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J. F. Herbart on the Art of Teaching: Bildsamkeit and Pedagogical Tact 
 

Christine Becks (nee Salmen) 

Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin 

Universität Duisburg-Essen 

 

 

Abstract 

Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) was a 

profound systematic thinker of early 19th century 

Germany whose work on pedagogical tact and 

educability speaks to the history and 

historiography of the foundations of modern 

education. His uncompromising commitment to 

pedagogy for and with the enlightened human 

being informs current policy developments 

toward systems of accountability and 

standardized instruction by invigorating a 

humanistic view of teaching and learning 

grounded in Enlightenment philosophy. 

 

Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) 

was one of the most renowned philosophers in 

early 19th century Germany. For many 

historians, his writings on pedagogy mark the 

beginning of education as a science. For 

historiography, the reception of Herbart’s 

scholarship provides a fascinating example of 

how ideas are translated through time and 

space. The German Herbartianismus of the late 

Nineteenth Century, and its American export, 

bear little resemblance to Herbart’s original 

ideas (Siljander, 2012). Rather, each co-opted 

Herbart’s name and authority to support 

curricular movements quite alien to his central 

concepts. Given the current interest in German 

education and philosophy, it is thus instructive 

to reframe Herbart’s ideas through the lens of 

the intellectual and political events of his day. 

What emerges is a more profound thinker than 

is represented in popular historical texts—and a 

benchmark for understanding the adaption and 

application of ideas in different socio- 

geographic contexts. 

Building upon the Enlightenment 

concept of educability (Bildsamkeit) Herbart 

sought the methods necessary to promote the 

full and harmonious development of human 

powers both for the good of the individual and 

the benefit of the state. This was to be a process 

of self-formation that would lead to the 

creation of moral beings and rational citizens. 

As English (2013) explains, “self-

determination (Selbstbestimmung) is 

connected to the ability to critique not only 

one’s own thoughts and actions, but also the 

values and norms that govern society at large” 

(p. 3). Central to this project was a new 

understating of teaching, what Herbart termed 

pedagogical tact, that blended theoretical 

knowledge and practical experience into the 

dynamic art necessary to cultivate each child’s 

diverse interests and talents. It is also helpful 

to read Herbart’s views on pedagogy against 

the convulsions wrought by the Napoleonic 

Wars (Clark 2006). In the wake of Prussia’s 

defeat intellectual and political 

leaders sought to rebuild the nation through a 

system of public education. Social order had to 

rest on rational thought and cooperation through 

the education of an enlightened citizenry. 

Precisely because citizens are not born but 

made (Tröhler, 2016b, p. 284), schooling was to 

be organized around a common instructional 

plan designed to develop the knowledge, skills, 

and values necessary to meet civic 

responsibilities. A formal, politically 

legitimized administrative curricular structure 

would create and oversee curricula and teach 

the beliefs and values of the future German 

society (Tröhler, 2016a, p.11). The ideal 

captured in the concept of Bildung was the 

development of autonomy necessary for a free, 

virtuous, and reasoned mind (Kinkel, 1908). 
 

The Historical Herbart 

Herbart was born on 4 May 1776 in 

Oldenburg to Lucie, a “remarkable woman 

with a lively sense of imagination … with 

quick decision-making, power of will and 

persistence in what she wanted” (Kinkel, 1908, 

p. 8). Fusing her own intellectual curiosity 

with the genius of her son, she worked side by 



42  

side with Herbart studying Greek, science, and 

mathematics under a series of private tutors. 

Herbart entered the city’s Gymnasium at age 

13 as its veritable protégé: At the age of 17, he 

gave a graduation address on national growth 

and the decline of morality. At his own 

graduation a year later, he spoke on the highest 

good and the principles of practical philosophy 

in Cicero and Kant at the age of 18 (Kinkel, 

1908, p. 11). The following year he published 

his reflections on Kant’s practical philosophy. 

Herbart also had significant musical talent: He 

played concerts for Duke Friedrich August of 

Schleswig- Holstein and published numerous 

compositions throughout his life. These 

achievements together with his own unique 

education would inform his later three-year 

service as tutor to the sons of the regional 

governor in the Swiss canton of Bern. 

Following his father’s wishes, Herbart 

entered the University of Jena in 1794 to pursue 

a career in the law. His mother followed him to 

support his studies and remained by his side 

over the coming years advancing his career. 

