Herbart’s View of the Place of Mathematics in Education

Extract

The claims of Herbart on the attention of the teacher are at last being recognised in this country. Not merely is he deserving of study as one of the founders of modern psychology, not merely does he attract our interest as the central object of veneration of a rapidly increasing school in his native country and in the United States, but he also takes up a position apart from most philosophers, in that he actually devoted a large part of his life to the work of teaching, and deliberately applied his psychology to education. To the readers of this Gazette, the opinions of Herbart, who offers us this rare combination of the theorist of the first rank with the successful teacher of boys and men, will be of additional interest when it is realised that he plays somewhat the same rôle as the staunch advocate of Mathematics in the curriculum that Herbert Spencer does for Natural Science. He urges that “for six hours weekly” Mathematics should be “the beginning, middle, and end” of every system of instruction. And the fact that Mathematik is of wider connotation than we should now award to it will not deprive his remarks of much of their value. It will be as well, however, to bear in mind that he includes in this term all that is not comprised in Geschichte.