Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PABT II. A STUDY OF HERBART. CHAPTER I. The Moral Aim. 1. Morality Suggested as the One Aim of Education.
The one and the whole work of education is summed up in the concept?Morality. These are practically the first words in the official scriptures of Herbartianism Many earnest educationists would instantly reject the really amazing claim here n put forward. Education, they would contend, has many and varied tasks to perform; any attempt to resolve these varied tasks into one? even a great one?must result only in a distortion of educational views and a comparative neglect of important elements in human life. How, for example, can aesthetic culture or intellectual keenness be regarded as a part of
Morality
? Needlework, swimming, and a multitude of other tasks commonly imposed on the teacher?are not they a part of Education ? This criticism?put forward systematically by Dittes and others?is really as old as Herbart himself. It was, in fact, anticipated by him. The Aeathetische DarsteUung der Welt will now be followed for some sections.
We might assume as many problems for Education as there are permissible aims for men. But then, this would involve as many educational inquiries as problems… . All parts of the work would be thrown out of their right proportions. If it is to be possible to think out thoroughly and accurately, and to carry out systematically, the business of Education as a single whole, it must be previously possible to comprehend the work of Education also as but one. Herbartianism, in fact, is an attempt so to unify all educational effort as to direct it solely in one direction ? the direction of Morality or Character. The goal is to be reached, however, not by depreciating the value of
secular
subjects and exalting…