726 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 



The teaching of Sociology reveals man as a social being who 

 finds his highest life and noblest purposes in his responsibility to 

 society, and whose welfare depends on his power of effective 

 co-operation with other social units. This teaching has shifted the 

 centre of educational theory. Instead of proposing as the end 

 of education the harmonious development of the powers of the 

 individual, we should rather seek to adjust him to his environment 

 that he may master the world of experience the more easily and 

 accurately. The age is practical, and tests institutions by a prag- 

 matical standard of values. The popular imagination, too, is 

 beginning to feel that a close connection exists between democracy 

 and education. It is true that the schools are making an attempt 

 to train their pupils in a sense of responsibility and self-direction ; 

 but some of the best schoolmasters of England are acknowledging 

 the practical failure of this attempted training in social habits and 

 social co-operation. Among the real remedies enunciated by them 

 are " a closer connection between the school and the outside 

 world " and " the reconstruction of curricula and the improving 

 of teaching methods." Very important, too, is the demand that 

 education should create habits and interests that will enable the 

 developing youth to use the large amount of time which the indus- 

 trial life of to-day, with its shorter hours of labour, places at his 

 disposal. Until education has made the leisure hours of adolescence 

 interesting, they will remain only a moral danger and a social 

 menace. Three practical aids to the realisation of this organic 

 concept of education would be found in the reform of teaching 

 methods, a revision of the curriculum, and the effective organisation 

 of trade and continuation schools. 



3.— A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF RETARDATION IN THE 

 ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. 



By PROFESSOR A. MACKIE, M.A., Principal, Teachers' Training College, Sydney. 



(Abstract) 



During the past few years the problems connected with the rate 

 of progress of children through the Elementary School have 

 received much attention from American investigators. A pre- 

 liminary investigation of the statistics of certain Sydney schools 

 has shown the need for further study of the question in New South 

 Wales. The paper discusses the methods of measuring retarda- 

 tion, examines the amount of retardation in typical schools and 

 groups of schools, and offers a preliminary analysis of the causes 

 of retardation. The percentage of retardation to class enrolment 

 increases markedly from the first to the fifth class, and the 

 investigation so far made appears to show that there is an excessive 

 percentage of retarded children in each class beyond the first. As 

 a result of the examination of 100 retarded children, it is clear 

 that the number of over-age children is capable of considerable 

 reduction by appropriate administrative measures and by changes 

 in the curriculum and organisation of the schools. 



