In order to avoid mistakes and excesses there is a call
for deep, impartial, and many-sided thinking on educational problems.
Supposing that we know what the controlling aim of education is, we are
next led to inquire about and to determine the relative value of
studies as tributary to this aim.
It is not however our purpose to give an original solution to this
problem and to those which follow it. We must decline to attempt a
philosophical inquiry into fundamental principles and their origin.
Ours is the humbler task of explaining and applying principles already
worked out by others; that is, to give the results of Herbartian
pedagogy as applied to our schools.
Instead of discussing the many branches of study one after another, it
will be well to make a broad division of them into three classes and
observe the marked features and value of each. First, _history_,
including the subject matter of biography, history, story, and other
parts of literature. Second, the _natural sciences_. Third, _the
formal studies_, grammar, writing, much of arithmetic, and the symbols
used in reading.
The first two open up the great fields of real knowledge and
experience, the world of man and of external nature, the two great
reservoirs of interesting facts.
Pages:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34