Herbart soon gravitated to philosophy and came 

under the orbit of Fichte, who directed his 

readings in Kant and German Idealism— a 

movement from which he would later turn. In 

addition, thanks to his mother’s social 

networking, frequenting local salons and 

literary circles, he enjoyed the company of 

Schiller, Goethe, and numerous other leading 

intellectuals of the day (Kinkel, 1908, p. 13). 

From 1797 to 1800, Herbart embraced 

his role as tutor to the Steiger family. Charged 

with the instruction of three boys, aged 8, 10, 

and 14, he perfected his instructional skills in 

what amounted to a pedagogic laboratory for 

his future works on education. His 

philosophical thought was also taking shape. By 

1798, his friend Böhlendorff spread the word 

that Herbart was formulating a new system 

(Kinkel, 1908, p. 24) and it was during this time 

that he met and observed Pestalozzi’s classes at 

Burgdorf. Although he found Pestalozzi’s 

psychology vague and underdeveloped, he was 

impressed by his efforts to develop the mind’s 

faculties through practical, sense-based 

learning within the natural environment. 

Pestalozzi was concerned with elementary 

instruction while Herbart’s interests lay mostly 

with Gymnasium and university students. Even 

so, he became an authority on Pestalozzi, 

publishing and lecturing on his methods, 

culminating in his expansive 1802 text 

Pestalozzi’s ABC of Sense- Perception. Indeed, 

he credits reflection on Pestalozzi’s concept of 

intuition as he a stimulus to his own 

mathematical view of mind (Herbart, 1903). 

Herbart focused the Steiger boys’ 

schooling on general learning, the perfection of 

character, and the development of rational 

thought. Specific skills could be acquired in 

later life, as needed. The classics were 

particularly useful for understanding human 

nature. In concert with the neo-classicism of 

the day, and the lessons of his own schooling, 

Herbart was convinced that Greek and Latin 

were a gateway to the powerful ideas of the 

ancients, an invaluable resource for the growth 

of moral insight. In a like manner, scientific 

instruction began with curiosity about nature, 

prompting the development of reason by 

revealing common principles and lawful 

relations, not as facts but as instruments of 

judgment. 

In 1800, when his mother fell ill and his 

parents’ divorce was imminent, Herbart 

relocated to the estate of a friend near Bremen 

where he prepared for the culmination of his 

university studies. After a mere two years of 

preparation, he successfully defended his 

dissertation on Pestalozzi 15 October 1802. 

Based on his impressive performance, the 

faculty invited him to defend his 12 theses in his 

habilitation disputation, through which he 

achieved full professor status the very next day. 

By 1802 he lectured in Göttingen and over the 

next six years he proved a highly popular 

teacher. Where other professors read their texts, 

Herbert employed an open Socratic style, 

engaging students in the effort to get them to 

think for themselves. His scholarly productivity 

was also impressive, resulting, in addition to his 

main educational work, the General Pedagogy 

(1806), important texts in philosophy that 

earned him the reputation as one of Germany 

most promising scholars. 

Although initially happy in Göttingen, 

Herbart’s situation changed in 1808 when the 



43  

conquering French authorities imposed 

draconian rules on the university. The 

unexpected offer of a professorship at the 

University of Königsberg arrived at the right 

moment. That fall he was appointed to the chair 

of philosophy previously held by Kant. A 

condition of his appointment was the 

establishment of a teacher training seminar. 

This was just the expertise Prussian authorities 

needed to rebuild the country after its defeat to 

Napoleon. Indeed, the following year he was 

drafted into the government department 

charged with establishing a national system of 

schooling. Under the leadership of Wilhelm 

von Humboldt, he worked on the curriculum of 

secondary education, emphasizing the need to 

guide future teachers in the kind of practical 

experience he had enjoyed as tutor to the 

Steiger children. He and Humboldt shared a 

commitment to the classics, the political 

importance of individuality, and the 

educational ideal of Bildung. 

