PROBLEMS IN EDUCATIONAL THEORY 65 



I. The Method of Educational Research 



Roughly speaking, we find at least four methods of educational 

 theorizing already in use: The philosophical, the historical, the 

 natural-scientific, and that proceeding directly from experience in 

 the art of education. So complex a subject must necessarily employ 

 somewhat different methods in its different branches. Even within 

 a fairly homogeneous science this is the case. Much more must it 

 be so in a subject which is not a well-marked-off science, but rather 

 the congeries of knowledge with which an institution, a profession, 

 is concerned. It may be that a wholly new method will not be 

 needed; but there is urgent need of a sharpening of the several 

 methods already employed, each of them highly diversified within 

 itself. There is need, too, of a closer application of those methods 

 to the specific facts which they are to collect and explain, and of an 

 adequate correlation of those methods and of the results arrived 

 at through their use. And new developments of method which 

 promise actual increase of knowledge are to be sought and welcomed 

 and employed. A few notes on these several modes of procedure 

 should be added. 



Historical research has a highly elaborated method of its own. Any 

 adequate history of education must stand the severe tests of this 

 method. Only such educational history can offer lasting contribu- 

 tions to our educational theory. We must seek in historical facts, as 

 interpreted with historical insight, a knowledge of those social ideals, 

 convictions, purposes, which determine the direction and the con- 

 tent of the education which any people will provide for its young. 

 In democratic countries, in particular, this historical knowledge leads 

 up to an understanding of public opinion, by which public education 

 is fashioned and inspired. These things reveal the informing spirit 

 of education. The knowledge of what is and has been in human 

 institutions cannot, like a knowledge of natural laws, enable us to 

 forecast future events with anything like certainty. Nor can it 

 alone give guidance in the choices of the future. It does not of 

 itself furnish us with any adequate theory of education, but it does 

 contribute much that is indispensable in the framing of such theory. 

 Classical examples will occur to every one, such as may be found 

 in the writings of Aristotle and of Montesquieu. In their widely 

 different ways, such men as Letourneau, Rashdall, Lexis, Balfour, 

 have, in recent years, been making notable contributions to this side 

 of educational theory. And vast collections of material for future 

 work of this kind are made by the English Education Department, 

 the Gcsellschaft fur deutsche Erziehungs- und Schulgeschichte at 

 Berlin, and other agencies. 



