The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Elements of General Method, by Charles A.
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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

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ELEMENTS OF GENERAL METHOD***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

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 Wi