PRESIDENT S ADDRESS — SECTION J. 



705 



shape tjien^selves upon the requirements of the social unit. The 

 complex demands now made upon the individual constitute in them- 

 selves the reason and the justification for a conception of education 

 that is distinctly utilitarian, in the sense that it must be essentially a 

 preparation for all the phases of complex living. The term, "bread 

 ancl butter studies," was at one time used as a term of inferiority, 

 implying the sacrifice of real education to material ends. It implied 

 that studies that had a direct value in equipping the student for 

 practical affairs could not be admitted as elements in what was called 

 a liberal education. One of the most significant tendencies in modern 

 education is the removal of the reproach of utilitarianism as applied 

 to it, by widening out the meaning of the term "utilitarian," making 

 that term applicable to all that equips the individual for rendering 

 service to society, whether that service is of the material kind for 

 which money payment is made or of the more immaterial kind by 

 which the spiritual, or aesthetic, or intellectual wants of society are 

 met. 



EDUCATION BECOMING A SCIENCE. 



The extension of the meaning of education has made the 

 educational problem exceedingly complex; but, at the same time, it 

 prepares the way for a science of education. The endeavour to create 

 a science of education has been rapidly developing. Observation and 

 experiment, analysis and sjTithesis, which have gone to the building 

 of other sciences, are being employed. The facts of mental growth, 

 of the bearing of physical constitution on mental processes, of the 

 relation of social claims to the training of the individual, are furnish- 

 ing a basis for an educational science. It has now come to be recog- 

 nised that while many things are subjects of instruction, the child is 

 the subject of education. As a result, the study of educational 

 psychology has been far-reaching, and is rapidly establishing the 

 relation that should be maintained between, on the one hand, the 

 methods of instruction, and, on the other, the process of development 

 and mode of action of the mind of the child. The acquisition of 

 knowledge as one of the results of education is dependent, not upon 

 the logical arrangement of tlie subject matter, or as something 

 imposed upon the pupil from without,- but is rather the result of the 

 proper direction of the pupil's own natural tendencies and activities, 

 and the utilising of motives towards healthy action. Education in this 

 view is the systematising of the child's experiences, a variety of dis- 

 jointed experiences being brought together, correlated, interlocked, 

 organised, before resulting in acquired knowledge. 



But while this subjective-psychological method of education has 

 enjoyed a revival that has had a salutary effect on school methods, it 

 is not an entirely adequate basis on which to build the various 

 activities of the school. Taken by itself, it minimises the value of the 

 subject-matter of studies. Educational work that is controlled entirely 

 by the principles of educational psychology is individualistic, and 

 leaves out of account the claims of the community. The individual 

 child cannot be educated as an isolated unit, and because of this 

 the content of his studies, and the practical purposes for which 



2r 



