Part 5 (1/2)

III. _The Modality of the Process of Teaching._

-- 122. Now that we have learned something of the relation of the teacher to the taught, and of the process of learning itself, we must examine the mode and manner of instruction. This may have (1) the character of contingency: the way in which our immediate existence in the world, our life, teaches us; or it may be given (2) by the printed page; or (3) it may take the shape of formal oral instruction.

-- 123. (1) For the most, the best, and the mightiest things that we know we are indebted to Life itself. The sum of perceptions which a human being absorbs into himself up to the fourth or fifth year of his life is incalculable; and after this time we involuntarily gain by immediate contact with the world countless ideas. But especially we understand by the phrase ”the School of Life,” the ethical knowledge which we gain by what happens in our own lives.

--If one says, _Vitae non scholae discendum est_, one can also say, _Vita docet_. Without the power exercised by the immediate world our intelligence would remain abstract and lifeless.--

-- 124. (2) What we learn through books is the opposite of that which we learn through living. Life _forces_ upon us the knowledge it has to give; the book, on the contrary, is entirely pa.s.sive. It is locked up in itself; it cannot be altered; but it waits by us till we wish to use it.

We can read it rapidly or slowly; we can simply turn over its leaves--what in modern times one calls reading;--we can read it from beginning to end or from end to beginning; we can stop, begin again, skip over pa.s.sages, or cut them short, as we like. To this extent the book is the most _convenient_ means for instruction. If we are indebted to Life for our perceptions, we must chiefly thank books for our understanding of our perceptions. We call book-instruction ”dead” when it lacks, for the exposition which it gives, a foundation in our perceptions, or when we do not add to the printed description the perceptions which it implies; and the two are quite different.

-- 125. Books, as well as life, teach us many things which we did not previously intend to learn directly from them. From foreign romances e.g. we learn, first of all, while we read them for entertainment, the foreign language, history or geography, &c. We must distinguish from such books as those which bring to us, as it were accidentally, a knowledge for which we were not seeking, the books which are expressly intended to instruct. These must (_a_) in their consideration of the subject give us the princ.i.p.al results of any department of knowledge, and denote the points from which the next advance must be made, because every science arises at certain results which are themselves again new problems; (_b_) in the consideration of the particulars it must be exhaustive, i.e. no essential elements of a science must be omitted. But this exhaustiveness of execution has different meanings according to the stand-points of those for whom it is made. How far we shall pa.s.s from the universality of the princ.i.p.al determinations into the multiplicity of the Particular, into the fulness of detail, cannot be definitely determined, and must vary, according to the aim of the book, as to whether it is intended for the apprentice, the journeyman, or the master; (_c_) the expression must be precise, i.e. the maximum of clearness must be combined with the maximum of brevity.

--The writing of a text-book is on this account one of the most difficult tasks, and it can be successfully accomplished only by those who are masters in a science or art, and who combine with great culture and talent great experience as teachers. Unfortunately many dabblers in knowledge undervalue the difficulty of writing text-books because they think that they are called upon to aid in the spread of science, and because the writing of compendiums has thus come to be an avocation, so that authors and publishers have made out of text-books a profitable business and good incomes. In all sciences and arts there exists a quant.i.ty of material which is common property, which is disposed of now in one way, now in another. The majority of compendiums can be distinguished from each other only by the kind of paper, printing, the name of the publisher or bookseller, or by arbitrary changes in the arrangement and execution. The want of principle with which this work is carried on is incredible. Many governments have on this account fixed prices for text-books, and commissioners to select them. This in itself is right and proper, but the use of any book should be left optional, so that the one-sidedness of a science patronized by government as it were patented, may not be created through the pressure of such introduction.

A state may through its censors.h.i.+p oppose poor text-books, and recommend good ones; but it may not establish as it were a state-science, a state-art, in which only the ideas, laws and forms sanctioned by it shall be allowed. The Germans are fortunate, in consequence of their philosophical criticism, in the production of better and better text-books, among which may be mentioned Koberstein's, Gervinus', and Vilmar's Histories of Literature, Ellendt's General History, Blumenbach's and Burmeister's Natural History, Marheineke's text-book on Religion, Schwegler's History of Philosophy, &c. So much the more unaccountable is it that, with such excellent books, the evil of such characterless books, partly inadequate and partly in poor style, should still exist when there is no necessity for it. The common style of paragraph-writing has become obnoxious, under the name of Compendium-style, as the most stiff and affected style of writing.--

-- 126. A text-book must be differently written according as it is intended for a book for private study or for purposes of general circulation. If the first, it must give more, and must develop more clearly the internal relations; if the second, it should be shorter, and proceed from axiomatic and clear postulates to their signification, and these must have an epigrammatic pureness which should leave something to be guessed. Because for these a commentary is needed which it is the teacher's duty to supply, such a sketch is usually accompanied by the fuller text-book which was arranged for private study.

