Herbart's ABC of Sense-Perception, and Minor Pedagogical Works #223966

Herbart's educational theories are in important respects supplementary to those of Pestalozzi. The most important idea is that of apperception. He teaches that the chief object of instruction is to secure the reaction of the mind upon what is offered to sense-perception. We must understand what we see. We must explain it by what we know already. Herbart would secure the assimilation of all our new perceptions by the total amount of experience already stored in our minds. Pestalozzi, on the other hand, made no account of previous experience and of this process of digesting our intellectual food. Pestalozzi wished to have us learn by seeing and hearing and the use of our other senses. In his mental physiology the process of eating is everything, and the process of digestion is ignored. This is the chief defect in his method. Sense-perception is worthy of much attention on the part of the educator, and Pestalozzi's methods have been fruitful of much that is good in our schools, but of far more importance are the processes of apperception - the conversion of sense-impressions into knowledge, and the modification of our previous knowledge by the new experience gained.