Formative Education: To Walter Asmus in Honor of his 85th Birthday.

Abstract

1. In 1970, when I published a systematic interpretation of Herbart's pedagogical theory under the title "Herbart's theory of 'formative education', "[erziehender Unterricht] it was at a time when "formative education" was an accepted formula, in any event as a historicizing approach, and education in general was undergoing a highly critical assessment. If education was to have any validity at all, it could only be in the sense of Rousseau's negative conception, the famous "d'empěcher que rien ne soit fait." Anti-authoritarian education was at the peak of its popularity and "the tools of education" were regarded fundamentally by many as the "tools of manipulation," and that included many who otherwise had maintained a circumspect attitude toward the prevailing spirit of the time. Then, when toward the end of the same decade an "educational deficiency" in our schools became a topic of discussion, and a new "courage to educate" was put forth as a countervailing thrust, quite a few saw this as the emergence ...