--It is the custom to call the proper text-book the ”small” one, and that which explains and ill.u.s.trates, the ”large” one. Thus we have the Small and the Large Gervinus, &c.--

-- 127. (3) The text-book which presupposes oral explanation forms the transition to Oral instruction itself. Since speech is the natural and original form in which mind manifests itself, no book can rival it. The living word is the most powerful agent of instruction. However common and cheap printing may have rendered books as the most convenient means of education--however possible may have become, through the multiplication of facilities for intercourse and the rapidity of transportation, the immediate viewing of human life, the most forcible educational means, nevertheless the living word still a.s.serts its supremacy. In two cases especially is it indispensable: one is when some knowledge is to be communicated which as yet is found in no compendium, and the other when a living language is to be taught, for in this case the printed page is entirely inadequate. One can learn from books to understand Spanish, French, English, Danish, &c., but not to speak them; to do this he must hear them, partly that his ear may become accustomed to the sounds, partly that his vocal organs may learn correctly to imitate them.

-- 128. Life surprises and overpowers us with the knowledge which it gains; the book, impa.s.sive, waits our convenience; the teacher, superior to us, perfectly prepared in comparison with us, consults our necessity, and with his living speech uses a gentle force to which we can yield without losing our freedom. Listening is easier than reading.

--Sovereigns e.g. seldom read themselves, but have servants who read to them.--

-- 129. Oral instruction may (1) give the subject, which is to be learned, in a connected statement, or (2) it may unfold it by means of question and answer. The first decidedly presupposes the theoretical inequality of the teacher and the taught. Because one can speak while many can listen, this is especially adapted to the instruction of large numbers. The second method is either that of the catechism or the dialogue. The catechetical is connected with the first kind of oral instruction above designated because it makes demand upon the memory of the learner only for the answer to one question at a time, and is hence very often and very absurdly called the Socratic method. In teaching by means of the dialogue, we try, by means of a reciprocal interchange of thought, to solve in common some problem, proceeding according to the necessary forms of reason. But in this we can make a distinction. One speaker may be superior to the rest, may hold in his own hand the thread of the conversation and may guide it himself; or, those who mingle in it may be perfectly equal in intellect and culture, and may each take part in the development with equal independence. In this latter case, this true reciprocity gives us the proper dramatic dialogue, which contains in itself all forms of exposition, and may pa.s.s from narration, description, and a.n.a.lysis, through satire and irony, to veritable humor.

When it does this, the dialogue is the loftiest result of intelligence and the means of its purest enjoyment.

--This alternate teaching, in which the one who has been taught takes the teacher's place, can be used only where there is a content which admits of a mechanical treatment. The Hindoos made use of it in very ancient times. Bell and Lancaster have transplanted it for the teaching of poor children in Europe and America. For the teaching of the conventionalities--reading, writing, and arithmetic--as well as for the learning by heart of names, sentences, &c., it suffices, but not for any scientific culture. Where we have large numbers to instruct, the giving of the fully developed statement (the first form) is necessary, since the dialogue, though it may be elsewhere suitable, allows only a few to take part in it. And if we take the second form, we must, if we have a large number of pupils, make use of the catechetical method only. What is known as the conversational method has been sometimes suggested for our university instruction. Diesterweg in Berlin insists upon it. Here and there the attempt has been made, but without any result. In the university, the lecture of the teacher as a self-developing whole is contrasted with the scientific discussion of the students, in which they as equals work over with perfect freedom what they have heard.

Diesterweg was wrong in considering the lecture-system as the princ.i.p.al cause of the lack of scientific interest which he thought he perceived in our universities. Kant, Fichte, Sch.e.l.ling, Schleiermacher, Wolf, Niebuhr, &c., taught by lectures and awakened the liveliest enthusiasm.

