ABSTRACT
Herbart was probably the most eminent advocate of turning educational knowledge into a distinctive academic discipline. Herbart starts his argument for turning the knowledge of education into a distinctive academic discipline by distancing himself from former, practical ways of knowing education. Apart from postulating that the knowledge of education should be grounded in scientifically controlled data, Herbart insists that it is independent from other disciplinary fields. The political metaphor, linking the discipline of education to the state, may be more than coincidental. Herbart’s theory is full of mechanical concepts, especially in his psychological descriptions of cognition and learning. Herbart’s reference to experiment as the methodological model for general pedagogy can be helpful in describing the relation between the “inner” and the “outer” experience.
