The necessity of education and the importance of maintaining pedagogics as an independent discipline

Abstract

The author takes the position that pedagogics is a normative science with its own subject of research. The historical development of pedagogical thought shows strong relations with philosophical-anthropological principles and with historical-cultural characteristics. Education today is confronted with, among other things, postmodern developments in society ('Hauslosigkeit') and a change in patterns of youth behaviour (from a standard career to a chosen career). For pedagogical analysis, a renewed appeal to reason is advocated. A suitable method is the triadic-pedagogical analysis, which reflects on the parent-child relation in connection with historical-cultural developments.