But Diesterweg is quite right in saying that the students should not be degraded to writing-machines. But this is generally conceded, and a pedantic amount of copying more and more begins to be considered as out of date at our universities. Nevertheless, a new pedantry, that of the wholly extempore lecture, should not be introduced; but a brief summary of the extempore unfolding of the lecture may be dictated and serve a very important purpose, or the lecture may be copied. The great efficacy of the oral exposition does not so much consist in the fact that it is perfectly free, as that it presents to immediate view a person who has made himself the bearer of a science or an art, and has found what const.i.tutes its essence. Its power springs, above all, from the genuineness of the lecture, the originality of its content, and the elegance of its form: whether it is written or extemporized, is a matter of little moment. Niebuhr e.g. read, word for word, from his ma.n.u.script, and what a teacher was he!--The catechetical way of teaching is not demanded at the university except in special examinations; it belongs to the private work of the student, who must learn to be industrious of his own free impulse. The private tutor can best conduct reviews.--The inst.i.tution which presupposing the lecture-system combines in itself original production with criticism, and the connected exposition with the conversation, is the _seminary_. It pursues a well-defined path, and confines itself to a small circle of a.s.sociates whose grades of culture are very nearly the same. Here, therefore, can the dialogue be strongly developed because it has a fixed foundation, and each one can take part in the conversation; whereas, from the variety of opinions among a great number, it is easily perverted into an aimless talk, and the majority of the hearers, who have no chance to speak, become weary.--

-- 130. As to the way in which the lecture is carried out, it may be so arranged as to give the whole stock of information acquired, or, without being so exact and so complete, it may bring to its elucidation only a relatively inexact and general information. The ancients called the first method the esoteric and the second the exoteric, as we give to such lectures now, respectively, the names _scholastic_ and _popular_.

The first makes use of terms which have become technical in science or art, and proceeds syllogistically to combine the isolated ideas; the second endeavors to subst.i.tute for technicalities generally understood signs, and conceals the exactness of the formal conclusion by means of a conversational style. It is possible to conceive of a perfectly methodical treatment of a science which at the same time shall be generally comprehensible if it strives to attain the transparency of real beauty. A scientific work of art may be correctly said to be popular, as e.g. has happened to Herder's _Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind_.

--Beauty is the element which is comprehended by all, and as we declare our enmity to the distorted picture-books, books of amus.e.m.e.nt, and to the mischievous character of ”Compendiums,” so we must also oppose the popular publications which style themselves _Science made Easy_, &c., in order to attract more purchasers by this alluring t.i.tle. Kant in his _Logic_ calls the extreme of explanation Pedantry and Gallantry. This last expression would be very characteristic in our times, since one attains the height of popularity now if he makes himself easily intelligible to ladies--a didactic triumph which one attains only by omitting everything that is profound or complicated, and saying only what exists already in the consciousness of every one, by depriving the subject dealt with of all seriousness, and sparing neither pictures, anecdotes, jokes, nor pretty formalities of speech. Elsewhere Kant says: ”In the effort to produce in our knowledge the completeness of scholarly thoroughness, and at the same time a popular character, without in the effort falling into the above-mentioned errors of an affected thoroughness or an affected popularity, we must, first of all, look out for the scholarly completeness of our scientific knowledge, the methodical form of thoroughness, and first ask how we can make really popular the knowledge methodically acquired at school, i.e. how we can make it easy and generally communicable, and yet at the same time not supplant thoroughness by popularity. For scholarly completeness must not be sacrificed to popularity to please the people, unless science is to become a plaything or trifling.” It is perfectly plain that all that was said before of the psychological and the logical methods must be taken into account in the manner of the statement.--