In 1810 the Didaktisches Institut was 

founded. A few talented students were 

required to work privately with pupils through 

the week before demonstrating their perfected 

lessons to Herbart and the group. This small-

scale experiment continued until the end of the 

Napoleonic Wars, when funds were made 

available to establish a boarding school 

adjacent to the university. Opened in 1818, the 

Pädagogisches Seminar was intended as 

model for future normal schools suitable for 

the preparation of Gymnasium teachers 

(Kenklies, 2012, p. 270). But waning 

government interest in educational reform 

undercut Herbart’s grand plans of exporting 

his pedagogic ideas to the country. Ultimately, 

his academic work faced a similar fate. For 

while Herbart’s production of scholarly works 

was unmatched, his overarching goal of 

formulating an empirical psychology based on 

the principles of mathematics gained few 

adherents. Thus, while he published 

Introductory Textbook of Philosophy (1813), 

Textbook of Psychology (1816), Psychology as 

a Science (1824/1825), General Metaphysics 

(1828/1829) and The Concise Encyclopedia of 

Philosophy (1831) during his years in 

Königsberg, he failed to secure the prestigious 

chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin 

vacated after Hegel’s death. Disappointed, 

Herbart returned to Göttingen in 1833 as Dean 

of the Faculty of Philosophy. Here in the in the 

final years of his life he published a 

systematic, compact overview of pedagogy, 

the Outlines of Educational Doctrine (1835). 

After suffering two strokes, he died on 13 

August 1841 age 64 (Dollinger, 2011). 

The reception of Herbart’s educational 

ideas was intimately related to his professional 

reputation. Staying true to his theorized 

conception of pedagogical knowledge, he 

understood that teaching philosophy as a tool 

for understanding the world and focused on the 

intellectual development of his students rather 

than the transmission of set views on 

knowledge (Kinkel, 1908, p.  33). When he left 

Königsberg for Göttingen in 1833, he received 

many accolades. But above all, for colleagues 

and students alike, he was a true child of 

rationalism with an incorruptible commitment 

to truth and rational thought (p. 48). These 

ideals live on in his written works, finding their 

clearest expression in his First Lecture of 

Pedagogy (Herbart, 1802/1986), and his later 

1806 treatise General Pedagogy Derived from 

the Purpose of Education. By the age of 28 

Herbart had woven ethical and psychological 

ideas about human nature and the social good 

into a comprehensive and practical theory of 

education. While the entire orbit of this 

expansive system is beyond the reach of this 

paper, two of Herbart’s central concepts serve 

to capture the spirit of his thought and its 

enduring value for educators of the present 

day: pedagogical tact and individuality. 
 

Herbart’s Science of Education 

In part, the influence and authority of 

Herbart’s educational thought flowed from his 

larger reputation as a systematic thinker the 

fields of philosophy and psychology. As Kim 

(2015) explains, Herbart’s “interpretation of 

space had an important influence on 

Helmholtz’s empirical theory of vision, and on 

Natorp’s ‘logicization’ of Kantian spatio-

temporal intuition. Herbart’s arguments against 

psychological faculties were taken over by 

Wundt, and his notions of the limen and the 



44  

‘subconscious’ were fundamental to Freud’s 

psychoanalytic theory. In philosophy, Herbart 

anticipated key ideas of phenomenology.” 

Indeed, drawing upon these wider ideas he 

sought to establish education as an independent 

science grounded in the laws of mind. 

Following the example of Newton, 

Herbart’s goal was to establish a mathematical 

science of the mind. Just as the physical world 

was governed by measurable forces, mental 

states and their intersections could be 

quantified to explain the development of the 

cognitive structures. What he termed the 

apperceptive mass served as the mechanism of 

thought. In contrast to faculty psychology, 

Herbart argued that mental powers were 

formed in the course of experience. This 

constructive process was the result of the 

struggle to create meaning through the 

subject’s interactions with the external world. 

Ultimately, Herbart’s central argument was 

that the active mind within had to perfect itself 

into the free, rational, and autonomous moral 

agent and teachers could help bring about this 

development by facilitating educative 

experiences. The role of pedagogy was thus to 

expand and strengthen the apperceptive mass 

that constituted the student’s horizons, their 

circle of thought (Gesichtskreis). This meant 

assimilating new content into a pre-existing 

mental structure and thereby continuously 

forming it. Interest had to be engaged, 

properties understood, and new objects of 

knowledge integrated into the cognitive whole 

under a common set of rules and principles. 

Herbart’s efforts to form a science of 

education must be read against Enlightenment 

conceptions of human nature and knowledge. 

