment of the stages of activity of mind, as so-called "faculties" of
the mind, _e.g._, attention, sense-perception, imagination, conception,
understanding, judgment, reason, and the like. Psychology is generally
made (by English writers) to include, also, what is here called
anthropology and phenomenology. After psychology, there is the science
of ethics, or of morals and customs; then, the Science of Rights,
already mentioned; then, Theology, or the Science of Religion, and,
after all these, there is Philosophy, or the Science of Science. Now, it
is clear that the Science of Education treats of the process of
development, by and through which man, as a merely natural being,
becomes spirit, or self-conscious mind; hence, it presupposes all the
sciences named, and will be defective if it ignores nature, or mind, or
any stage or process of either, especially Anthropology, Phenomenology,
Psychology, Ethics, Rights, Æsthetics, or Science of Art and Literature,
Religion, or Philosophy].
§ 2. The scope of pedagogics being so broad, and its presuppositions so
vast, its limits are not well defined, and its treatises are very apt to
lack logical sequence and conclusion; and, indeed, frequently to be mere
collections of unjustified and unexplained assumptions, dogmatically set
forth. Hence the low repute of pedagogical literature as a whole.
§ 3. Moreover, education furnishes a special vocation, that of teaching.
(All vocations are specializing--being cut off, as it were, from the
total life of man. The "division of labor" requires that each individual
shall concentrate his endeavors and be a _part_ of the whole).
§ 4. Pedagogics, as a special science, belongs to the collection of
sciences (already described, in commenting on § 1) included under the
philosophy of Spirit or Mind, and more particularly to that part of it
which relates to the will (ethics and science of rights, rather than to
the part relating to the intellect and feeling, as anthropology,
phenomenology, psychology, æsthetics, and religion. "Theoretical"
relates to the _intellect_, "practical" relates to the _will_, in this
philosophy). The province of practical philosophy is the investigation
of the nature of freedom, and the process of securing it by
self-emancipation from nature. Pedagogics involves the conscious
exertion of influence on the part of the will of the teacher upon the
will of the pupil, with a purpose in view--that of inducing the pupil to
form certain prescribed habits, and adopt prescribed views and
inclinations. The entire science of mind (as above shown), is
presupposed by the science of education, and must be kept constantly in
view as a guiding light. The institution of the _family_ (treated in
practical philosophy) is the starting-point of education, and without
this institution properly realized, education would find no solid
foundation. The right to be educated on the part of children, and the
duty to educate on the part of parents, are reciprocal; and there is no
family life so poor and rudimentary that it does not furnish the most
important elements of education--no matter what the subsequent influence
of the school, the vocation, and the state.
§ 5. Pedagogics as science, distinguished from the same as an art: the
former containing the abstract general treatment, and the latter taking
into consideration all the conditions of concrete individuality,
_e.g._, the peculiarities of the teacher and the pupil, and all the local
circumstances, and the power of adaptation known as "tact."
§ 6. The special conditions and peculiarities, considered in education
as an art, may be formulated and reduced to system, but they should not
be introduced as a part of the _science_ of education.
§ 7. Pedagogics has three parts: first, it considers the idea and nature
of education, and arrives at its true definition; second, it presents
and describes the special provinces into which the entire field of
education is divided; third, it considers the historical evolution of
education by the human race, and the individual systems of education
that have arisen, flourished, and decayed, and their special functions
in the life of man.
§ 8. The scope of the first part is easy to define. The history of
pedagogics, of course, contains all the ideas or definitions of the
nature of education; but it must not for that reason be substituted for
the scientific investigation of the nature of education, which alone
should constitute this first part (and the history of education be
reserved for the third part).
§ 9. The second part includes a discussion of the threefold nature of
man as body, intellect, and will. The difficulty in this part of the
science is very great, because of its dependence upon other sciences
(_e.g._, upon physiology, anthropology, etc.), and because of the
temptation to go into details (_e.g._, in the practical department, to
consider the endless varieties of schools for arts and trades).
