Educatability of Man as the Foundation of the sense and significance of Formation

Abstract

The paper points to one of the basic categories in scientific pedagogy which is „educatability.” It played an important role in the origins of pedagogy as a discipline of science and was combined with the acceptance in the point of departure, as a special hypothesis, that there are possibilities to form man. Assuming this possibility, J.F. Herbart (1776-1841), the father of scientific pedagogy, worked out his concepts of formation and general pedagogy. According to him, „educatability” (Die Bildsamkeit) is the basic category of pedagogy (Algemeine Paedagogik, 1806).

As the contemporary pedagogical thought seeks more and more often an answer to the question about the sense and meaning of education, stumbling at the same time on the byways of its utopian and idealistic approaches, the category of „educatability” may become one of the ways to make the pedagogical practice and theory real and sensible. Like over two hundred years ago this category has become the ground upon which to build the scientific reflection in pedagogy. In the same manner this paper suggests that it may turn out very helpful to bring it back and remind. It can help us explain the contemporary problems connected especially with the discovery of the sense and possibility to educate man.

The paper concentrates first on the discussion around the problem of educatability over the history of human thought. Listing its main representatives and its stages (from the ancient until the modern times), it exposes two standpoints characteristic of that „debate about the educatability of man”: „pedagogical optimism” and „pedagogical pessimism.” It also points to the contemporary solutions of that problem in „pedagogical realism” that characterizes, among other things, the Christian approach to the issue of man's educatability. Following the line of the latter standpoint, that paper discusses in detail the structure of the process of man's educatability, pointing to the basic elements and factors of the process of the person's educatability.

The approach to „educatability” as a category giving sense to education and pedagogy is listed among the basic problems of the research of general pedagogy. Here we ask not only about the essence of education and its specific character, but also about the possibility and conditions of the process of education and about its sense and meaning (its noetic dimension).