Karl Mager (January 1, 1810 – June 10, 1858) was a German educator.
Mager was born in
Gräfrath
Gräfrath or Graefrath is a district of Solingen in the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, about east of Düsseldorf.
History
There was an abbey
An abbey is a type of monastery used by members of a religious order under the ...
.
He studied
philology
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...
in
Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...
, Berlin, and Paris,
and stayed in Paris for some years, during which time he wrote ''Versuch einer Geschichte und Charakteristik der französischen Nationallitteratur'' ("Attempt at a history and characterization of the French national literature", 1834–39, 5 vols.).
Upon his return to Germany, he studied the philosophy of
Hegel and
Johann Friedrich Herbart
Johann Friedrich Herbart (; 4 May 1776 – 14 August 1841) was a German philosopher, psychologist and founder of pedagogy as an academic discipline.
Herbart is now remembered amongst the post-Kantian philosophers mostly as making the greatest ...
, and the
pedagogy
Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken ...
of
Adolph Diesterweg
Friedrich Adolph Wilhelm Diesterweg (29 October 1790 in Siegen7 July 1866 in Berlin) was a German educator, thinker, and progressive liberal politician, who campaigned for the secularization of schools. He is said to be precursory to the reform ...
and
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (, ; 12 January 1746 – 17 February 1827) was a Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer who exemplified Romanticism in his approach.
He founded several educational institutions both in German- and French-speaking ...
. He wrote articles on the teaching of foreign languages for a journal edited by Diesterweg in 1835 and 1838, which gained him a job as professor at a cantonal school in
Geneva
, neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier
, website = https://www.geneve.ch/
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...
. However, he quickly moved to
Bad Cannstatt
Bad Cannstatt, also called Cannstatt (until July 23, 1933) or Kannstadt (until 1900), is one of the outer stadtbezirke, or city boroughs, of Stuttgart in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Bad Cannstatt is the oldest and most populous of Stuttgart's bo ...
due to poor health.
In 1840, he published ''Die deutsche Bürgerschule'', and founded the journal ''Pädagogische Revue'', both of which would be influential on German and Swiss public education. He edited the ''Pädagogische Revue'' until 1849, taught foreign languages in the cantonal schools of
Aarau to test his theories in a practical setting, and published ''Die genetische Methode des Unterrichts in fremden Sprachen'' ("The genetic method of instruction in foreign languages", 1846). From 1848 to 1852 he directed the ''
Realschule
''Realschule'' () is a type of secondary school in Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It has also existed in Croatia (''realna gimnazija''), the Austrian Empire, the German Empire, Denmark and Norway (''realskole''), Sweden (''realskola''), ...
'' in
Eisenach
Eisenach () is a town in Thuringia, Germany with 42,000 inhabitants, located west of Erfurt, southeast of Kassel and northeast of Frankfurt. It is the main urban centre of western Thuringia and bordering northeastern Hessian regions, situat ...
according to his theories, but he retired in 1852 due to poor health, and died in 1858 in
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden () is a city in central western Germany and the capital of the state of Hesse. , it had 290,955 inhabitants, plus approximately 21,000 United States citizens (mostly associated with the United States Army). The Wiesbaden urban area ...
.
An 1844 pamphlet of his coined the term "
social pedagogy", a
broad concept of education, particularly influential in German pedagogy, that focuses on the acquisition of culture by society (rather than the acquisition of knowledge by individuals) as its key element.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mager, Karl
1810 births
1858 deaths
German educational theorists
19th-century educational theorists