§ 10. The third part contains the exposition of the various national
standpoints furnished (in the history of the world) for the bases of
particular systems of education. In each of these systems will be found
the general idea underlying all education, but it will be found existing
under special modifications, which have arisen through its application
to the physical, intellectual, and ethical conditions of the people. But
we can deduce the essential features of the different systems that may
appear in history, for there are only a limited number of systems
possible. Each lower form finds itself complemented in some higher form,
and its function and purpose then become manifest. The systems of
"national" education (_i.e._, Asiatic systems, in which the
individuality of each person is swallowed up in the substantiality of
the national idea--just as the individual waves get lost in the ocean on
whose surface they arise) find their complete explanation in the systems
of education that arise in Christianity (the preservation of human life
being the object of the nation, it follows that when realized abstractly
or exclusively, it absorbs and annuls the mental independence of its
subjects, and thus contradicts itself by destroying the essence of what
it undertakes to preserve, _i.e._, life (soul, mind); but within
Christianity the principle of the state is found so modified that it is
consistent with the infinite, untrammelled development of the
individual, intellectually and morally, and thus not only life is saved,
but spiritual, free life is attainable for each and for all).
§ 11. The history of pedagogy ends with the present system as the latest
one. As science sees the future ideally contained in the present, it is
bound to comprehend the latest system as a realization (though
imperfect) of the ideal system of education. Hence, the system, as
scientifically treated in the first part of our work, is the system with
which the third part of our work ends.
§ 12. The nature of education, its form, its limits, are now to be
investigated. (§§ 13-50.)
§ 13. The nature of education determined by the nature of Mind or
Spirit, whose activity is always devoted to realizing for itself what it
is potentially--to becoming conscious of its possibilities, and to
getting them under the control of its will. Mind is potentially free.
Education is the means by which man seeks to realize in man his
possibilities (to develop the possibilities of the race in each
individual). Hence, education has freedom for its object.
§ 14. Man is the only being capable of education, in the sense above
defined, because the only conscious being. He must know himself ideally,
and then realize his ideal self, in order to become actually free. The
animals not the plants may be _trained_, or _cultivated_, but, as devoid
of self-consciousness (even the highest animals not getting above
impressions, not reaching ideas, not seizing general or abstract
thoughts), they are not realized for _themselves_, but only for us.
(That is, they do not know their ideal as we do.)
§ 15. Education, taken in its widest compass, is the education of the
human race by Divine Providence.
§ 16. In a narrower sense, education is applied to the shaping of the
individual, so that his caprice and arbitrariness shall give place to
rational habits and views, in harmony with nature and ethical customs.
He must not abuse nature, nor slight the ethical code of his people, nor
despise the gifts of Providence (whether for weal or woe), unless he is
willing to be crushed in the collision with these more substantial
elements.
§ 17. In the narrowest, but most usual application of the term, we
understand by "education" the influence of the individual upon the
individual, exerted with the object of developing his powers in a
conscious and methodical manner, either generally or in special
directions, the educator being relatively mature, and exercising
authority over the relatively immature pupil. Without authority on the
one hand and obedience on the other, education would lack its ethical
basis--a neglect of the will-training could not be compensated for by
any amount of knowledge or smartness.
§ 18. The general province of education includes the development of the
individual into the theoretical and practical reason immanent in him.
The definition which limits education to the development of the
individual into ethical customs (obedience to morality, social
conventionalities, and the laws of the state--Hegel's definition is here
referred to: "The object of education is to make men ethical") is not
comprehensive enough, because it ignores the side of the _intellect_,
and takes note only of the _will_. The individual should not only be man
in general (as he is through the adoption of moral and ethical
forms--which are _general_ forms, customs, or laws, and thus the forms
imposed by the _will_ of the _race_), but he should also be a
self-conscious subject, a particular individual (man, through his
intellect, exists for himself as an individual, while through his
general habits and customs he loses his individuality and spontaneity).
