RELATION TO SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 91 



and in artificially separating our study of the specifically school prob- 

 lems from the study of the other sociological and economic questions 

 which are in fact intimately connected with it. 



The study of educational science stands in very close relationship 

 to sociology, to biology, to physiology, to the science of public health, 

 to economics, and to politics, as well as to psychology, ethics, and 

 religion. Nor can it dispense with the aid of political and economic 

 history as throwing light upon the course of the development of 

 various forms of corporate life, while the comparative study of racial 

 characteristics is needed in order to a judgment concerning the type 

 of education which is likely to be more appropriate to the particular 

 group or people under review. 



But school problems have been too rarely regarded in relation to 

 their social context. Different branches of social effort and of social 

 administration have been kept too often in an unfruitful and un- 

 scientific separation from one another. There has been a false kind 

 of specialization of thought and of practical treatment in the common 

 handling of school problems. Too little synthetic thought has been 

 devoted to the relationship between specifically school problems and 

 the general social welfare of the community, including the life-needs, 

 other than inclividualistically economic, of the different categories of 

 pupils in the schools. The result is that in educational investigation 

 we have failed to make the most profitable use of much already ac- 

 cessible social experience, and many workers in other parts of the 

 sociological field have, in their turn, omitted to give the necessary 

 special study to the technical problems of the school. There has 

 been too much undiscriminating generalization and too little scien- 

 tifically planned analysis of the diverse problems which lie concealed 

 under the apparent unity of the elementary-school question. Special- 

 ization within arbitrary limits has defeated its own object and has 

 held us back from the course of conjoint investigation over the whole 

 field of action which must precede successful synthesis and which 

 alone can lead us to the attainment of more precise social aims in 

 administrative and educational reform. Happily, there is now 

 noticeable all over the world a distinct movement towards less 

 separatism in our treatment of the school problem. We observe 

 everywhere, and not least in America, an effort in the direction of 

 more synthetic inquiry into the relationship between school work 

 and other departments of social activity. But so little has yet been 

 done to bring our knowledge of educational history into its true re- 

 lation to the history of economic and social development, and we 

 are still so far from having brought into the common stock our 

 educational experience and observations and the experience and 

 observations gained in other departments of sociological inquiry, that 

 we are not yet in possession of the materials upon which alone we 



