GERMAN SOCIO-PEDAGOGICAL DISCOURSE IN THE 1890s

Abstract

The emergence of social pedagogy as a science at the end of the 19th century took place in the context of the European reformist pedagogical movement. The German socio-pedagogical discourse of the 1890s was represented by a galaxy of bright names (Paul Bergemann, Otto Willmann, Paul Natorp, Johannes Trüper, Johannes Tews, Theobald Ziegler and others). The article examines the works of German educators published during the 1890s, in which significant questions were raised regarding social pedagogy.

The purpose of the work involves the study of the pedagogical heritage and works of German educators who worked at the end of the 19th century, and the analysis of their views on social pedagogy.

Methodology. In the course of the study of the German socio-pedagogical discourse of the 1890s, general scientific methodological approaches were used: problem, systemic and specifically scientific: paradigmatic-pedagogical, comparative-pedagogical, problem-historical and herme­neutic approaches. The main research methods were pedagogical-retrospective, comparative, problem-historical and the method of hermeneutics.

Scientific novelty. It is established that the German socio-pedagogical discourse of the 1890s was not reduced to a single Natorp «idealistic» line, but reflected the different visions of German educators of the conceptual sphere of social pedagogy.

Conclusions. In the course of the European reform movement at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, it was precisely the representatives of the direction of social pedagogy, focusing on the most painful «social question», who contributed to a profound conceptual rethinking of nature-based (classical) pedagogy. The opposition of social pedagogy to individual pedagogy is the most characteristic feature of the German socio-pedagogical discourse of the 1890s. Behind this opposition were the rejection of the nature-based exagogy of the individual human soul and the recognition of the exhaustiveness of the philosophical and theological paradigm of pedagogy. The German socio-pedagogical discourse of the 1890s reflected the emerging contradictions between the objective necessity of educating a person as a social being and the lack of development of the tools for this implementation, and at the highest level – between the social need for mass education of the population and the lack of organizational and legal mechanisms for universal public education (social pedagogy).