§ 19. Education has a definite object in view and it proceeds by grades
of progress toward it. The systematic tendency is essential to all
education, properly so called.
§ 20. Division of labor has become requisite in the higher spheres of
teaching. The growing multiplicity of branches of knowledge creates the
necessity for the specialist as teacher. With this tendency to
specialties it becomes more and more difficult to preserve what is so
essential to the pupil--his rounded human culture and symmetry of
development. The citizen of modern civilization sometimes appears to be
an artificial product by the side of the versatility of the savage man.
§ 21. From this necessity of the division of labor in modern times there
arises the demand for two kinds of educational institutions--those
devoted to general education (common schools, colleges, etc.), and
special schools (for agriculture, medicine, mechanic arts, etc).
§ 22. The infinite possibility of culture for the individual leaves,
of course, his actual accomplishment a mere approximation to a complete
education. Born idiots are excluded from the possibility of education,
because the lack of universal ideas in their consciousness precludes to
that class of unfortunates anything beyond a mere mechanical training.
§ 23. Spirit, or mind, makes its own nature; it _is_ what it produces--a
self-result. From this follows the _form_ of education. It commences
with (1) undeveloped mind--that of the infant--wherein nearly all is
potential, and but little is actualized; (2) its first stage of
development is self-estrangement--it is absorbed in the observation of
objects around it; (3) but it discovers laws and principles
(universality) in external nature, and finally identifies them with
reason--it comes to recognize itself in nature--to recognize conscious
mind as the creator and preserver of the external world--and thus
becomes at home in nature. Education does not create, but it
emancipates.
§ 24. This process of self-estrangement and its removal belongs to all
culture. The mind must fix its attention upon what is foreign to it, and
penetrate its disguise. It will discover its own substance under the
seeming alien being. Wonder is the accompaniment of this stage of
estrangement. The love of travel and adventure arises from this basis.
§ 25. Labor is distinguished from play: The former concentrates its
energies on some object, with the purpose of making it conform to its
will and purpose; play occupies itself with its object according to its
caprice and arbitrariness, and has no care for the results or products
of its activity; work is prescribed by authority, while play is
necessarily spontaneous.
§ 26. Work and Play: the distinction between them. In play the child
feels that he has entire control over the object with which he is
dealing, both in respect to its existence and the object for which it
exists. His arbitrary will may change both with perfect impunity, since
all depends upon his caprice; he exercises his powers in play according
to his natural proclivities, and therein finds scope to develope his own
individuality. In work, on the contrary, he must have respect for the
object with which he deals. It must be held sacred against his caprice,
must not be destroyed nor injured in any way, and its object must
likewise be respected. His own personal inclinations must be entirely
subordinated, and the business that he is at work upon must be carried
forward in accordance with its own ends and aims, and without reference
to his own feelings in the matter.
Thus work teaches the pupil the lesson of self-sacrifice (the right of
superiority which the general interest possesses over the particular),
while play develops his personal idiosyncrasy.
§ 27. Without play, the child would become more and more a machine, and
lose all freshness and spontaneity--all originality. Without work, he
would develop into a monster of caprice and arbitrariness.
From the fact that man must learn to combine with man, in order that the
individual may avail himself of the experience and labors of his
fellow-men, self-sacrifice for the sake of combination is the great
lesson of life. But as this should be _voluntary_ self-sacrifice,
education must train the child equally in the two directions of
spontaneity and obedience. The educated man finds recreation in change
of work.
§ 28. Education seeks to assimilate its object--to make what was alien
and strange to the pupil into something familiar and habitual to him.