-- 131. It has been already remarked (-- 21), in speaking of the nature of education, that the office of the instructor must necessarily vary with the growing culture. But attention must here again be called to the fact, that education, in whatever stage of culture, must conform to the law which, as the internal logic of Being, determines all objective developments of nature and of history. The Family gives the child his first instruction; between this and the school comes the teaching of the tutor; the school stands independently as the ant.i.thesis of the family, and presents three essentially different forms according as it imparts a general preparatory instruction, or special teaching for different callings, or a universal scientific cultivation. Universality pa.s.ses over through particularizing into individuality, which contains both the general and the particular freely in itself. All citizens of a state should have (1) a general education which (_a_) makes them familiar with reading, writing, and arithmetic, these being the means of all theoretical culture; then (_b_) hands over to them a picture of the world in its princ.i.p.al phases, so that they as citizens of the world can find their proper status on our planet; and, finally, it must (_c_) instruct him in the history of his own state, so that he may see that the circ.u.mstances in which he lives are the result of a determined past in its connection with the history of the rest of the world, and so may learn rightly to estimate the interests of his own country in view of their necessary relation to the future. This work the elementary schools have to perform. From this, through the _Realschule_ (our scientific High School course) they pa.s.s into the school where some particular branch of science is taught, and through the Gymnasium (cla.s.sical course of a High School or College) to the University. From its general basis develop (2) the educational inst.i.tutions that work towards some special education which leads over to the exercise of some art. These we call Technological schools, where one may learn farming, mining, a craft, a trade, navigation, war, &c. This kind of education may be specialized indefinitely with the growth of culture, because any one branch is capable in its negative aspect of such educational separation, as e.g.

in foundling hospitals and orphan asylums, in blind and deaf and dumb inst.i.tutions. The abstract universality of the Elementary school and the one-sided particularity of the Technological school, however, is subsumed under a concrete universality, which, without aiming directly at utility, treats science and art on all sides as their own end and aim. _Scientia est potentia_, said Lord Bacon. Practical utility results indirectly through the progress which Scientific Cognition makes in this free att.i.tude, because it collects itself out of the dissipation through manifold details into a universal idea and attains a profounder insight thereby. This organism for the purpose of instruction is properly called a University. By it the educational organization is perfected.

--It is essentially seen that no more than these three types of schools can exist, and that they must all exist in a perfectly organized civilization. Their t.i.tles and the plan of their special teaching may be very different among different nations and at different times, but this need not prevent the recognition in them of the ideas which determine them. Still less should the imperfect ways in which they manifest themselves induce us to condemn them. It is the modern tendency to undervalue the University as an inst.i.tution which we had inherited from the middle ages, and with which we could at present dispense. This is an error. The university presents just as necessary a form of instruction as the elementary school or the technological school. Not the abolition of the university, but a reform which shall adapt it to the spirit of the age, is the advance which we have to make. That there are to be found outside of the university men of the most thorough and elegant culture, who can give the most excellent instruction in a science or an art, is most certain. But it is a characteristic of the university in its teaching to do away with contingency which is unavoidable in case of private voluntary efforts. The university presents an organic, self-conscious, encyclopaedic representation of all the sciences, and thus is created to a greater or less degree an intellectual atmosphere which no other place can give. Through this, all sciences and their aims are seen as of equal authority--a personal stress is laid upon the connection of the sciences. The imperfections of a university, which arise through the rivalry of external ambition, through the necessity of financial success, through the jealousy of different parties, through scholars.h.i.+ps, &c., are finitudes which it has in common with all human inst.i.tutions, and on whose account they are not all to be thrown away.--Art academies are for Art what universities are for Science. They are inferior to them in so far as they appear more under the form of special schools, as schools of architecture, of painting, and conservatories of music; while really it may well be supposed that Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music, the Orchestra, and the Drama, are, like the Sciences, bound together in a _Universitas artium_, and that by means of their internal reciprocal action new results would follow.--Academies, as isolated master-schools, which follow no particular line of teaching, are entirely superfluous, and serve only as a _Prytaneum_ for meritorious scholars, and to reward industry through the prizes which they offer. In their idea they belong with the university, this appearing externally in the fact that most of their members are university professors. But as inst.i.tutions for ostentation by which the ambition of the learned was flattered, and to surround princes with scientific glory as scientific societies attached to a court, they have lost all significance. They ceased to flourish with the Ptolemies and the Egyptian caliphs, and with absolute monarchical governments.--In modern times we have pa.s.sed beyond the abstract jealousy of the so-called Humanities and the Natural Sciences, because we comprehend that each part of the totality can be realized in a proper sense only by its development as relatively independent. Thus the _gymnasium_ has its place as that elementary school which through a general culture, by means of the knowledge of the language and history of the Greeks and Romans, prepares for the university; while, on the other hand, the _Realschule_, by special attention to Natural Science and the living languages, const.i.tutes the transition to the technological schools. Nevertheless, because the university embraces the Science of Nature, of Technology, of Trade, of Finance, and of Statistics, the pupils who have graduated from the so-called high schools (_hohern Burgerschulen_) and from the _Realschulen_ will be brought together at the university.--

