74 TWENTY-FIRST REPORT. 



sible to determine what part the element of thought should play in elemen- 

 tary education. 



A third educational problem centers around imagination ; this is quite 

 distinct from the question in imagination suggested above. (I am employing 

 the term "imagination" only in the constructive sense). In the school world, 

 imagination or imaginative is commonly associated with fancy, and accord- 

 ingly a great amount of non-factual material of almost every description is 

 used to train "the imagination." In fact much that is taught in literature and 

 pseudo-literature is justified upon this ground. When we go to text-books in 

 psychology we find very little material of any assistance on this point. About 

 the only contribution to the solution of this problem, insofar as I am aware, 

 appear.s in the revised edition of Judd's "Psychology." The author gives us a 

 classification of imaginations which seems invaluable in dealing with this 

 problem. He distinguishes three kinds of imagination — scientific, literary, 

 and fancy. The acceptance of these distinctions would enable the school to 

 reorganize its material in a very different way from what it is at present. A 

 much greater amount of scientific material and human experience would take 

 the place of the excessive amount of what contributes chiefly to the building 

 up of fancy. But until psychology recognizes generally these distinctions, or 

 others of at least equal value, we shall find progress difficult. 



A fourth problem in education pertains to the doctrine of recapitulation 

 and the culture epoch theory — the theory that the child is by nature suc- 

 cessively savage, barbarian, half-civilized, and civilized. If this theory is 

 accepted, then education must be based on the.se stages ; and this is actually 

 found to be the situation in a large percentage of the schools today. Children 

 are taught Indian, Arabian, and Hebrew stories, Greek and Roman myths, and 

 various modern stories of adventure because the pupils are believed to be in 

 certain psychological stages. The practice is based on the biogenetic "law," 

 which is not a law at all but only a vaguely supported theory. Tlie problem 

 is in reality a psycho-biological one, and demands a careful examination of 

 the doctrines and facts of evolution. Present-day knowledge and theory of 

 evolution fail to support the biogenetic "law." Evolution, as T. H. Morgan 

 points out, does not take place by new characters adding themselves "to the 

 end of a line of already existing characters but, if they affect the adult char- 

 acters, they change them without, as it were, passing through and beyond 

 them." To use the classical example of the gill slits, these slits are not to be 

 interpreted as the remnants of an early adult fish stage, but of a primitive 

 embryonic stage or condition. That is, the human embryo does not repeat an 

 ancient adult form, but only an embryonic one. Likewise, the child of six is 

 not repeating the adult life of earlier man, but only the child life of our ances- 

 tors. Thorndike has investigated this problem somewhat from the purely 

 p.sychological side, and concludes that there are no such stages or periods as 

 commonly described. Yerkes suggests that we imagine the stages then believe 