[The pupil is to attack, one after the other, the foreign realms in the
world of nature and man, and conquer them for his own, so that he can be
"at home" in them. It is the necessary condition of all growth, all
culture, that one widens his own individuality by this conquest of new
provinces alien to him. By this the individual transcends the narrow
limits of particularity and becomes generic--the individual becomes the
species. A good definition of education is this: it is the process by
which the individual man elevates himself to the species.]
§ 29. (1) Therefore, the first requirement in education is that the
pupil shall acquire the habit of subordinating his likes and dislikes to
the attainment of a rational object.
It is necessary that he shall acquire this indifference to his own
pleasure, even by employing his powers on that which does not appeal to
his interest in the remotest degree.
§ 30. Habit soon makes us familiar with those subjects which seemed so
remote from our personal interest, and they become agreeable to us. The
objects, too, assume a new interest upon nearer approach, as being
useful or injurious to us. That is useful which serves us as a means for
the realization of a rational purpose; injurious, if it hinders such
realization. It happens that objects are useful in one sense and
injurious in another, and _vice versa_. Education must make the pupil
capable of deciding on the usefulness of an object, by reference to its
effect on his permanent vocation in life.
§ 31. But _good and evil_ are the ethical distinctions which furnish the
absolute standard to which to refer the question of the usefulness of
objects and actions.
§ 32. (2) Habit is (a) _passive_, or (b) _active_. The passive habit
is that which gives us the power to retain our equipoise of mind in the
midst of a world of changes (pleasure and pain, grief and joy, etc). The
active habit gives us skill, presence of mind, tact in emergencies, etc.
§ 33. (3) Education deals altogether with the formation of habits. For
it aims to make some condition or form of activity into a second nature
for the pupil. But this involves, also, the breaking up of previous
habits. This power to break up habits, as well as to form them, is
necessary to the freedom of the individual.
§ 34. Education deals with these complementary relations (antitheses):
(a) authority and obedience; (b) rationality (_general_ forms) and
individuality; (c) work and play; (d) habit (general custom) and
spontaneity. The development and reconciliation of these opposite sides
in the pupil's character, so that they become his second nature, removes
the phase of constraint which at first accompanies the formal
inculcation of rules, and the performance of prescribed tasks. The
freedom of the pupil is the ultimate object to be kept in view, but a
too early use of freedom may work injury to the pupil. To remove a pupil
from all temptation would be to remove possibilities of growth in
strength to resist it; on the other hand, to expose him needlessly to
temptation is fiendish.
§ 35. Deformities of character in the pupil should be carefully traced
back to their origin, so that they may be explained by their history.
Only by comprehending the historic growth of an organic defect are we
able to prescribe the best remedies.
§ 36. If the negative behavior of the pupil (his bad behavior) results
from ignorance due to his own neglect, or to his wilfulness, it should
be met directly by an act of authority on the part of the teacher (and
without an appeal to reason). An appeal should be made to the
understanding of the pupil only when he is somewhat mature, or shows by
his repetition of the offence that his proclivity is deep-seated, and
requires an array of all good influences to reinforce his feeble
resolutions to amend.
§ 37. Reproof, accompanied by threats of punishment, is apt to
degenerate into scolding.
§ 38. After the failure of other means, punishment should be resorted
to. Inasmuch as the punishment should be for the purpose of making the
pupil realize that it is the consequence of his deed returning on
himself, it should always be administered for some particular act of
his, and this should be specified. The "overt act" is the only thing
which a man can be held accountable for in a court of justice; although
it is true that the harboring of evil thoughts or intentions is a sin,
yet it is not a crime until realized in an overt act.
§ 40. Punishment should be regulated, not by abstract rules, but in view
of the particular case and its attending circumstances.
§ 41. Sex and age of pupil should be regarded in prescribing the mode
and degree of punishment. Corporal punishment is best for pupils who are
very immature in mind; when they are more developed they may be punished
by any imposed restraint upon their free wills which will isolate them
from the ordinary routine followed by their fellow-pupils. (Deprivation
of the right to do as others do is a wholesome species of punishment for
those old or mature enough to feel its effects, for it tends to secure
respect for the regular tasks by elevating them to the rank of rights
and privileges.) For young men and women, the punishment should be of a
kind that is based on a sense of honor.
