The Herbartian psychology applied to education : being a series of essays applying the psychology of Johann Friedrich Herbart / by John Adams.

  • Adams, John, 1857-1934.
Date:
[1900?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Herbartian psychology applied to education : being a series of essays applying the psychology of Johann Friedrich Herbart / by John Adams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    165/316 (page 157)
    a new and unexpected rendering of a familiar text, he is having a lesson in the activity of the mind in the making of knowledge. Browning is reported to have said that his obscure poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came meant to every man exactly as much as he could take out of it. This poem has nearly as many interpretations as readers. A certain clever inspector of schools, complaining of the exclusively bookish training given in our schools, made the remark — Our children are treated like pointers : they are trained to bark at print. The edu- cation of actual experience is open to the same condem- nation. We are all trained to bark at something; and, each in our own field, we can do wonderful things — not because our senses are keener, but because our knowledge is fuller and better arranged in our own special directions. The doctor who calls on a patient for the first time sees no more than do the anxious friends who have sent for him ; the only difference is that the brute facts of the case are no longer brute facts to him; he fits them into their places in a little cosmos that he carries about with him. Thoughtless people are apt to ex- press this by saying that his powers of observation have been trained; but the obvious limit to this is that the resulting power is strictly confined to a certain class of facts. Outside of his own department a doctor is no more observant than other folks. Indeed, a doc- tor who gains distinction in other (not cognate) fields than Medicine, is apt to lose his patients and his practice.