Rather than imposing truth and goodness from 

without, he followed Kant in developing 

understanding and character from within. 

Comenius’ Great Didactic (1910) drew upon 

the child’s everyday experiences in order to 

teach fixed truths about God’s Creation so that 

all would understand their religious duties. The 

German Enlightenment reversed this project. 

The internal powers of mind were to be 

developed so the individual could form their 

own rational judgments about the world and 

their conduct within it. Through the aesthetic 

representation of the world, human judgment is 

to be formed by exemplary representations of 

the world through which students learn modes 

of understanding world as such, the Modi des 

Weltverstehens (Sivesind & Luimes, 2017, 

p.21) For Herbart, education was about "what 

students should become" (Sivesind & Luimes, 

2017, p.24) rather than what they should know. 

Human self-formation had to be at the forefront 

of the teacher’s mind and instruction 

transforms content into knowledge of the 

world, i.e. turning subject matter into meaning, 

as Hopmann (2007) explains: “Any given 

matter can represent many different meanings, 

and any given meaning can be opened up by 

many different matters” (p. 116). Consider, for 

example, a flower. Once plucked and in the 

classroom, it is no longer what it is in the world, 

yet it offers pathways into poetry about 

flowers, films, or the chemistry behind 

photosynthesis. How the content is approached 

and to what educative end-in-view it is used is 

entirely a matter of Didaktik and pedagogical 

tact. The essential art of teaching rests on 

utilizing, as Hopmann (2007) pinpoints, 

“different approaches to one and the same 

subject matter based on the different 

possibilities to unfold an educative meaning for 

different learners“ (p.117). Professional 

autonomy is captured in the very act of 

choosing and sequencing content, and it calls 

for experience-based judgment and flexible 

decision-making. In the modern German 

tradition, this process is known as Didaktik (see 

figure 1). 
 

 



45  

 
Figure 1: Didaktik model of teaching in the 

context of schooling, figure by author. 
 

Pedagogical Tact 

Addressing university students on the 

nature of pedagogy as a discipline in his First 

Lecture of Pedagogy (1802), Herbart 

introduces the concept of tact, an idea similar 

to the Greek notion of phronesis. His goal is to 

unite theory (episteme) and practice (techne) by 

demonstrating that teaching must be 

understood as an art informed by science. Like 

phronesis, tact is a power of mind and character 

that permits the individual to make rapid, 

creative, intelligent, and informed judgments in 

infinitely diverse contexts. Pedagogical tact 

thus stands opposed to any technocratic manual 

of actions. What Herbart offers the future 

teacher is not a skillset, but a humanistic ideal, 

something to aspire to and create within 

themselves. This clearly parallels his 

distinction between education and teaching, i.e. 

the transmission of knowledge. Only the 

educated teacher can hope to foster the 

pedagogic ideal of Bildung. 

Herbart’s argument begins with a 

distinction between the theory and art of 

education. Theory is an organized set of axioms 

and principles; art a set of means-end skills 

brought together for some practical purpose. 

One is a product of philosophical thought, the 

other requires immediate action (Herbart, 

1802/1986, p. 55). Theory provides knowledge 

of the universal at the expense of the particular; 

grounded in the particular, practice is effective 

yet circumscribed and routine. One can almost 

hear a Kantian maxim; theory without practice 

is empty, practice without theory is blind. In 

specific conditions, an effective art might be 

discovered through “accident, through 

empathy, or indeed parental love,” but an 

expert educator must “know how to treat each 

temper, each disposition and each age 

differently” (Herbart, 1802/1986, 55). 

Educational theory provides such insights, 

deepens knowledge and broadens perspectives, 

yet, it cannot operate effectively unless it is 

applied to the concrete conditions of the 

learning situation. This demands a unique form 

of thought that “occupies the place that theory 

leaves vacant, and so becomes the immediate 

director of practice” (Herbart, 

1903, p. 20). Students were to realize their 

innate potential through a sequence of multiple, 

different, and intellectually inspiring tasks that 

would help them perfect their inner abilities and 

talents. Each person had to create their own 

nature. Teachers could aid and prompt students, 

but it was up to the individual to realize their 

own potential. Pedagogic tact enabled the 

teacher to choose the most appropriate material 

for the student to engage with. It included an 

assessing each student’s readiness and learning 

horizons based upon knowledge about their 

background, progress, and ability. Each 

educational experience had to be dovetailed for 

the specific learning situation. This complex, 

multifaceted challenge is what qualifies 

teaching as a profession. 

