328 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE GREATEST NEED IN" RESEARCH 



By Professor M. V. O'SHEA. 



UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 



A NY student of social progress might learn a useful lesson if lie 

 -*--*- would attend a convention of the National Educational Asso- 

 ciation, which, in the general character of its work, is typical of the 

 numberless educational organizations existing among us. He would 

 find the most complicated questions of educational procedure being 

 discussed by a body of men of the most divergent interests, training 

 and experience — by prominent public officials who may boast of the 

 fact that they were not trained in the schools themselves; by college 

 presidents and professors in technical departments who have never 

 given an hour's thought to the principles of education; by normal 

 school principals and school superintendents, who devote all their 

 energies to executive details; and in addition to these one may listen 

 to dogmatic opinions regarding studies and methods from editors of 

 the secular and professional press, parents and citizens, merchant 

 princes, bankers, lawyers, physicians, ministers — any one who has at- 

 tracted attention in any field of practical activity is likely to be invited 

 to give teachers directions as to how they should ' train up the rising 

 generation.' The sort of person who will be least in evidence at the 

 convention is he who is carefully investigating some particular problem 

 of education according to scientific methods. Program makers usually 

 do not wish ' theoretical ' or ' laboratory ' papers ; they want something 

 ' spicy/ ' concrete,' ' practical,' ' common sense.' Study the programs 

 of educational gatherings, and note how largely they are devoted to the 

 exploitation of mere opinion based upon incidental and shallow observa- 

 tion. One does not often hear a governor, say, or a college president, 

 or a professor of Greek, or an editor of a daily paper, instructing 

 physicians regarding the nature of disease and how it should be treated ; 

 but such persons will often dogmatically lay down the laws to teachers 

 respecting educational values and methods. They justify themselves 

 on the ground of superior ' common sense ' ; specialists, they say, men 

 who devise ways to overcome the universal tendency to interpret every- 

 thing in the light of individual experience and preconceptions, so 

 that they may examine the phenomena in a special field with an eye 

 single to the truth — such men are not generally favored by the gods 

 with well-balanced minds, and only the man who knows a little of 