-- 132. The technique of the school will be determined in its details by the peculiarity of its aim. But in general every school, no matter what it teaches, ought to have some system of rules and regulations by which the relation of the pupil to the inst.i.tution, of the pupils to each other, their relation to the teacher, and that of the teachers to each other as well as to the supervisory authority, the programme of lessons, the apparatus, of the changes of work and recreation, shall be clearly set forth. The course of study must be arranged so as to avoid two extremes: on the one hand, it has to keep in view the special aim of the school, and according to this it tends to contract itself. But, on the other hand, it must consider the relative dependence of one specialty to other specialties and to general culture. It must leave the transition free, and in this it tends to expand itself. The difficulty is here so to a.s.sign the limits that the special task of the school shall not be sacrificed and deprived of the means of performance which it (since it is also always only a part of the whole culture) receives by means of its reciprocal action with other departments. The programme must a.s.sign the exact amount of time which can be appropriated to every study. It must prescribe the order in which they shall follow each other; it must, as far as possible, unite kindred subjects, so as to avoid the useless repet.i.tion which dulls the charm of study; it must, in determining the order, bear in mind at the same time the necessity imposed by the subject itself and the psychological progression of intelligence from perception, through conception, to the thinking activity which grasps all. It must periodically be submitted to revision, so that all matter which has, through the changed state of general culture, become out of date, may be rejected, and that that which has proved itself inimitable may be appropriated; in general, so that it may be kept up to the requirements of the times. And, finally, the school must, by examinations and reports, aid the pupil in the acquirement of a knowledge of his real standing. The examination lets him know what he has really learned, and what he is able to do: the report gives him an account of his culture, exhibits to him in what he has made improvement and in what he has fallen behind, what defects he has shown, what talents he has displayed, what errors committed, and in what relation stands his theoretical development to his ethical status.

--The opposition of the _Gymnasia_ to the demands of the agricultural communities is a very interesting phase of educational history. They were asked to widen their course so as to embrace Mathematics, Physics, Natural History, Geography, and the modern languages. At first they stoutly resisted; then they made some concessions; finally, the more they made the more they found themselves in contradiction with their true work, and so they produced as an independent correlate the _Realschule_. After this was founded, the gymnasium returned to its old plan, and is now again able to place in the foreground the pursuit of cla.s.sical literature and history. It was thus set free from demands made upon it which were entirely foreign to its nature.--The examination is, on one side, so adapted to the pupil as to make him conscious of his own condition. As to its external side, it determines whether the pupil shall pa.s.s from one cla.s.s to another or from one school to another, or it decides whether the school as a whole shall give a public exhibition--an exhibition which ought to have no trace of ostentation, but which in fact is often tinctured with pedagogical charlatanism.--

-- 133. The Direction of the school on the side of science must be held by the school itself, for the process of the intellect in acquiring science, the progress of the method, the determinations of the subject matter and the order of its development, have their own laws, to which Instruction must submit itself if it would attain its end. The school is only one part of the whole of culture. In itself it divides into manifold departments, together const.i.tuting a great organism which in manifold ways comes into contact with the organism of the state. So long as teaching is of a private character, so long as it is the reciprocal relation of one individual to another, or so long as it is shut up within the circle of the family and belongs to it alone, so long it has no objective character. It receives this first when it grows to a school. As in history, its first form must have a religious character; but this first form, in time, disappears. Religion is the absolute relation of man to G.o.d which subsumes all other relations. In so far as Religion exists in the form of a church, those who are members of the same church may have instruction given on the nature of religion among themselves. Instruction on the subject is proper, and it is even enjoined upon them as a law--as a duty. But further than their own society they may not extend their rule. The church may exert itself to make a religious spirit felt in the school and to make it penetrate all the teaching; but it may not presume, because it has for its subject the absolute interest of men, the interest which is superior to all others, to determine also the other objects of Education or the method of treating them. The technical acquisitions of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, Drawing and Music, the Natural Sciences, Mathematics, Logic, Anthropology and Psychology, the practical sciences of finance and the munic.i.p.al regulations, have no direct relation to religion. If we attempt to establish one, there inevitably appears in them a morbid state which destroys them; not only so, but piety itself disappears, for these accomplishments and this knowledge are not included in its idea.