? The so-called modern education refers to the institutionalized and popular education that rises with the development of capitalist industry and commodity economy. It takes the scientific and cultural knowledge accumulated by human society as the main educational content and classroom teaching as the basic teaching organization form, which embodies people's pursuit of rationality and science since the Enlightenment. Herbart's educational thought just embodies the main ideas and characteristics of modern society. In this sense, Herbart's theory has incomparable basic significance and strong affinity for China education and China teachers in the process of modernization.
? Herbart was born in Germany on May 4th, 776. His father used to be a lawyer, and later he was promoted to be an adviser to the Privy Council. His mother is beautiful and intelligent, with profound literary accomplishment. 1794 After graduating from high school, 18-year-old Herbart came to the University of Jena, the German philosophy center. At that time, many famous philosophers and writers were in this university. With the help of his mother, he met the philosopher Fichte, which laid the foundation for his education and philosophical research. 1797 At the beginning of the year, Herbart went down to a noble family to be a tutor before he finished his college course and graduated, and was responsible for all the teaching work of three boys for three years. He carefully analyzed the personality characteristics of the three children and made an education plan for them. Every two months, Herbart writes a report on his teaching methods and achievements. This teaching experience deeply influenced his teaching theory. It can be said that Herbart's interest in education was caused by this position, which also laid a certain practical foundation for his later formation of his own educational thought.
? 1799 Summer, Herbart made a special trip to visit Pestalozzi, a famous educator at that time, and forged an unforgettable friendship with him. Pei's slogan of "mental education" gave him great enlightenment. 1802- 10, received his doctorate from the University of G? ttingen, and then stayed in school to teach pedagogy, psychology and philosophy. He just stepped onto the platform of the university, worked very hard and gradually gained his own influence. From 65438 to 0806, he published General Pedagogy, which established his important position in the history of education. 1809, the university of konigsberg offered Herbart an appointment to take over Kant's position as chairman of philosophy and teach philosophy and pedagogy. He has taught in this university for 25 years, and his lectures are very popular with students. At that time, about half of the students at the University of Konigsberg took his courses.
? Herbart not only devoted himself to the podium, but also actively participated in educational reform. In order to link educational theory with educational practice, he set up an education research class at the University of Koenigsberg from 18 17, which is the first educational research institute in the world. In addition, he also founded a normal research class and an affiliated experimental school, which contributed to the training of excellent teachers. It was during the period of Konigsberg University that Herbart formed his own educational theory and method. From 65438 to 0835, he published the Outline of Pedagogy, which supplemented and further elaborated the previous general pedagogy. Herbart is very persistent in education. Until August 184 1, two days before his sudden coma and death, he still taught philosophy and psychology as usual.
? Herbart's insight and height in philosophy and psychology enabled him to carry out and embody the modern ideas since the Enlightenment in the construction of education and teaching theory, so that pedagogy, like other ancient and emerging disciplines, had its own mission, characteristics and structure from then on, and established a complete educational theory system.
Personality is the starting point of education.
? Herbart critically inherited Kant's thought, "Don't dream of higher authority ... because everyone is a judge himself ... Philosophy doesn't judge at all, but philosophy teaches people to learn to judge." As "individual people", students get due attention in Herbart. Even if the purest and most successful description of human beings is made, this description will always be an explanation of special individuals. Therefore, education should "take students' personality as the starting point", and a real educator "should avoid infringing on personality as much as possible" so that everyone's distinctive personality outline can be clearly displayed. "Because people's pursuit is multifaceted, educators should also pay attention to many aspects. "However, the diversity of society and children's ideals determines that it is impossible for schools to cultivate people with uniform specifications and can only create conditions for the development of each student." We finally understand how beneficial it is for human beings to prepare and determine different jobs for different people. At the same time, the personality of young people is increasingly revealed in the hard work of educators. Taking personality as the starting point of education is actually the concrete embodiment of Herbart's philosophical thought that "man is the purpose" in education.
Morality is the highest purpose of education.
? As early as 1804, Herbart put forward: "We can summarize the only and all tasks of education as such a concept: morality." Morality is generally regarded as the highest goal of mankind, so it is also the highest goal of education. "In Herbart's view, the formation of moral character is the highest goal of people and education. Education should not only inherit knowledge, but also shape students' character and virtue, and cultivate their values and sense of mission. "The ultimate goal of teaching lies in virtue". He pointed out that moral education is by no means to cultivate an external behavior pattern, but to cultivate a wise and appropriate will in students' minds. Herbart expounded this from the perspective of pedagogy and systematically put forward five moral concepts: inner freedom, perfection, kindness, justice and fairness. Herbart pointed out that the realization of this highest educational goal cannot be accomplished by a single teacher and discipline, and it requires multi-faceted and sustained efforts. Based on this, he criticized the phenomenon that morality is only regarded as a constraint, and advocated that five moral concepts should be students' own wishes. In other words, students should cultivate a moral quality or moral will. As the saying goes, "a moral man commands himself", Herbart advocates that foreign judgment and obedience should be made by his own choice, so that foreign things can become his own will and "inner freedom" can be realized.
