Johann Friedrich Herbart: biography of this psychologist and pedagogue.

A summary of the life of Johann Friedrich Herbart, psychologist, philosopher and pedagogue.

The life of Johann Friedrich Herbart is not very well known, although it should be noted that his way of educating and seeing how students should be made future adults well adapted for the society in which they lived was something advanced in his time.

Let us take a look at the history of this psychologist and philosopher from a biography of Johann Friedrich Herbartwith the key elements of his trajectory.

Brief biography of Johann Friedrich Herbart

Johann Friedrich Herbart was born on May 4, 1776 in Oldenburg, Germany. Due to an accident in childhood, he was a child of frail health, which forced him to be educated by his mother at home until the age of 12. until he was 12 years old.

After that, he entered the "Gymnasium" (German high school) in his hometown for six years, during which he showed a great interest in Kant's philosophy. great interest in Kant's philosophy.. Later he would continue his studies in the city of Jena, where he would study philosophy under Johann Gottlieb Fichte, with whom he would have many conflicting opinions.

After living in Jena for three years, he began to teach the children of Herr von Steiger, who was the governor of Interlaken, Switzerland. It was out of this experience that Herbart was motivated to consider how the way of teaching should be reformed..

While still in Switzerland, Herbart had the opportunity to meet Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, a Swiss educator who was becoming involved in educational reforms in schools.

Herbart would begin to study Greek and mathematics on his return to Germany, specifically in the city of Bremen, for three years and later he would go to Göttingen, where he would remain from 1801 to 1809. It was during this period that he gave his first lectures on philosophy, in 1805..

After living in Göttingen he would pass to reside in Königsberg, where he would direct a seminary of pedagogy until 1833, year in which he would decide to return to the previous city, where he would remain until the date of his death, working as professor of philosophy.

An anecdote about his death is that Johann Friedrich Herbart was in fairly good health even at the end of his days. In fact, just two days before his sudden death from a stroke, he had given a lecture, his last, and, according to those in attendance, he was looking in good health.

He died on August 14, 1841, in the city of Göttingen, Germany.. He was buried in the Albanifriedhof cemetery of the same city.

Thought and theoretical legacy of this researcher

Next we will see some aspects of Johann Friedrich Herbart's thought, all of them very related to his way of seeing and applying pedagogy.

Principles in education

According to Herbart, pedagogy was to emphasize the child's connection with societypromoting its development with a useful purpose for the rest of human beings. That is to say, the intellectual and moral development of the child should be done in such a way as to transform him, over time, into an adult who feels fulfilled and useful, a productive citizen for society as a whole.

In Johann Friedrich Herbart's view, each child was born with a unique potential. However, this potential would not be properly tapped if the child did not have the opportunity to receive a formal and regulated education, i.e., school, and that school was well organized. education, i.e., school, and that it was well organized. While the family and the church could transmit knowledge and values useful for everyday life, only the school could guarantee a correct intellectual and moral development.

Pedagogical method

Within his educational method, Herbart considered moral and intellectual education to go hand in hand.. They could not be separated and pretend to teach them properly without the one depending on the other or without establishing links between the two conceptions.

According to him, if the nature of the human mind was something unitary, how could intelligence and morality be divided? In order to instruct the spirit, that is, morality, it is necessary to educate it by means of learning and the promotion of intelligence.

However, the only way to ensure that the educational process was productive was to make the lessons interesting to the students. to make the lessons of interest to the student body.. Johann Friedrich Herbart considered it a cardinal sin for the teacher to be boring and not to bother to capture the attention of his pupils. Curiosity, liveliness in the way lessons are given, motivation and the desire to teach were something extremely necessary in every lesson.

Herbart goes so far as to speak of different types of interest that a person can present with respect to an object of study.

1. Speculative

This is the interest that derives from meditation on objects that have been experienced (seen, heard, known). (seen, heard, tasted...). It is of the reflective type.

2. Aesthetic

It is the one that occurs before the observation of something that is beautiful, either natural or elaborated by the human being. It is of the emotional type.

3. Empirical

It is born from the immediate perception of things, without attributing to them any emotionality or reflection.. It is neutral.

Then come three other types of interest that are more related to the type of human interaction that occurs between the individual and other people.

4. Sympathetic

This is the type of interest that the infant manifests when he/she is participating in activities with people around him/her. when he/she is participating in activities with people around him/her.. It can feel joy or pain, and it is the one that occurs in the family and school environment.

5. Social

It is the one that occurs before an event in which several people are involved and in which cooperation is required.

6. Religious

According to Herbart, and having a very theological vision, it would be the interest towards the human spirit and divinity, which would serve to achieve a complete life..

The education he advocated

Herbart recommends to set in motion the interest and spirit of the pupils, and to prepare them for the new lesson. The method to be followed starts with the teacher preparing the topic in depth and seeing how it can be related to what has been covered previously..

Then, the teacher will recall, with caution, the ideas presented in previous lessons, to make the students establish a relationship on their own, but not before having summarized very briefly the subject of the new lesson.

Philosophical concept of the real

Herbart was one of the first thinkers to be aware of the importance of psychology in education, considering it a fundamental science for learning and fostering children's character.

This researcher disagreed about how knowledge was acquired according to Kant's vision of the real.. Kant believed that knowledge was given by studying the innate categories of thought, whereas Herbart considered that one learns only by studying external things and real bodies. It is not that they are found from before, or in a world of ideas or something like that. Herbart went so far as to say: the world is a world of things per se, and things per se are perceptible.

Herbart, like Locke with his tabula rasa, considered that the soul did not possess innate ideas or pre-established categories of thought, as was Kant's view.as was Kant's view. The soul, considered as something real, was something passive at the beginning of its existence, being modified by means of external stimuli.

Bibliographical references:

• Boring, E.G. (1950). "German psychology before 1850: Kant, Herbart, and Lotze." In R.M. Elliott (Ed.), A history of experimental psychology (2nd ed.). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
• De Garmo, C. (1895). Herbart and the herbartians. New York: C. Scribner's sons.
• Kenklies, K. (2012). "Educational theory as topological rhetoric. The concepts of pedagogy of Johann Friedrich Herbart and Friedrich Schleiermacher". Studies in Philosophy and Education. 31: 265–273. doi:10.1007/s11217-012-9287-6