An unconventional reading of Johann Friedrich Herbart

Pedagogical self-government and the active position of the learner

Abstract

This essay addresses the work General Pedagogy, published by German pedagogue Johann Friedrich Herbart in 1806. Although Herbart influenced authors such as John Dewey and Jean Piaget, he is considered until today a defender of traditional pedagogy, focusing on the content and authoritarian directing role of the educator. In order to demystify this idea, this essay briefly exposes the architecture of General Pedagogy, drawing from it the notion of Pedagogy as an independent field of study, which investigates the three-fold pedagogical action as that of government, of teaching and of discipline. By justifying Pedagogy as an independent field of study, Herbart seeks to distance it from both metaphysics and experimental science of his time. The essay then reconstructs Herbart’s critique of the two forms of pedagogical authoritarianism in the government of children, which were widely exercised at that moment – physical punishment and bookish education. As a defender of pedagogical self-government, he could not obviously accept, in his idea of general Pedagogy, any form of educational practice that curtails human freedom. Finally, it is presented the topicality of Herbart’s thought in relation to three aspects: pedagogical self-government, the statute of Pedagogy and the role of the educator (teacher) as an intellectual director. This is not a matter of simply transposing the pedagogical ideals of this nineteenth-century author into the present. It is rather about seeking conceptual inspiration in his work in order to understand the time we live in and ourselves as subjects that understand such time.