ABSTRACT
Pedagogy first gained a foothold at universities in the Age of Enlightenment. With regard to pedagogy as a practical end-means theory, there were two additional special grounds for skepticism: first, its end components were obviously dependent on valuations, belief-convictions and worldviews, thus historically contingent and relative, and thereby not generally valid; second, its need for knowledge about means, at least at that time, was far from being met by scientific psychology. For pedagogists, skepticism is particularly hard to bear, because educators, politicians and the public have exaggerated expectations from their knowledge, not hypothetical explanatory knowledge with a thousand reservations, but rather practically useful action-guiding knowledge that could permit optimism. Pedagogy is currently still not a discipline in which one can unreservedly take pride. Pedagogy is, however, today indispensable, because there are complicated educational systems in modern societies, for which educational personnel must be trained on a scientific basis.
