Herbart and the Herbartians

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The purpose of this volume is to give a bird's-eye view of Herbart and his doctrines of education, both as presented by himself, and as developed by his successors. The ultimate purpose of the Herbartians may be said to be the development of character, not in a narrow subjective sense, but in a broad social one. They seek to fit the child for every important phase of family, social, civil, religious, and economic life, -- to develop, in short, the whole boy or girl. In this broad aim they are, perhaps, not peculiar; but they have certainly made some contributions as to the means of accomplishing this end, so devoutly to be desired for public education. The strength of their position is, that they show how under favorable circumstances this result can be achieved with the agencies already at the command of the school; namely, the common-school studies as they may be taught, together with the ordinary discipline of the school. They believe that, properly selected, articulated, and taught, the common branches of an elementary education are potent influences in training the child's moral insight and disposition.