The appraisal of a teacher hinges on 

how tact emerges within that person and 

whether the person remains truthful to the laws 

that science provides. Tact forms “through 

deliberation, thinking, inquiry” (Herbart, 

1806/1986, p. 57) whereas teachers prepare 

themselves—not individual future actions, but 

their art of teaching on a whole—through 

science. It further needs ingenuity to do what 

each situation requires, because each action is 

only relevant to the degree that it contributes 

to the enterprise of pedagogy (Herbart, 

1806/1986, p. 58). The important point was to 

provide the tools necessary for this intellectual 

construct. 

 

It is by reflection, reasoning, inquiry, in 

short, by science, [that] the educator 

must prepare not his future action in 

individual cases so much as himself, his 

tone of mind, his head as well as his 

heart, for correctly receiving, 

apperceiving, feeling, and judging the 

phenomena awaiting him and the 

situation in which he may be placed. 

(Herbart, 1903, p. 21) 

 
“Only in action,” he continues, 

 
do we learn the art and acquire tact, 



46  

aptness, quickness, dexterity; but even 

in action only he learns the art who has 

in previous thinking learned the 

science; has made it his own; by it has 

attuned himself; has predetermined the 

impressions to be made upon him by 

future experience. (Herbart, 1903, p. 

22) 

 

By itself, theory could not produce “an 

infallible master of the educator’s art” 

(Herbart, 1903, p. 22). But it can teach how to 

learn from pedagogic successes and failures. 

Armed with an appreciation of the moral ends 

of education and the psychological principles 

governing learning and development, theory 

empowers the reflective educator to analyze, 

assess, and methodize their practice in 

increasingly powerful ways. The parallel with 

moral autonomy is instructive. The virtuous 

person, Herbart insists, is not one who 

mechanically obeys conventions but, through 

the “long, attentive, and impartial 

contemplation of human relations to himself 

and to all that surrounds him” (Herbart, 1903, 

p. 26). has developed a principled 

understanding of the moral order: 

 

This tact, which impels the man of 

character to swift and resolute action, is 

especially needed also by the educator, 

in order that he may know on the spot 

what is to be done and do it rightly and 

with energy. If an educator lacks this tact 

his personality will not have weight; 

never will he prevail by authority. 

(Herbart, 1903, p. 26) 

 

 This is a telling insight for those who would 

challenge the professional standing of the 

teacher. 

The lecture concludes on the notion that 

forming tact relates to a way of pedagogical 

thinking (pädagogische Sinnesart) that is 

unique to pedagogy and the teacher, a way of 

seeing the world, so to speak. It emerges from 

the balance of theory and practice, and it 

contributes to the debate of education theory 

and education practice that has been “an 

integral part of development of education 

science in the 18th century” (Kenklies, 2012, p. 

265) and to this day. His contribution to this 

debate is what makes Herbart an “iconic author 

of German education science” (Kenklies, 2012, 

p. 265), no less because he distinctly argues 

against education practice void of any theory. 

Herbart demands that teachers “realize their 

own horizons and the dependency on their own 

thoughts and practices … by acknowledging 

the existence of other ways of educating 

(Kenklies, 2012, p. 270). This is what others 

coined restraint in teaching (Hopmann, 2007; 

Westbury, 2000): education theory generates 

awareness that protects teachers against the 

jogtrot and it tasks them as much as the student 

to exhibit morality in acting as moral persons. 

Autonomy as foundation of the teaching 

profession and the enlightened human being is 

the expression of such morality (Kenklies, 

2012, p. 271). 
Herbart’s lecture remains a 

foundational reading to this because it speaks 

to core understandings of what it means to 

teach for the purpose of education (Bildung); 

it continues to be at the core of what future 

teachers read at universities and in programs 

that follow the Didaktik tradition. Keeping the 

concern for the learner’s growth at the 

forefront of each consideration, tact informs 

“the agile teacher’s action towards wise, 

situational judgment“ (English, 2013, p. 49). 

As such, it is improvisational yet grounded in 

education theory and it gives productive 

meaning to teachable, golden moments that 

emerge from a teacher’s creative, ingenious 

reaction to a situation (English, 2013, p. 51). 

