Science in Public Affairs 



of the lack of proper physical training, are con- 

 necting themselves with the other questions of 

 education in such a way as immeasurably to 

 increase the urgency and social significance of 

 the whole problem. When it is fully realised 

 that the physical well-being of the nation is at 

 stake, and that safeguards against degeneration 

 must be found in a systematic social policy, of 

 which educational influences and well-planned 

 school training form an indispensable and integral 

 part, sectional jealousies in the management of 

 elementary schools will be overborne by a clear 

 conviction of national necessity. 



Another effect of the scientific movement upon 

 educational thought is not less penetrating. It 

 has given a new significance to the study of child 

 nature and of the psychology of childhood and 

 adolescence. The investigations to which this new 

 turn in educational thought has led have been 

 fruitful already, but are still in an early stage. 

 "A true educational science must be inductive, 

 must be made up from the study of the particular 

 facts in answer to thousands of different questions. 

 The science of education when it develops will, 

 like other sciences, rest upon direct observations 

 of, and experiments on, the influence of educational 

 institutions and methods, made and reported with 

 quantitative precision. Since groups of variable 

 facts will be the material it studies, statistics will 

 everywhere be its handmaid." 1 But the influence 



1 Thorndike, "Educational Psychology," p. 164. (New 

 York, Lemcke and Buechner, 1903.) 