Interest is the direct purpose of teaching.
? As a psychological concept, interest has been used in teaching for a long time. But before Herbart, history educators regarded interest as a teaching method. In Herbart, interest is not a simple means, but the direct purpose of teaching. Hershey's interest not only refers to children's superficial excitement caused by novelty and strangeness in teaching, but also refers to their inner psychological state of being highly attracted and concerned about what they have learned, or a feature of intellectual activities. Herbart also believes that teaching is not a single interest, but a variety of interests. Unilateral excessive interest and complete lack of interest will also undermine the educational nature of teaching, which is not conducive to the cultivation of complete character and virtue Specifically, Herbart divides various interests into two aspects: cognition and sympathy, including experience interest, speculation interest, aesthetic interest, sympathy interest, social interest and religious interest. To cultivate students' interests, we must attach great importance to imparting new knowledge to students, and teachers should be good at stimulating and cultivating students' interests. Only in this way can teaching achieve outstanding results, otherwise it will only become a mere formality and fail.
Education and teaching: the integration of moral education and intellectual education
Historically, since Socrates, an ancient Greek philosopher, put forward the proposition that "virtue is knowledge", there has been a problem of coordinating the relationship between moral cultivation and knowledge transmission in the field of education. Moral education and intellectual education are more important, and how to combine them has always been controversial. Herbart systematically expounded this issue, and clearly put forward the concept of "education and teaching" for the first time, which opened the research of teaching ethics.
Specifically, Herbart's education and teaching mainly includes two aspects, one is aesthetics and literature; Second, mathematics and natural science, sometimes called "poetry and mathematics", are benign in purpose, content and means. We can see that Herbart's education and teaching not only expounds the moral basis of teaching existence from the purpose, but also stipulates what is good teaching from the teaching method. This means that education and teaching should stimulate intellectual activities. So, how to make people wise? How to make teaching full of intellectual activities? Herbart believes that will is rooted in "ideological scope" and in the joint and comprehensive function of his ideas. "If teaching broadens the scope of students' thoughts, then children's rough nature will generally be weakened by the expansion of desires within the scope of thoughts, and they will lose the energy of one-sided pursuit. Secondly, if teaching makes children understand an aesthetic object, then their sentiment will become noble, which will be close to the correct judgment of will, which will lead to the emergence of practical concepts. "As long as teaching contributes to the formation of children's ideological scope, teaching can make people wise.
Herbart Theory in China
In China, Herbart's influence is equally important. He was the first western educator systematically introduced to China, and played an unparalleled role in the establishment of new schools in China in the early 20th century and the development of modern normal education. Wang Guowei and his editor-in-chief, Education World, introduced Herbart and his school's educational thoughts in large quantities, which initiated Herbart's educational theory and theory into modern China and promoted the establishment of pedagogy as an independent discipline in modern China. Due to the introduction of Herbart school's pedagogy theory, China has formed a relatively systematic and complete discipline system in a short time, which is in line with the advanced world level and greatly shortens the scientific process of pedagogy in China.
It can be seen that Herbart established pedagogy on the basis of psychology and practical philosophy (ethics), and built a complete pedagogy system in both theoretical system and practical application value, which made pedagogy embark on a scientific road. Herbart was the first person in the history of education who explicitly proposed to build pedagogy into an independent discipline and science, and from the perspective of philosophy and psychology, he practiced the systematization and scientificity of pedagogy from three aspects: the purpose, content and method of education.
Today, the fierce debate and uproar caused by Herbart and his contemporary educators, the magnificent movement, the deep thinking of the poor competition Committee and the painstaking masterpiece may have gradually disappeared into the dust of history. Generation after generation of new successors took to the stage in turn. They compete to renovate their theories, ask questions again, refute their opponents loudly and try their best to prove themselves. Lantern-like transformation extends to the depths of history. However, whenever we listen carefully, we will find that in the noise of these successors, we can hear echoes again and again, and we can see that those questions and answers reappear in a changed way, so that we can't stop thinking and moving forward.