F.D.E. Schleiermacher's Outlines of the Art of Education: A Translation & Discussion

"One must assume we are all familiar with what is commonly called 'education.'" This is how Schleiermacher begins his famous 1826 lecture on the Art of Education. But in proceeding further--and unlike Rousseau or Locke before him--Schleiermacher carefully avoids assuming that education is primarily about a return to nature or about "soundness" of mind and body. Education is instead an ethical and political undertaking and a pragmatic art whose ultimate object and morality has differed greatly over time. It is exercised as a form of practical influence of the older generation on the younger: "A significant part of the activity of the older generation extends toward the younger," Schleiermacher reasons, and it "is more complete and perfect the more it is governed by an idea of what should happen--the more it has an exemplar to guide its action--the more it is an art." This book offers these and other insights on education--long canonical in Central and Northern Europe--for the first time to an English audience. It also provides five chapters by scholars in education and its history that discuss various aspects of Schleiermacher's lecture.

Norm Friesen, Ph.D., is Professor at the College of Education, Boise State University. He has worked as a visiting researcher at Humboldt University (Berlin) and the University of Vienna. He studied German and philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and has translated and edited Klaus Mollenhauer's Forgotten Connections.

Karsten Kenklies, Dr. phil., is Senior Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. He was a professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen and the University of Jena and a research fellow at Tamagawa University, Tokyo. His research and publications focus on systematic and historical pedagogy in the perspective of an intercultural-comparative history of ideas.