Wilhelm August Lay

Wilhelm August Lay (born July 30, 1862 in Bötzingen (Breisgau); † May 9, 1926 in Karlsruhe ) was an elementary school teacher and professor at the teachers' seminar in Karlsruhe. Together with Ernst Meumann (1862–1915) he is considered the founder of experimental pedagogy and both are considered the founding fathers of later empirical educational science .

Live and act

Wilhelm August Lay was the son of the farmer Johann Georg (1821–1876) and Maria Katharina (1828–?). He was brought up in rural Protestant religiosity.

Lay attended elementary school and, after his father's death in 1876, went to agricultural school, which he dropped out after a year. The father rejected Lay's wish to move to a higher school, as he was supposed to take over the farm one day. In addition, due to his advanced age, he was advised not to attend a high school. He therefore decided to become an elementary school teacher. He graduated from the preparatory school in Gengenbach , the teachers' seminar in Karlsruhe, and from April 1883 was an assistant teacher in Schriesheim .

In the fall of 1883, however, he took a leave of absence in order to prepare for the examination for a real-world teacher at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic and in the final semester at the University of Freiburg . In 1885 he passed the examination to become a secondary school teacher with the main subjects in mathematics and natural sciences. Lay then completed an academic year at the University of Freiburg and Halle . He was interested in both natural sciences and the humanities. Lay particularly emphasized his studies in the chemical laboratory and participation in scientific excursions. However, he did not finish his studies because of a serious lung disease.

In 1886 he became a teacher in Freiburg and in 1892 principal teacher at the Freiburg girls' school. From 1893 until his retirement he was a secondary school teacher at the teachers' seminar II in Karlsruhe. There he taught science and agriculture. In spring 1903 he did his doctorate with Alois Riehl at the Friedrichs University in Halle on the subject of "Experimental Didactics". Lay remained a seminar teacher without managerial activity throughout his life, but was appointed senior real teacher in 1914 and professor at his own insistence in 1920. Despite this title, nothing changed in his professional tasks. In 1924 he retired early - against his will - due to the poor financial situation of the federal states.

His wedding to Anna Barbara Lay took place in 1889. The marriage resulted in three sons, Walther (* 1893), Curt (* 1892) and Werner (* 1906).

pedagogy

Goals and demands

Lay was mainly concerned with improving school practice and teacher training. The effects of the lessons should be verifiable through didactic-psychological experiments. The experiments should take on the character of lessons as far as possible. He also called for “educational institutes” and “educational laboratories” in which such experiments could be carried out. The experimental pedagogy is not in direct contrast to the “old” pedagogy, but rather overcomes it by continuing it.

Differentiation from humanities education

According to Lay, science should be based on experience and not, as in humanities education, on philosophical-speculative thinking. In contrast to the hermeneutic method of humanities education, educational measures are to be tested experimentally . The concern was the application of the experiment , the statistics and an exact or systematic observation .

Demand for pedagogical chairs

In 1910 there was only one chair for pedagogy in Jena in Germany , as Lay emphasized and noted: The German states make great sacrifices every year for experiments on the cultivation of useful plants and for experimental stations for the refinement of domestic animals; but they do not yet provide funds for the establishment of educational laboratories.

Relationship between Meumann and Lay

Meumann and Lay are often spoken of as the founding fathers of empirical pedagogy. However, after the experimental pedagogy in its former form could not prevail, Meumann criticized Lay massively. For example, "Meumann attributed the criticism of the experimental method in pedagogy primarily to Lay's scientific position," claims Peter Drewek. Lay's “... wrong (r) amateurish (r) conception of empirical and especially experimental research must be strongly contradicted because it would lead us to a new dogmatism and doctrinalism in pedagogy that would be more dangerous than the self-overestimation of pure theory because it relies on a pseudo-certainty that human research can never achieve. "

Lay emphasized, however, that he was the very first to work experimentally and pedagogically: “The spelling attempts are the first attempts to justify a teaching method and to create an experimental didactic at all. [...] Natural history experimentation [...] brought me to the idea of carrying out experiments on spelling with school classes . ”In contrast to Lay, for Meumann experimental pedagogy is not a science that encompasses the entire pedagogy, but only serves as an empirical foundation the education. Both agreed, however, that they saw no "hostile contrast" to the old educational science. For Lay it was "of the utmost importance for the formation of hypotheses on which the statistical and experimental investigations must be based." For Meumann, the determination of the general educational goals and the presentation of the design of the subject matter in the textbooks were - as far as they were pure material aspects are determined, to a large extent a matter of philosophical pedagogy.

