822 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION I. 



5.— SECONDARY EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA. 



By PERCY A. ROBIN, M.A. 



Ever since the publication of Bacon's Advancement of 

 Learning, in 1605, the scientific basis of education has been 

 more or less definitely recognised. Glimpses of this truth had 

 indeed been gained nearly 2000 years before by the versatile 

 genius of Aristotle, who wrote that in education " we must 

 conform to the results of psychological analysis," and that 

 " every art and system of training aims at supplying the 

 deficiencies of one's nature." To Bacon, however, is due the 

 honour of having referred to pedagogics as a branch of 

 psychology. Though many systems based on rational 

 principles have been constructed since the intellectual revolu- 

 tion heralded by Bacon, yet recognition as a science has only 

 recently been accorded to education. The systems of 

 Comenius, Milton, Locke, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Kant were, 

 as it were, feeling after a scientific basis, but it was Herbart, 

 the Konigsberg Pi'ofessor of Philosophy and Pedagogy, who, 

 just half a century ago, established its close dependence upon 

 the sciences of psychology and ethics. Since then, English as 

 well as German philosophers and teachers have been build- 

 ing upon this foundation. Among English writers on the 

 scientific aspects of pedagogy it will suffice to mention Mr. 

 Herbert Spencer, Professor Bain, and Mr. James Sully. 

 Great activity also is now being shown by the general body 

 of English educationists. The Teachers' Guild of Great 

 Britain and Ireland, the Royal College of Preceptors, the 

 National Union of Elementary Teachers, the Association of 

 Assistant Masters in Secondary Schools, the Annual Head- 

 masters' Conference, — all bespeak an active interest in the 

 improvement of the theory and practice of teaching. Yet the 

 wave of progress seems hardly to have reached A ustralian 

 shores. Regarding their occupation as an art, or at most as 

 a rational system, Australian schoolmasters seem not to rise 

 to the higher conception of an educational science. If it 

 were so, the laws of mental phenomena would be the recog- 

 nised basis of every scheme of teaching. It would at least be 

 acknowledged that physiology, psychology, and ethics are the 

 ultimate standards for testing the school course and for regulat- 

 ing all special methods of tuition. Yet in how many schools is 

 the time-table intentionally adjusted so as to accord with the 

 law^s of mind ? In how many schools are sul^ects consistently 

 taught in accordance with scientific ideas ? To ^o into details 



