Pedagogics as a System Part 1

Pedagogics as a System.

by Karl Rosenkranz.

INTRODUCTION.

-- 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 a.s.surance, 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 compet.i.tion 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 a.s.sures 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 cla.s.s. 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 circ.u.mstances 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 formulae 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 subst.i.tute 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 const.i.tutes 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, i.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.

FIRST PART.

The General Idea of Education.

-- 12. The idea of Pedagogics in general must distinguish,

(1) The nature of Education in general; (2) Its form; (3) Its limits.

I.

_The Nature of Education._

-- 13. The nature of Education is determined by the nature of mind--that it can develop whatever it really is only by its own activity. Mind is in itself free; but if it does not actualize this possibility, it is in no true sense free, either for itself or for another. Education is the influencing of man by man, and it has for its end to lead him to actualize himself through his own efforts. The attainment of perfect manhood as the actualization of the Freedom necessary to mind const.i.tutes the nature of Education in general.

--The completely isolated man does not become man. Solitary human beings who have been found in forests, like the wild girl of the forest of Ardennes, sufficiently prove the fact that the truly human qualities in man cannot be developed without reciprocal action with human beings.

Caspar Hauser in his subterranean prison is an ill.u.s.tration of what man would be by himself. The first cry of the child expresses in its appeals to others this helplessness of spirituality on the side of nature.--

-- 14. Man, therefore, is the only fit subject for education. We often speak, it is true, of the education of plants and animals; but even when we do so, we apply, unconsciously perhaps, other expressions, as "raising" and "training," in order to distinguish these. "Breaking"

consists in producing in an animal, either by pain or pleasure of the senses, an activity of which, it is true, he is capable, but which he never would have developed if left to himself. On the other hand, it is the nature of Education only to a.s.sist in the producing of that which the subject would strive most earnestly to develop for himself if he had a clear idea of himself. We speak of raising trees and animals, but not of raising men; and it is only a planter who looks to his slaves only for an increase in their number.

--The education of men is quite often enough, unfortunately, only a "breaking," and here and there still may be found examples where one tries to teach mechanically, not through the understanding power of the creative WORD, but through the powerless and fruitless appeal to physical pain.--

-- 15. The idea of Education may be more or less comprehensive. We use it in the widest sense when we speak of the Education of the race, for we understand by this expression the connection which the acts and situations of different nations have to each other, as different steps towards self-conscious freedom. In this the world-spirit is the teacher.

-- 16. In a more restricted sense we mean by Education the shaping of the individual life by the forces of nature, the rhythmical movement of national customs, and the might of destiny in which each one finds limits set to his arbitrary will. These often mould him into a man without his knowledge. For he cannot act in opposition to nature, nor offend the ethical sense of the people among whom he dwells, nor despise the leading of destiny without discovering through experience that before the Nemesis of these substantial elements his subjective power can dash itself only to be shattered. If he perversely and persistently rejects all our admonitions, we leave him, as a last resort, to destiny, whose iron rule must educate him, and reveal to him the G.o.d whom he has misunderstood.

--It is, of course, sometimes not only possible, but necessary for one, moved by the highest sense of morality, to act in opposition to the laws of nature, to offend the ethical sense of the people that surround him, and to brave the blows of destiny; but such a one is a sublime reformer or martyr, and we are not now speaking of such, but of the perverse, the frivolous, and the conceited.--

-- 17. In the narrowest sense, which however is the usual one, we mean by Education the influence which one mind exerts on another in order to cultivate the latter in some understood and methodical way, either generally or with reference to some special aim. The educator must, therefore, be relatively finished in his own education, and the pupil must possess unlimited confidence in him. If authority be wanting on the one side, or respect and obedience on the other, this ethical basis of development must fail, and it demands in the very highest degree, talent, knowledge, skill, and prudence.

--Education takes on this form only under the culture which has been developed through the influence of city life. Up to that time we have the nave period of education, which holds to the general powers of nature, of national customs, and of destiny, and which lasts for a long time among the rural populations. But in the city a greater complication of events, an uncertainty of the results of reflection, a working out of individuality, and a need of the possession of many arts and trades, make their appearance and render it impossible for men longer to be ruled by mere custom. The Telemachus of Fenelon was educated to rule himself by means of reflection; the actual Telemachus in the heroic age lived simply according to custom.--

-- 18. The general problem of Education is the development of the theoretical and practical reason in the individual. If we say that to educate one means to fas.h.i.+on him into morality, we do not make our definition sufficiently comprehensive, because we say nothing of intelligence, and thus confound education and ethics. A man is not merely a human being, but as a reasonable being he is a peculiar individual, and different from all others of the race.

-- 19. Education must lead the pupil by an interconnected series of efforts previously foreseen and arranged by the teacher to a definite end; but the particular form which this shall take must be determined by the peculiar character of the pupil's mind and the situation in which he is found. Hasty and inconsiderate work may accomplish much, but only _systematic_ work can advance and fas.h.i.+on him in conformity with his nature, and the former does not belong to education, for this includes in itself the idea of an end, and that of the technical means for its attainment.

-- 20. But as culture comes to mean more and more, there becomes necessary a division of the business of teaching among different persons, with reference to capabilities and knowledge, because as the arts and sciences are continually increasing in number, one can become learned in any one branch only by devoting himself exclusively to it, and hence becoming one-sided. A difficulty hence arises which is also one for the pupil, of preserving, in spite of this unavoidable one-sidedness, the unity and wholeness which are necessary to humanity.

--The nave dignity of the happy savage, and the agreeable simplicity of country people, appear to very great advantage when contrasted on this side with the often unlimited narrowness of a special trade, and the endless curtailing of the wholeness of man by the pruning processes of city life. Thus the often abused savage has his hut, his family, his cocoa tree, his weapons, his pa.s.sions; he fishes, hunts, plays, fights, adorns himself, and enjoys the consciousness that he is the centre of a whole, while a modern citizen is often only an abstract expression of culture.--

-- 21. As it becomes necessary to divide the work of teaching, a difference between general and special schools arises also, from the needs of growing culture. The former present in different compa.s.s all the sciences and arts which are included in the term "general education," and which were cla.s.sified by the Greeks under the general name of Encyclopaedia. The latter are known as special schools, suited to particular needs or talents.

--As those who live in the country are relatively isolated, it is often necessary, or at least desirable, that one man should be trained equally on many different sides. The poor tutor is required not only to instruct in all the sciences, he must also speak French and be able to play the piano.--

-- 22. For any single person, the relation of his actual education to its infinite possibilities can only be approximately determined, and it can be considered as only relatively finished on any one side. Education is impossible to him who is born an idiot, since the want of the power of generalizing and of ideality of conscious personality leaves to such an unfortunate only the possibility of a mechanical training.

--Sagert, the teacher of the deaf mutes in Berlin, has made laudable efforts to educate idiots, but the account as given in his publication, "Cure of Idiots by an Intellectual Method, Berlin, 1846," shows that the result obtained was only external; and though we do not desire to be understood as denying or refusing to this cla.s.s the possession of a mind _in potentia_, it appears in them to be confined to an embryonic state.--

II.