§ 42. (1) Corporal punishment should be properly administered by means
of the rod, subduing wilful defiance by the application of force.
§ 48. (2) Isolation makes the pupil realize a sense of his dependence
upon human society, and upon the expression of this dependence by
coöperation in the common tasks. Pupils should not be shut up in a dark
room, nor removed from the personal supervision of the teacher. (To shut
up two or more in a room without supervision is not isolation, but
association; only it is association for mischief, and not for study.)
§ 44. (3) Punishment based on the sense of honor may or may not be based
on isolation. It implies a state of maturity on the part of the pupil.
Through his offence the pupil has destroyed his equality with his
fellows, and has in reality, in his inmost nature, isolated himself from
them. Corporal punishment is external, but it may be accompanied with a
keen sense of dishonor. Isolation, also, may, to a pupil, who is
sensitive to honor, be a severe blow to self-respect. But a punishment
founded entirely on the sense of honor would be wholly internal, and
have no external discomfort attached to it.
§ 45. The necessity of carefully adapting the punishment to the age
and maturity of the pupil, renders it the most difficult part of the
teacher's duties. It is essential that the air and manner of the teacher
who punishes should be that of one who acts from a sense of painful
duty, and not from any delight in being the cause of suffering. Not
personal likes and dislikes, but the rational necessity which is over
teacher and pupil alike, causes the infliction of pain on the pupil.
§ 46. Punishment is the final topic to be considered under the head of
"Form of Education."
In the act of punishment the teacher abandons the legitimate province of
education, which seeks to make the pupil rational or obedient to what is
reasonable, as a habit, and from his own free will. The pupil is
punished in order that he may be _made_ to conform to the rational, by
the application of constraint. Another will is substituted for the
pupil's, and good behavior is produced, but not by the pupil's free act.
While education finds a negative limit in punishment, it finds a
positive limit in the accomplishment of its legitimate object, which is
the emancipation of the pupil from the state of imbecility, as regards
mental and moral self-control, into the ability to direct himself
rationally. When the pupil has acquired the discipline which enables him
to direct his studies properly, and to control his inclinations in such
a manner as to pursue his work regularly, the teacher is no longer
needed for him--he becomes his own teacher.
There may be two extreme views on this subject--the one tending towards
the negative extreme of requiring the teacher to do everything for the
pupil, substituting his will for that of the pupil, and the other view
tending to the positive extreme, and leaving everything to the pupil,
even before his will is trained into habits of self-control, or his mind
provided with the necessary elementary branches requisite for the
prosecution of further study.
§ 47. (1) The subjective limit of education (on the negative side) is to
be found in the individuality of the pupil--the limit to his natural
capacity.
§ 48. (2) The objective limit to education lies in the amount of time
that the person may devote to his training. It, therefore, depends
largely upon wealth, or other fortunate circumstances.
§ 49. (3) The absolute limit of education is the positive limit (see §
46), beyond which the youth passes into freedom from the school, as a
necessary instrumentality for further culture.
§ 50. The pre-arranged pattern-making work of the school is now done,
but self-education may and should go on indefinitely, and will go on if
the education of the school has really arrived at its "absolute"
limit--_i.e._, has fitted the pupil for self-education. Emancipation
from the school does not emancipate one from learning through his
fellow-men. Man's spiritual life is one depending upon coöperation with
his fellow-men. Each must avail himself of the experience of his
fellow-men, and in turn communicate his own experience to the common
fund of the race. Thus each lives the life of the whole, and all live
for each. School-education gives the pupil the instrumentalities with
which to enable him to participate in this fund of experience--this
common life of the race. After school-education comes the still more
valuable education, which, however, without the school, would be in a
great measure impossible.