PROBLEMS IN EDUCATIONAL THEORY 67 



into something having universal validity; how, in a word, to make 

 educational judgments conformable to truth. Such sifting and 

 correction have not been wholly wanting in the past. The tradi- 

 tional background of individual opinion itself has served in some 

 rough fashion as a corrective; for that which it has offered has 

 already survived more tests than the ordinary experience of one 

 lifetime can apply, and is likely accordingly to be wiser than the 

 independent wisdom of most individuals. But the more wise among 

 writers on education have supplied their own corrective of individual 

 caprice, in their broad knowledge of contemporary life, as well as of 

 contemporary education, in their judicial temper, their wide sympa- 

 thies, their moral elevation and sense of the fitness of things. The 

 opinion of some unusually gifted individual has now and again rallied 

 about it many followers, making a school of educational thought. 

 The varied judgment and experience of the members of such a group, 

 cooperating, comparing views and results, criticising one another, 

 have led to conceptions which are presumably nearer to truth than 

 those even of the leader himself. In recent years, governments and 

 educational bodies have sought systematically to correct the judg- 

 ment of individuals through conferences of many individuals, chosen 

 from different schools of thought, with reference to their recognized 

 and varied abilities. In this way there have been added to our edu- 

 cational literature such valuable papers as the reports of the Dezember 

 Konferenz and of our own Committee of Ten. 



This enumeration of correctives is not exhaustive, but it is suffi- 

 cient to show that in the past a serious endeavor has been made to 

 render empirical judgments relative to the art of education more 

 free from the caprice of individual opinion, more nearly universal, 

 more accordant with the truth of things. But such procedure at the 

 best has left much to be desired. The resulting doctrines have been 

 full of assumptions the correctness of which is doubtful; assump- 

 tions which, at the same time, are capable of being tested as to their 

 correctness by psychological, historical, or other scientific research. 

 The more the scientific spirit comes abroad in the field of education, 

 the more clear becomes the demand that, wherever possible, the 

 results of such research shall replace the naive pronouncements of 

 even the finest unscientific insight. 



So far as we can foresee, education must continue to offer free play 

 to the creative spirit of teaching, without which the teaching art 

 cannot be true art; and at the core of educational theory must still 

 be that personal sense of personal and social values, that discrim- 

 inating appreciation of excellence in things done, which is needed 

 to guide, interpret, and criticise the finer products and processes of 

 the human spirit. The offerings of sociology, psychology, and the 

 physical sciences are not contributions to our knowledge of educa- 