In that way, the teacher develops the 

“educated conscience of pedagogical 

responsibility” (English, 2013, p. 52), a 

specific way of pedagogical thinking that 

knows about the limits of teaching, as Herbart 

taught his students: “World and nature do more 

for the student than education may pride itself 

on.” (Herbart, 1802/1986, p. 58) 
 

Individuality 

Herbart’s General Pedagogy opens with 

that paradox at the center of his theory; how to 

educate another for self-determination. As 

English summarizes, Herbart unpacks the 



47  

paradox of educating for self-determination 

through determination-by-another through 

“developing and listening closely to their own 

inner self-critical voice.” (English, 2013, p. 

48). Reflective practice tasks teachers with 

questioning their judgments and with forming 

an inner censor that knows about the limits of 

teaching. 

Developing individual potential not only 

promotes personal happiness and wellbeing, 

but it also serves the diverse needs of the 

modern state. With these strictures in mind, 

Herbart repeatedly warns about the 

consequences of not allowing character to 

form in its own way and against authoritative 

schooling that asks students to replicate their 

teachers as “small children treat their dolls the 

way they are treated themselves” (Herbart, 

1806/1986, p. 76). He also opposes over-

education. He calls for restraint, for abstaining 

from everything that is expendable: no 

breaking the child’s will, no dominating its 

mood or disturbing its cheerfulness. The 

teacher must not “cripple the action of the 

future man” (p. 84) but instead develop the 

student’s ability to think for themselves rather 

than serving the needs and interests of others. 

Developing pedagogical tact necessitates 

the same self-formation in the teacher that 

Herbart advocates for students. “What a teacher 

strives towards depends on his horizon” 

(Herbart, 1806/1986, p. 71), so developing and 

forming this horizon is essential to becoming a 

teacher. As a role model, they “seriously and 

purposefully engage with a student with work 

that meets (the student’s) interest and against 

which all games become petty (…) and 

disappear.” (p. 72) Given the complexity of 

these tasks, Herbart’s standard for teachers is 

high. As role models, they must exemplify what 

guides their students. Only a teacher who can 

demonstrate the role of self-reflection in the 

government of their thought and behavior is 

equipped to lead students and to “cultivate the 

inner struggle for self- education and self-

growth” (English, 2013, p. 184). No profession 

could be more important to personal and 

national progress. “Comfortable excuses” (p. 

74) about the teacher’s ability or the student’s 

intelligence cannot be tolerated. “The residue of 

pedagogical experiments are the mistakes of the 

student as a man” (p. 74). 

Herbart’s ideas of pedagogy offered a 

radically new understanding of the 

relationship between theory and practice, an 

exciting agenda for practical research, and a 

powerful justification for the authority of the 

teacher. These powerful insights proved 

central to the development of the German 

educational thought. As Kenklies (2012) 

summarizes, in the Didaktik tradition, 

 

pedagogical tact is what enlightens 

education practice through its theory 

and in doing so, strengthens the 

teaching profession as a reflective 

practice that theorizes itself. It accepts 

the categorical difference between 

theory and practice and offers a better 

understanding of both. (p. 274) 

 

Herbart also remains iconic for his 

demand that teachers “realize their own 

horizons and the dependency on their own 

thoughts and practices . . . by acknowledging 

the existence of other ways of educating 

(Kenklies, 2012, p. 270). This call for open 

mindedness has been identified as the 

imperative of restraint in teaching (Hopmann, 

2007; Westbury, 2000); the recognition that 

educational theory protects teachers against 

routine, tasking them—as much as the 

student—to exhibit intelligence and creativity 

in their work. The teaching profession must 

model the autonomy the enlightened reason 

(Kenklies, 2012, p. 271). Above all, Herbart’s 

writings remain foundational because they 

speak to the core understanding of what it 

means to educate for Bildung and employ 

pedagogic tact to inform theoretically 

grounded, wise action in diverse learning 

situations.  
 

