The methods used to teach children, if you go by the root words (although it is often used to describe education methods for all ages).

Pedagogy, or Pedagogics, a term Anglicized from the German, signifies the SCIENCE OF EDUCATION OR TEACHING, for the systematic development of the human faculties. It has Mind, Matter, and Method as essential factors, and its ideal is to study the individual natures of youth, in order to ascertain the special functions with which each is endowed, so as to develop them towards perfection by systematized methods of training.

This study is effected under three recognized divisions: physiology, the constitution of the body; psychology, the constitution of the mind; ethics and religion, the moral and spiritual nature.

The psychology of pedagogy embraces the scientific observation and study of children, mental pathology or morbid conditions, comparative psychology, or the growth and grades of intelligence, and empirical and educational psychology, the latter including apperception, or the essential mental operation in the act of learning.

The physiological aspect of pedagogy embraces physical education and hygiene, including anthropometry or body measurements, supervision of eyestrain, spinal curvature, overpressure, stammering, vocal efforts, the ventilation, sanitation, furniture, apparatus and equipment of school grounds and buildings, the gymnastic, calisthenic, Delsartian, Swedish, and other athletic exercises.

The moral and spiritual side of pedagogy embraces ethics or manners, aesthetics which gives inspiration by a taste for and contemplation of the beautiful, and civil and religious instruction, which include Sunday-schools, and initiate the duties and rights of citizenship, the formation of religious sentiment, and the recognition of a supreme moral force.

The principles and practice of Pedagogy comprise elementary, secondary and higher instruction, and school administration.

School administration and management embrace organization and discipline, the question of punishments, amusements and general exercises, the selection of text-books, libraries, and museum collections, supervision of studies, elective systems of study, examinations and degrees, legislation, and endowments, including federal and state aid, land grants, and private benefactors.

Elementary instruction is typified by the kindergarten--children's garden or child-study institution, giving instruction in the rudiments of language, number and arithmetic, nature study, object lessons, geography, drawing and music. To the elementary also belogns the education of orphans and neglected children, of colored children--negroes, Indians, Eskimos, etc., and of defective children, blind, deaf mutes, mentally deficient, truants, incorrigibles and offenders, and compulsory education to combat illiteracy.

Secondary and higher education comprise the advanced forms of elementary education, together with ancient and modern languages, history, economics, politics and sociology, mathematics and science.

Higher education also embraces night and continuation schools, public lectures, college settlements, university extension courses, self-culture, and home education. Other forms of high pedagogy are found in the methods for manual and industrial training, typified in the sloyd, slojd, or Swedish series of manual exercises.

The highest pedagogic forms embrace the college and university courses for professional education, including training for teaching, theology, law, medicine and its sub-divisions--surgery, dentistry, pharmacy and nursing; fine arts comprising sculpture, drawing, painting, engraving, music and architecture; science embracing technology, agriculture, commerce, military and naval training; modern colleges for the education of women, and post-graduate courses.

The literature on every branch of Pedagogy is enormous and continually increasing. Reference to any special department is best made by consulting: the "Catalog of Educational Literature of the U.S. Bureau of Education," Washington; the "Bulletin of the Books on Education in the Libraries of Columbia University," New York city; or the excellent bibliographies of Education by Prof. W.S. Monroe, by G.S. Hall and J.M. Mansfield and others.

CHARLES LEONARD STUART


Entry from Everybody's Cyclopedia, 1912.

Ped"a*go`gy (?), n. [Gr. : cf. F. p'edagogie.]

Pedagogics; pedagogism.

South.

 

© Webster 1913.

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