The History of Pedagogy
9781465647191
281 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Of the three phases of educational study, the practical, the theoretical, and the historical, the last, as proved by the number of works written on the subject, has received but very little attention from English and American teachers; and yet, if we allow that a teacher should first of all be a man of culture, and that an invaluable factor in his professional education is a knowledge of what has hitherto been done within his field of activity, there are the best of reasons why the claims of this study should be urged upon the teaching profession. For giving breadth of view, judicial candor, and steadiness of purpose, nothing more helpful can be commended to the teacher than a critical survey of the manifold experiments and experiences in educational practice. The acutest thinkers of all the ages have worked at the solution of the educational problem, and the educating art has been practised under every variety of conditions, civil, social, religious, philosophic, and ethnic. Is it not time for us to review these experiments, as the very best condition for advancing surely and steadily? The almost complete neglect of this study among us has been due, in great measure, to the fact that there have been no books on the subject at all adapted to the ends to be attained. A dry, scrappy, and incomplete narration of facts can end only in bewilderment and in blunting the taste for this species of inquiry. The desirable thing has been a book that is comprehensive without being tedious, whose treatment is articulate and clear, and that is pervaded by a critical insight at once catholic and accurate. Some years ago I read with the keenest admiration, the Histoire Critique des Doctrines de l’Éducation en France depuis le Seizième Siècle, by Gabriel Compayré (Paris, 1879); and it seemed to me a model, in matter and method, for a general history of education. Within a recent period Monsieur Compayré has transformed this Histoire Critique into such a general history of education, under the title Histoire de la Pédagogie. In this book all the characteristics of the earlier work have been preserved, and it represents to my own mind very nearly the ideal of the treatise that is needed by the teaching profession of this country. The reader will observe the distinction made by Monsieur Compayré between Pedagogy and Education. Though our nomenclature does not sanction this distinction, and though I prefer to give to the term Pedagogy a different connotation, I have felt bound on moral grounds to preserve Monsieur Compayré’s use of these terms wherever the context would sanction it. It seems mere squeamishness to object to the use of the word Pedagogy on account of historical associations. The fact that this term is in reputable use in German, French, and Italian educational literature, is a sufficient guaranty that we may use it without danger. With us, the term Pedagogics seems to be employed as a synonym for Pedagogy. It would seem to me better to follow continental usage, and restrict the term Pedagogyto the art or practice of education, and Pedagogics to the correlative science.
