596 HUMAN BIOLOGY 



is crucial. Galileo did not simply talk about what he beheved 

 to be true. He cHmbed to the tower's top and did some- 

 thing that could be accurately verified. That, doubtless, 

 in the end, was why he won. The experiment he performed 

 carried its own persuasion. 



In the field of social values, it is at once apparent, there 

 are many thinkers but few experimenters. These thinkers 

 would hke to ehminate poverty, would like to have a warless 

 world, would like to develop a citizenry of tolerant and 

 growing minds, would like to put color and adventure 

 into the human scene. For the most part they write books 

 about these matters. In other words, they use the fairly 

 easy technique of verbal persuasion instead of the much 

 more difficult but far more powerful technique of persuasion 

 by experiment. 



Can experimentation be introduced into the field of human 

 values? There are, I think, at least two outstanding examples 

 which are worth examining. The first has to do with a pro- 

 found change of ideas about what education means. In 

 this case the Tower of Pisa was at the University of Chicago, 

 and the Galileo in question was a professor of philosophy, 

 John Dewey. Dewey believed that the basic ideas then pre- 

 vailing in education were in error. He seemed to find in the 

 schools no effort to tie up the material of instruction with 

 the actual life of the children in such manner as to make 

 it both significant and vitally effective. He might have 

 expounded the matter to his students and gone no further. 

 On the contrary, convinced of the idea that education must 

 in every respect be vital to each age-period and must 

 actually function in the life of the child, he established a 

 school in which to try out his ideas. As the school began 

 to show results, interested educators came to observe. 

 Some of these went away and established other schools. A 

 wider circle of teachers observed and carried the methods 

 into their classrooms. Articles began to be written. That 

 was in 1896. Today, only a little more than thirty years 

 later, the Dewey-idea of education has become so powerful 

 among the progressives in education that it not only begins 

 to circle the globe but it bids fair to penetrate and transform 

 the traditional system of instruction. 