Travelling ideas: The German Herbartianismus 

and its United States export 

Thirty years after Herbart’s death in 

1841, Tuiskon Ziller (1817-1882), Chair of 

Pedagogy at the University of Leipzig, and 

Wilhelm Rein (1847-1929), who held a similar 

position to Ziller at the University of Jena, 



48  

spearheaded the German Herbartian movement 

(Herbartianismus) determined to improve 

public education through the employment of 

scientifically informed instruction. By that 

time, Herbart’s metaphysical and psychological 

theories had been discredited and replaced by 

positivistic and experimental studies of sensory 

and cognitive processing. Even his basic goal of 

moral development was easily ignored. 

However, his Herbartianism had a very 

different tenor to its namesake. Where Herbart 

looked to the preparation of university students 

for the Gymnasium, Ziller—responding to the 

social, economic, political realities of the late 

Nineteenth Century—sought the improvement 

of the population through standardized 

instruction in the elementary school. His chief 

insight, in line with Herbart’s teachings, was 

that this could best be achieved through a 

general education that enriches the child’s 

circle of thought. Wilhelm Rein also led the 

way in producing the materials for this 

extensive curricular reformation. He 

aformulated what was to be the most enduring 

feature of the Herbartianist movement, the five-

point lesson plan—preparation, presentation, 

association, generalization, and application. 

Herbart’s structures on the formation of the 

apperceptive mass were thus turned into a series 

of technocratic steps indicating how external 

content can be imparted into the student’s mind. 

Ziller and Rein’s work spread 

internationally, most notably to the United 

States where it dominated educational thought 

for more than a decade. Its introduction can be 

traced to Edmund J. James who returned to 

Illinois State Normal University in 1875 with 

his doctorate from Jena after studying in Berlin, 

Leipzig and Halle. In the following years, a 

number of his students—including Charles 

DeGarmo, Charles and Frank McMurry—

traveled to study under Rein (Oelkers, 1989). 

The program in Jena included a Theoretikum 

with lectures on ethics, psychology, the 

pedagogical horizon, subject-matter, and 

cultural-historical steps of teaching. The 

Praktikum offered hands-on practice with 

teaching units and the Kritikum discussed 

observed lessons. Upon their return they 

quickly popularized these central concepts, 

stimulating a flood of curricular materials for 

American schools. Framed by DeGarmo’s 

Essentials of Method (1889) and McMurry’s 

Elements of General Method (1892), the 

movement quickly gained momentum. By 

1895, with the support of prominent reformers 

such as John Dewey and Nicholas Murrey 

Butler, the National Herbart Society was born. 

But the high tide of Herbartianism soon 

receded. Many, such as Dewey, who had 

aligned themselves with the cause in opposition 

to traditional views of instruction found the 

core ideas of cultural epochs ill-formed and out 

of phase with developments in child 

psychology. Herbart’s notion 

of the apperceptive mass was particularly 

problematic. But if these elements rapidly 

dropped out of curriculum theorizing, the 

Herbartian emphasis on logical organization of 

content became a mainstay of efficiency era 

planning. The five-step lesson plan was an ideal 

means to regulate what and how teachers 

taught. What had started as pedagogical tact 

eventually evolved into an instrument of 

technocratic control (Dunkel, 1970). 

Herbartianismus had initially 

dovetailed with the positivistic thought and 

the Zeitgeist for the natural sciences (Dunkel, 

1970, p. 82) but forty years later, it faced the 

same accusations originally levelled against 

the original Herbart. Its teachings were called 

old, speculative, dilletante, and obsolete. Like 

the original, Herbartianismus was attacked 

for being too focused on individuals at the 

expense of societal rules. It was charged with 

being too moralistic, too intellectual, and 

incompatible with the emerging personality 

research and social pedagogy of the 1920s. 

Moreover, as Herbart’s psychology was 

attacked as being too speculative, so the 

Herbartians’ view of mind and learning was 

discredited by advances in experimental 

psychology. In 1908, while Rein describes 

their paradigm as bendable and preceptive, 

less a theory and more theorems and tenets, 

the “ruinous debate was already ongoing” 

(Oelkers, 1989, p. 82).  

Notwithstanding its broad success in 

Germany, German Herbartianismus had 

vanished by 1926. Its rise and disappearance 



49  

are a story of a paradigm shift from initial 

optimism to the same cries of crisis that had 

secured its rise. Indeed, it fell before the same 

criticisms that were levelled against Herbart. 

Its teachings were characterized as 

speculative, dilletante, and obsolete. Like the 

original, it was attacked for being too focused 

on individuals at the expense of societal rules. 

