SHORT PAPER 



PROFESSOR H. H. HORNE, of Dartmouth College, presented the following 

 interesting paper on " A Science of Education." 



It is the purpose of this brief paper to reach a conception of the nature and 

 method of a science of education, if indeed such a science is possible. 



The term science means, in this connection, as usual, organized and verifiable 

 knowledge. Such a body of knowledge may be one of two kinds, either a descrip- 

 tion of what is, or a prescription of what ought to be. 



The term education in this connection means the school processes whereby 

 human individuals are developed into the maturity of their powers. 



Is a science of education possible? There can be no question that a descriptive 

 science of education is possible. Careful students of education can gather, 

 classify, and verify knowledge of the school processes. There can be scientific 

 knowledge of existing educational agencies. The unorganized data for such a 

 descriptive science are already largely at hand in all the various school reports 

 of each country. Such a descriptive science of American education was really 

 partially attained in the volumes entitled Education in the United States, prepared 

 for the Paris Exposition. 1 Still more exact and comprehensive knowledge of 

 the nature of educational experience may be confidently expected; indeed, it is 

 already being gathered. And such descriptive knowledge of past and present 

 educational methods and results may be our best preparation for the answer to 

 the next question. 



A presciiptive or normative science of education, is it possible? Is it possible 

 to say at all how men ought to be educated? If so, is such knowledge organizable 

 and verifiable? 



Here we may turn profitably to the history of educational theory. Every 

 educational reformer from Socrates to Eliot has known something about how 

 youth ought to be educated. That their ideas differed from each other was 

 but natural under the changing conditions of their age. Each generation has 

 always known something about how the next generation ought to be educated. 

 Such knowledge it has always derived from its own experience and from its con- 

 ception of what man himself is and ought to become. The history of educational 

 theory, then, presents not a static but a developing normative science of educa- 

 tion. Since education became an object of serious study in Plato, there has 

 always been a relatively valid, but never a universally valid, pedagogy. And it 

 may further be observed that, so long as life grows and society changes, we have 

 no need for an absolute pedagogy. Sufficient unto the educational generation is 

 its own theory. 



The impossibility of a universally valid pedagogy, clearly shown by history, 

 was also clearly announced by Professor Dilthey of the University of Berlin in 

 1888, before the Berlin Academy of Sciences. Such a declaration was doubtless 

 necessary to limit the overleaping ambition of young scientific pedagogues. It 

 would misconstrue this real service to suppose that Professor Dilthey has shown 

 the impossibility of a relative and growing science of education. 



When the Educational Review was established in America, Professor Royce 

 found himself in agreement with Professor Dilthey, as thus expressed: " There is 

 no universally valid science of pedagogy that is capable of any complete formula- 

 tion and of direct application to individual pupils and teachers. Nor will there 



1 Under the editorship of Dr. N. M. Butler. 



