Herbart's educational psychology pursues the scientificity of education, but its idealism, speculation and deduction ultimately affect the scientificity of his theory, which is manifested in the limitations of the development of psychological science itself, the neglect of educational experiments and the lack of understanding of the education and teaching process. At that time, psychology was not completely separated from philosophy, and it inevitably had the rational color of German idealism philosophy. Although Herbart also emphasized the importance of experience and experiment, it was not until Feng Te established the first psychology laboratory that scientific experimental psychology was established. Therefore, many of Herbart's psychological views are still the products of metaphysical logical deduction, such as reducing emotion, imagination and will to ideological forms because of emphasizing concepts. In addition, the application of his associationism in teaching tends to be mechanistic and fails to reach the level of scientific thinking. Herbart developed or redefined metaphysics, psychology and ethics, but his educational theory did not make much progress. He tried to combine education with psychology and ethics, claiming that ethics supports the purpose and psychology provides the method, but did not provide any details on how to operate it. Therefore, some people think that "in a sense, Herbart, who is often called the founder of educational scientific methods, has indeed failed in developing educational science and is erratic between psychology and ethics." Although this criticism is harsh, it is not unreasonable, because Herbart's psychological theory covers too little children, children's education and purpose. His psychology is a science about the movement of thoughts in the mind based on mathematical calculation, which influenced many psychological theories in the19th century until Freud's psychoanalysis, but its application in education was not successful. Because there is no scientific basis for experiments, many of them belong to scattered empirical knowledge, mixed with intuition or belief, which obviously damages the level of educational psychology. From the understanding of the educational process, although he put forward the importance of interest cultivation and communication between teachers and students, he lacked scientific basis for the division of interest content, put students in a plastic passive position, emphasized teachers' guidance of students' thoughts, neglected students' own vitality and dispelled people's personality and freedom. This subjectivism tends to separate the vivid and substantial educational life. With the obsolescence of empiricism in the19th century, the psychology of Herbart school was first criticized as lacking observation and experience, and could not be used in laboratories or for accurate data analysis. Of course, the above shortcomings can not be regarded as the failure of Herbart's educational psychology, nor can he blame him for not providing what future generations want, but what he left to people. His efforts were of epoch-making significance, which was unparalleled in the following decades. Until the end of 19, with the development of children's psychology and the rise of progressive education movement, his dominant position and international influence were rapidly weakened.