Chapter 7

--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 principal cause of the lack of scientific interest which he thought he perceived in our universities. Kant, Fichte, Schelling, 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 But this is generally conceded, and a pedantic amount of copying more and more begins to be considered as out of date at our universities.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 constitutes 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 manuscript, 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 institution 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 associates 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 substitute 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 amusement, 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 title. 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 antithesis 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 passes 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 principal 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 circumstances 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 pass into the school where some particular branch of science is taught, and through the Gymnasium (classical course of a High School or College) to the University. From its general basis develop (2) the educational institutions 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 institutions. 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 attitude, 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 titles 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 institution 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, encyclopædic 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 scholarships, &c., are finitudes which it has in common with all human institutions, 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 institutions 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 passed 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, constitutes 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 (_höhern Bürgerschulen_) 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 institution, 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 assign 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 assign 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 repetition 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 classical 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 pass from one class 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 constituting 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 God 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 municipal 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.

--Such treatment of Art and Science may be well-meant, but it is always an error. It may even make a ludicrous impression, which is a very dangerous thing for the authority of religion. If a church has established schools, it must see to it that all which is there taught outside of the religious instruction, i.e. all of science and art, shall have no direct connection with it as a religious institution.--

§ 134. The Church, as the external manifestation of religion, is concerned with the absolute relation of man, the relation to God, special in itself as opposed to his other relations; the State, on the contrary, seizes the life of a nation according to its _explicit totality_. The State should conduct the education of all its citizens. To it, then, the church can appear only as a school, for the church instructs its own people concerning the nature of religion, partly by teaching proper, that of the catechism, partly in quite as edifying a way, by preaching. From this point of view, the State can look upon the church only as one of those schools which prepare for a special avocation. The church appears to the State as that school which assumes the task of educating the religious element. Just as little as the church should the state attempt to exercise any influence over Science and Art. In this they are exactly alike, and must acknowledge the necessity which both Science and Art contain within themselves and by which they determine themselves. The laws of Logic, Mathematics, Astronomy, Morals, Æsthetics, Physiology, &c., are entirely independent of the state. It can decree neither discoveries nor inventions. The state in its relations to science occupies the same ground as it should do with relation to the freedom of self-consciousness. It is true that the church teaches man, but it demands from him at the same time belief in the truth of its dogmas. It rests, as the real church, on presupposed authority, and sinks finally all contradictions which may be found in the absolute mystery of the existence of God. The state, on the contrary, elaborates its idea into the form of laws, i.e. into general determinations, of whose necessity it convinces itself. It seeks to give to these laws the clearest possible form, so that every one may understand them. It concedes validity only to that which can be proved, and sentences the individual according to the external side of the _deed_ (overt act) not, as the church does, on its internal side--that of _intention_. Finally, it demands in him consciousness of his deed, because it makes each one responsible for his own deed. It has, therefore, the same principle with science, for the proof of necessity and the unity of consciousness with its object constitute the essence of science. Since the state embraces the school as one of its educational organisms, it is from its very nature especially called upon to guide its regulation in accordance with the manifestation of consciousness.

[Sidenote: _The Modality of the Process of Teaching._]

--The church calls this "profanation." One might say that the church, with its mystery of Faith, always represents the absolute problem of science, while the state, as to its form, coincides with science. Whenever the state abandons the strictness of proof--when it begins to measure the individual citizen by his intention and not by his deed, and, in place of the clear insight of the comprehending consciousness, sets up the psychological compulsion of a hollow mechanical authority, it destroys itself.--

§ 135. Neither the church nor the state should attempt to control the school in its internal management. Still less can the school constitute itself into a state within the state; for, while it is only one of the means which are necessary for developing citizens, the state and the church lay claim to the whole man his whole life long. The independence of the school can then only consist in this, that it raises within the state an organ which works under its control, and which as school authority endeavors within itself to befriend the needs of the school, while externally it acts on the church and state indirectly by means of ethical powers. The emancipation of the school can never reasonably mean its abstract isolation, or the absorption of the ecclesiastical and political life into the school; it can signify only the free reciprocal action of the school with state and church. It must never be forgotten that what makes the school a school is not the total process of education, for this falls also within the family, the state, and the church; but that the proper work of the school is the process of instruction, knowledge, and the acquirement, by practice, of skill.