E-text prepared by Al Haines
Based on the Principles of Herbart.
by
CHARLES A. McMURRY, PH.D.
Second Edition
Public-School Publishing Co., Publishers,
Bloomington, Illinois.
1893
Copyright, 1893.
By C. A. McMurry, Normal, Ill.
The Herbart School of Pedagogy has created much stir in Germany in thelast thirty years. It has developed a large number of vigorous writerson all phases of education and psychology, and numbers a thousand ormore positive disciples among the energetic teachers of Germany.
Those American teachers and students who have come in contact with theideas of this school have been greatly stimulated.
In such a miscellaneous and many-sided thing as practical education, itis deeply gratifying to find a clear and definite leading purpose thatprevails throughout and a set of mutually related and supportingprinciples which in practice contribute to the realization of thispurpose.
The following chapters cannot be regarded as a full, exact, andpainfully scientific account of Herbartian ideas, but as a simpleexplanation of their leading principles in their relations to eachother and in their application to our own school problems.
In the second edition the last chapter of the first edition has beenomitted, while the other chapters have been much modified and enlarged.The chapter on the Formal Steps is reserved for enlargement andpublication in a separate form.
Normal, Ill., November 4, 1893.
What is the central purpose of education? If we include under thisterm all the things commonly assigned to it, its many phases asrepresented by the great variety of teachers and pupils, the manybranches of knowledge and the various and even conflicting methods inbringing up children, it is difficult to find a definition sufficientlybroad and definite to compass its meaning. In fact we shall notattempt in the beginning to make a definition. We are in search not somuch of a comprehensive definition as of a central truth, a key to thesituation, an aim that will simplify and brighten all the work ofteachers. Keeping in view the end from the beginning, we need acentral organizing principle which shall dictate for teacher and pupilthe highway over which they shall travel together.
We will assume at least that education means the whole bringing up of achild from infancy to maturity, not simply his school training. Thereason for this assumption is that home, school, companions,environment, and natural endowment, working through a series of years,produce a character which is a unit as the resultant of these differentinfluences and growths. Again, we are compelled to assume that thisaim, whatever it is, is the same for all.
Now what will the average