Pedagogics as a System

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by WILLIAM T. HARRIS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.

ANALYSIS.

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PEDAGOGICS AS A SYSTEM.

[Inquiries from teachers in different sections of the country as to the sources of information on the subject of Teaching as a Science have led me to believe that a translation of Rosenkranz's Pedagogics may be widely acceptable and useful. It is very certain that too much of our teaching is simply empirical, and as Germany has, more than any other country, endeavored to found it upon universal truths, it is to that country that we must at present look for a remedy for this empiricism.

Based as this is upon the profoundest system of German Philosophy, no more suggestive treatise on Education can perhaps be found. In his third part, as will be readily seen, Rosenkranz follows the classification of National ideas given in Hegel's Philosophy of History. The word "Pedagogics," though it has unfortunately acquired a somewhat unpleasant meaning in English--thanks to the writers who have made the word "pedagogue" so odious--deserves to be redeemed for future use. I have, therefore, retained it in the translation.

In order that the reader may see the general scope of the work, I append in tabular form the table of contents, giving however, under the first and second parts, only the main divisions. The minor heads can, of course, as they appear in the translation, be easily located.--Tr.]

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 assurance, 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.