332 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



The majority of them yield to the general clamor for something imme- 

 diately serviceable in reference to teaching, and so they engage two or 

 three instructors who are expected to give themselves entirely to the 

 work of instruction, and to enlisting the support of the teachers in their 

 several communities for their respective universities. The situation 

 would not be so much in need of remedying if the normal schools were 

 making any progress in research, but they too are engrossed with imme- 

 diately practical affairs. They must look to other institutions — prop- 

 erly the universities — for new light, and they will then spread it among 

 the people. 



It is worthy of remark that a country which keenly appreciates the 

 necessity of scientific experimentation in agriculture, and carries it on 

 very effectively, should not think it needful to provide for similar 

 experimentation in the care and culture of human beings during the 

 formative period. Some one may ask whether the National Bureau of 

 Education is not an investigating institution; and the answer is that 

 is not intended to make, nor is it making, the slightest contribution 

 to educational science, except in so far as the gathering of statistics 

 regarding school attendance, the wages of teachers, the progress of new 

 studies, as manual training and nature study and the like, may be 

 found to bear in some way upon educational theory. It can not take 

 the initiative in any research ; it can simply report what is being done. 

 The men who manage our educational finances have evidently imagined 

 that since so many people are engaged in educational work they would 

 be constantly pushing forward into the unknown, ever widening the 

 boundaries of knowledge about human nature and the means of influ- 

 encing it most effectively and economically. But it is just as reasonable 

 to assume that practical farmers will continually develop the science of 

 agriculture without experiment stations, or that practical doctors will 

 develop the science of medicine without research laboratories, as to 

 assume that practical superintendents and principals and class-room 

 teachers will develop the science of education without special schools 

 for investigation. 



