Abstract:

In the process of reinterpretation of the German Enlightenment (Aufklärung) after the French Revolution, efforts to understand the concept of Bildung led to the rise of thinkers who addressed teaching and education in a way that complemented each other and established the relationship between them. In these thinkers, Johann Friedrich Herbart, who followed Immanuel Kant's chair at Königsberg University, has progressed on the way of building its opening in education on scientific foundations. Herbart has tried to develop solutions to the problem of freedom in education, with the approaches it brings to the questions how limited the child is, how he can make his own choices and how he should be in social interaction. In this article, Herbart's life story was discussed in the context of the development of the mental climate, some critical points of his views were pointed out in the framework of the specific issues, and his place in the history of education was mentioned. In comparison with some thinkers in the intellectual interaction and with the conception of liberal education, the ideas in the field of freedom in education have been revealed. The assessments made in this framework have concluded that Herbart’s pedagogy is derived from educational formations that aim to educate the child as a free individual. This study, which is a quality research, applied to the method of document analysis.

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