HA.iLKY] EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH 17* 



the results are deplorable; it means simply that \vc cannot say 

 definitely whether this or that teachings is ^ooi\ and the results 

 commendable. In the absence of fundamental standards, both 

 the teacher's efficiency and the value of the subject are judged 

 \ cry largely by standards that are important enough so far as 

 they go, but which fail to measure true efficiency. A subject 

 may, for example, be justified because it is "interesting". This 

 criterion is obviously accessory and not fundamental. Even 

 admitting that a subject from which valuable educative results 

 are to be derived should be presented in an interesting fashion 

 in order to realize its value, it does not necessarily follow that all 

 subjects that can be so presented are valuable. The investiga- 

 tions of Reudinger and Strayer (Journal of Educational Psy- 

 chology. May, 1910) indicate that the ability to maintain good 

 order is the most important single factor in the supervisor's 

 judgment of a teacher's efficiency in the elementary school. 

 But, important as order is in the schoolroom, the veriest tyro in- 

 school management know^s that it is only a means to an end, or, 

 at most, only one end out of many that should be sought. 



What we lack primarily in educational science, then, is a 

 series of standards by which the growth that pupils make in the 

 realization of our educational ideals may be adequately meas- 

 ured, — standards somewhat analogous to those furnished by the 

 clinical thermometer, the bacterial stains, and the optical and 

 acoustic tests in medicine, by the various devices for measuring 

 the strength of materials in engineering and by the seed-vitality 

 tests in agriculture. Even jurisprudence has now the opportu- 

 nity to reduce one of its numerous fields to the rule of exact pro- 

 cedure through the development of accurate methods of deter- 

 mining the validity of testimony. In short we are coming to 

 see that the possibility of precise determinations is not limited 

 to the objective sciences, but that even the operations of the 

 human mind may be definitely measured and accurately com- 

 pared. Xor are some phases of educational activity far behind 

 these other human callings in availing themselves of the instru- 

 ments of quantitative determination. Binet in France has devised 

 a scheme of measuring intellectual capacity that will lindoubt- 

 edly mark an epoch in the education of defective and abnormal 

 children : and Stone's recent investigations in arithtiietic ("Arith- 

 metical Abilities: Some Factors Determining Them," Xew 

 York, 1908) indicate very clearly the possibility of measuring 

 results in the teaching of elementary arithmetic with a fair de- 



