The Elements of General Method

The Elements of General Method,
by Charles A.

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Charles A. McMurry
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Title: The Elements of General Method Based on the Principles of
Herbart
Author: Charles A. McMurry

Release Date: October 29, 2006 [eBook #19659]
Language: English
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ELEMENTS OF GENERAL METHOD***
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THE ELEMENTS OF GENERAL METHOD
Based on the Principles of Herbart.
by
CHARLES A. McMURRY, PH.D.
Second Edition

Public-School Publishing Co., Publishers, Bloomington, Illinois. 1893
Copyright, 1893. By C. A. McMurry, Normal, Ill.

PREFACE.
The Herbart School of Pedagogy has created much stir in Germany in
the last thirty years. It has developed a large number of vigorous writers
on all phases of education and psychology, and numbers a thousand or
more positive disciples among the energetic teachers of Germany.
Those American teachers and students who have come in contact with
the ideas of this school have been greatly stimulated.
In such a miscellaneous and many-sided thing as practical education, it
is deeply gratifying to find a clear and definite leading purpose that
prevails throughout and a set of mutually related and supporting
principles which in practice contribute to the realization of this
purpose.
The following chapters cannot be regarded as a full, exact, and
painfully scientific account of Herbartian ideas, but as a simple
explanation of their leading principles in their relations to each other
and in their application to our own school problems.
In the second edition the last chapter of the first edition has been
omitted, while the other chapters have been much modified and

enlarged. The chapter on the Formal Steps is reserved for enlargement
and publication in a separate form.
Normal, Ill., November 4, 1893.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
The Chief Aim of Education
CHAPTER II.
Relative Value of Studies
CHAPTER III.
Nature of Interest
CHAPTER IV.
Concentration
CHAPTER V.
Induction
CHAPTER VI.
Apperception
CHAPTER VII.
The Will
CHAPTER VIII.

Herbart and His Disciples Books of Reference
CHAPTER I.
THE CHIEF AIM OF EDUCATION.
What is the central purpose of education? If we include under this term
all the things commonly assigned to it, its many phases as represented
by the great variety of teachers and pupils, the many branches of
knowledge and the various and even conflicting methods in bringing up
children, it is difficult to find a definition sufficiently broad and definite
to compass its meaning. In fact we shall not attempt in the beginning to
make a definition. We are in search not so much of a comprehensive
definition as of a central truth, a key to the situation, an aim that will
simplify and brighten all the work of teachers. Keeping in view the end
from the beginning, we need a central organizing principle which shall
dictate for teacher and pupil the highway over which they shall travel
together.
We will assume at least that education means the whole bringing up of
a child from infancy to maturity, not simply his school training. The
reason for this assumption is that home, school, companions,
environment, and natural endowment, working through a series of years,
produce a character which is a unit as the resultant of these different
influences and growths. Again, we are compelled to assume that this
aim, whatever it is, is the same for all.
Now what will the average man, picked up at random, say to our
question: What is the chief end in the education of your son? A farmer
wishes his boy to read, write, and cipher, so as to meet successfully the
needs of a farmer's life. The merchant desires that his boy get a wider
reach of knowledge and experience so as to succeed in a livelier sort of
business competition. A university professor would lay out a liberal
course of training for his son so as to prepare him for intellectual
pursuits among scholars and people of culture. This utilitarian view,
which points to success in life in the ordinary sense, is the prevailing
one. We could probably sum up the wishes of a great majority of the

common people by saying, "They desire to give their children, through
education, a better chance in life than they themselves have had." Yet
even these people, if pressed to give reasons, would admit that the
purely utilitarian view is a low one and that there is something better
for every boy and girl than the mere ability to make a successful living.
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