Fonts

Experimental Pedagogy with Special Consideration for Education through Action (1908)

• Psychological foundations of educational teaching and its application to the reshaping of teaching in natural history. (A ceremony for the Comenius celebration in 1892). Konkordia, Bühl (Baden) 1892.
• Guide to spelling lessons. Based on psychological experiments and combined with a criticism of the first subject and language lessons . Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1896. (3rd edition 1905, 4th edition 1913)
• Guide through the first arithmetic lesson. Natural teaching method based on psychological experiments and connected to the development history of arithmetic instruction . Karlsruhe: Nemnich, Karlsruhe 1898. (3rd edition 1914 under the title: The arithmetic instruction on an experimental-pedagogical basis. )
• Methodology of natural history teaching and criticism of reform efforts based on modern psychology . Nemnich, Karlsruhe 1899.
• Experimental didactics lay the foundations with special consideration for will and action . Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1903. (4th edition 1920)
• Guide to arithmetic lessons at the lower level based on didactic experiments . Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1907.
• Experimental pedagogy with special regard to education through action. From: Natur und Geisteswelt , 224. (Collection of scientific and common understandable representations). BG Teubner, Leipzig 1908. (2nd edition 1912, 3rd edition 1918)
• With Max Enderlin: Guide through the first school year as the basis of the Tatschule . Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1911.
• The Tatschule - a natural u. culturally appropriate school reform. Zickfeldt, Osterwieck / Harz [u. a.] 1911. (2nd edition 1921)
• Textbook of pedagogy . Thienemann, Gotha 1912.
• Popular education.  ? 1921.
• Guide through the first year as the basis of Tatschule . Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1926.
• The community school. In: The teacher's book treasure (scientific compilation for preparation and further education) . Zickfeldt, Osterwieck / Harz [u. a.] 1927.
• Autobiography in: The pedagogy of the present in self-portrayals , Volume 2, Ed. E. Hahn, 1927, pp. 69-100 (W, L).

literature

• German Institute for Scientific Pedagogy (Ed.): Lexicon of Contemporary Pedagogy (Second Volume) Keyword Lay, Wilhelm August (p. 162). Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1932. ( Online )
• B. Rathmayr: Educational and educational science . 2012. p. 128 ff.
• C. Hopf: The experimental pedagogy. Empirical educational science in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century . Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn / Obb. 2004.
• Peter Drewek: The emergence and transformation of empirical pedagogy in Germany in the educational history context of the early 20th century. In Ch. Ritzi, U. Wiegeman (Ed.): Observing, measuring, experimenting. Contributions to the history of empirical pedagogy / educational science. Julius Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2010. p. 170.
• Manfred Prenzel:  Lay, August Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 3 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilhelm August Lay in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Wilhelm August Lay  in the German Digital Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lay 1910, p. 72.
2. ↑ Peter Drewek: The emergence and transformation of empirical pedagogy in Germany in the educational history context of the early 20th century. In: Ch. Ritzi u. U. Wiegeman (Ed.): Observing, measuring, experimenting. Contributions to the history of empirical pedagogy / educational science. Julius Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2010. p. 170.
3. ^ E. Meumann: Outline of experimental pedagogy . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig / Berlin 1914.
4. ^ Lay 1905
5. ↑ Experimental pedagogy with special regard to education through action. From: Natur und Geisteswelt , 224 (collection of scientific-common understandable representations). Teubner, Leipzig 1908. (2nd edition 1912, 3rd edition 1918)