Academic science education is currently in crisis, which primarily involves the transmission of thinking skills as a priority task of the university. The author sketches a picture of this crisis by contrasting two theoretical models of teaching and learning at the university which are essentially identified with the terms “rhizoming” and Bildung. The presented ways of using the models in academic practice are used to consider the possibilities of overcoming the crisis and determining the conditions.
In the teaching of future and present educators, an ability to experiment plays a significant though little appreciated role. Even Immanuel Kant already drew attention to an experimental character of modern education. Contemporary educators, like never before, have to be taught how to educate via experiments. The text consists of three parts. In the first one, the author focuses on a relation between pedagogy and experiments. In the second one, Johann Herbart’s views on practical training of education teachers are reconstructed. Simultaneously, there are some references to his experience from the period he was a director of The Didactic Institute and The Pedagogical Seminary in Königsberg. Finally, in the third part, there are put questions for people responsible for an academic education of future pedagogues. The programme of innovative pedagogical education, suggested by Teresa Hejnicka-Bezwińska, is mentioned as well.
The author of the paper tries to show that general pedagogy has its philosophical distinction, e.g., comparing to philosophy of education. Johann Friedrich Herbart’s essay On the Dark Side of Pedagogy is an important point of reference in the analysis. Starting from the essay, the author justifies the necessity of an approach to general pedagogy with its most important goal, i.e., defining the basic pedagogical thought. The thought is “basic” as it combines theoretical and practical knowledge on education and has to be defined over and over again, and not because without it education cannot be imagined. The history of philosophy is full of evidence that education can be “deduced” even from the theories that have nothing in common with education.