It was charged with being too moralistic, too 

intellectual, and incompatible with the 

emerging methods of psychological research 

(Oelkers, 1989). 

A standard claim is that German 

Herbartianismus misconstrued its master. 

Oelkers’ (1989) more plausible thesis is that 

Herbart’s initial work was adapted to the 

changing times and the needs of the day. But 

what might have been feasible for building 

the foundations of public schooling was unfit 

for the purpose of teacher education in the 

present day. German and American 

Herbartianism teach valuable lessons about 

the translation of ideas through time and 

place. Both have little to do with Herbart’s 

writings and his pedagogical thought. It was 

easy to distort his arguments and interpret his 

pedagogical insights through the lens of 

current concerns. A more valuable project, 

perhaps, is to reconstruct Herbart’s thought in 

its original context to reclaim his 

conceptually powerful philosophy of 

education. 
 

A Renaissance: Herbart’s education philosophy 

for education reform 

Interest in German-speaking philosophy 

of education, and particularly in Herbart’s 

work, is high and rising. His contributions to 

pedagogic thought have been rediscovered by a 

new generation of scholars seeking alternatives 

to currently prevalent views on teaching and 

learning (Banks, 2005, p. 208; Hopmann, 2009; 

Kim, 2015). This renaissance reinvigorates an 

earlier peak of interest in the 1980s (Metz, 

1995) and validates the import of his ideas for 

contemporary discussions about the future of 

public schooling. In search for alternatives to 

the American accountability paradigm of the 

past 20 years, debates about transitioning 

from narrow accountability toward a more 

humanistic vision of public schooling are 

ongoing.  

Equity and excellence had been the 

pillars of education reform before the No 

Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) (2001) 

shifted this balance in favor of excellence. In 

doing so, it disregarded the original policy 

intent of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary 

Education Act (Mathis & Trujillo, 2016, p. 6) 

and even though the Every Student Succeeds 

Act (2015) is less narrowly constructed and 

less punitive, it replicates the NCLB 

accountability paradigm in which equity 

remains a mere means to excellence’s end. 

Herbart’s pedagogy as a science places 

the teaching in the hands of experienced 

practitioners. Pedagogical tact is their 

intellectual ability to identify a case of 

something is situational judgment based on 

experience and theory alike, both informing 

pedagogical action (Hopmann, 2009). In that 

sense, Herbart is practical without being 

technocratic and firm on educability as the 

grounding on which teaching for morality and 

rationality rests. Competing purposes of 

education are constitutive to education as a 

field and a practice, not a problem to be solved 

(Labaree, 2017), and Herbart’s pedagogical tact 

accepts dissonances as a precondition for 

creating educative experiences. 

Herbart’s philosophy of education of 

Herbart’s life can teach teachers to think 

situationally in their pedagogical practice, and 

there is a desperate need of thoughtful teachers 

(English, 2013, p. 158) given the scholarly 

debate of public schooling in both the United 

States and German-speaking and Nordic 

Europe. The history of educational thought that 

formed the first systems of public schooling 

might provide an inspiration for finding 

alternatives to the “what works” paradigm that 

commands technocratic structures and so- 

called achievement tests. How to assure the 

quality of public schooling remains open for 

debate; Herbart’s work offers insight into the art 

of teaching that carries wisdom and power to 

transform social interaction into teachable, 

golden moments. It makes the profession 

interesting and worthy, engages educators and 

students alike, and focuses on each of their own 



50  

self-formation processes. 

Herbart's work informs scholars of 

education history and historiography that seek 

to understand the foundations of modern 

German-speaking and Nordic education. 

Scholars interested in education reform find 

inspiration and clarity in Herbart's 

uncompromising commitment to pedagogy 

for and together with the enlightened human 

being. It foregrounds situational judgment and 

experiential understanding of schooling. It 

affirms that the world as we experience is the 

real world. That calls upon education to 

capitalize on people and education as a 

reflective practice that readily meets its 

responsibility for each student as an 

individual. This is particularly relevant in 

view of the current policy developments in the 

German-speaking world that move away from 

the roots of Didaktik and toward systems of 

accountability reminiscent of the past 40 years 

of American education policy. 
 
 

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Manuscript received, March 9, 2022 

Revision received, August 28, 2022 

Manuscript accepted, August 29, 2022