'624 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J» 



science, while education was only given a place among the arts. 

 As a matter of fact, education had captured psychology, but it 

 was greatly to the advantage of the latter that it had become an 

 ^essential part of the professional training of teachers. Still, educa- 

 tion was more than applied psychology, and must not rely too much 

 'on another study which itself had an insecure foothold among the 

 sciences. It must establish an objective standard. This objective 

 standard was being evolved gradually by comparison of the results 

 of a large number of observations and experiments. Binet and 

 his collaborators were formulating a series of tests in order that we 

 :may eventually measure the average intelligence of children at 

 •different ages. Winch and many others were testing certain 

 methods of teaching by scientific examination. For instance, it 

 had been dernonstrated that teaching counts for more than practice 

 in preparing pupils to do problems in arithmetic. On the other 

 hand, education was groping for an objective standard to determine 

 whicJi children are defective and which are merely dull. The deci- 

 sion was mainly left to the doctors instead of to the teachers in 

 "their knowledge of the mental reactions of the chil5 ; because 

 physiology had an objective standard, and education had not. Yet 

 the doctors must obviously be inferior to the teachers. 



We greatly need investigation into those questions that were 

 most urgently demanding answers among practical educators. The 

 truths thus acquired and recorded could then be classified and 

 •correlated with the various investigations being made throughout 

 the world ; so there would be a great strengthening of the objective 

 standard so much needed. 



Professor Adams' appeal for investigation and experiment of 

 the phenomena of vexed questions in education will not, I hope, 

 fall upon stony ground here in Australia. There is indeed urgent 

 need for investigating our own educational questions. I believe 

 that we keep well abreast of educational experiments; but they 

 are almost entirely the experiments of other parts of the world, 

 and are not always suited to the needs of our children. It is 

 strange that in a country so daring and so original in its social 

 legislation, so careless of the authority of older systems, and so 

 ready to strike out new paths along most lines of activity, our 

 educational methods alone seem to be in slavery, now to America, 

 and now to Europe. It is well to experiment with new ideas from 

 elsewhere, but we are too ready, I think, to adopt rather than ex- 

 periment with new methods that have not yet proved their real 

 value in the country of their birth. Yet, in perhaps the only case 

 where an experiment of our own has been forced upon us by cir- 

 <!umstances, we have solved a problem which is still puzzling other 

 English-speaking countries — the problem of creating in day schools, 

 ■or mixed boarding and day schools, the corporate life of the great 

 English public schools, which are, of course, composed entirely of 



