Section J. X^ v >* ^ » - 'v>> 



RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN E&feXTlbN. 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



Mr. P, BOAED, M.A., 



Under Secretary for Puhlic Instruction and Director of Education, 

 New South Wales. 



MENTAL SCIENCE AND EDUCATION". 



INTRODUCTORY. 



A presidential address is necessarily of a character introductory 

 to tlie business of the session. I shall, therefore, endeavour to deal 

 witli some of the broader aspects of the educational situation of to- 

 day, leaving it to other members of the section to treat of special 

 features and discuss special questions. 



THE 20th CP:NTURY RENAISSANCE. 



A survey of the great world movements of our time suggests that 

 the historian of the future will write of the Eenaissance of the 

 twentieth century as the historian of to-day speaks of that of the 

 sixteenth. In every department of human activity there is a deep 

 consciousness that there is something better to be gained, and that 

 every step onward is a step upward. Religious questions are 

 discussed with an independence of traditional beliefs that causes 

 no shock to even pious minds. Social conditions are under 

 review, and reorganisation proceeds by rapid steps to a goal that it 

 is yet impossible to determine. Political theories are being re-cast 

 under the pressure of social rearrangements. Science " reaching down 

 to the infinitesimally small " brnigs to the surface fact upon fact that 

 reveals new world and unimagined possibilities. Industry expresses 

 itself in methods and processes, kaleidoscopic in their changes, the old 

 scarcely giving place to the new before the new gives place to the 

 newer. Literature has shaken itself free of all trammels and, more 

 prolific than ever, maintains a constant intellectual ferment. The 

 world is in travail. 



ITS CAUSE. 



When the historian of the future looks for the cause of this 

 Renaissance, he cannot fail to observe that it has followed closely 

 upon the democratising of education that marked the latter half of 

 the nineteenth century. '" The first need of man is bread, the second 

 is education,"" said a leader of the French Revolution, and the modem 

 patriot Avithout any thought of revolutionary methods has embodied 

 the demand in the legislation of his country. Practically, all the 



