This article reconstructs the phases of development of the history of education as a school subject and subject within the framework of the education of teachers at teacher training schools from 1869 onwards, and the presence of these contents at teacher training academies after 1960 and faculties of education after 1986. At the same time, it examines the position and the presence of this subject in the course of educational studies at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana during the interwar period and during the period following the Second World War until Slovenia's gaining of independence. Also presented is the situation in this field in three study programmes of educational science in Slovenia. On this subject, the article will look at changes in content focus. Based on the analysis of records on J. F. Herbart in textbooks on the history of education and educational articles, an attempt is made to recognise the development of interpretational patterns and to focus on his educational ideas relating to current trends. Although J. F. Herbart may be regarded as one of the key educational classics, authors in Slovenia have seldom read Herbart in the original. For more than a century, the records relating to him have been repeating controversial stereotypes, and only in the recent period has there been a positive shift in this field.