694 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION tL. 
Section L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE. 
PRESIDENT OF THE SecTION—Sir Puitie Maanus, B.Sc., M.P. 
THURSDAY, AUGUST 1. 
The President delivered the following Address :— 
The Application of Scientific Method to Educational Problems. 
NorwirHstanpiIne the fact that the greater part of my life has been spent in 
educational work, in teaching, in examining, in organisation, and in the investiga- 
tion of foreign systems of instruction, I have experienced considerable difficulty 
in selecting, from the large number of subjects that crowd upon me, a suitable 
one on which to address you as President of a Section of the British Association 
devoted to educational science. 
At the outset I am troubled by the title of the section over which I have the 
honour to preside. I cannot refrain from asking myself the question, Is there an 
educational Science, and if so, what is its scope and on what foundations does it 
rest? The object of the British Association is the advancement of Science, and 
year by year new facts are recorded in different branches of inquiry, on which 
fresh conclusions can be based. The progress of past years, whether in Chemistry, 
Physics or Biology, can be stated. Can the same be said, and in the same sense, 
of Education? It is true that the area of educational influence is being constantly 
extended. Schools of every type and grade are multiplied, but is there any 
corresponding advance in our knowledge of the principles that should govern and 
determine our educational efforts, or which can justify us in describing such know- 
ledge as Science? If we take Science to mean, as commonly understood, organised 
knowledge, and if we are to test the claim of any body of facts and principles to 
be regarded as Science by the ability to predict, which the knowledge of those 
facts and principles confers, can we say that there exists an organised and orderly 
arrangement of educational truths, or that we can logically, by any causative 
sequence, connect training and character either in the individual or in the nation ? 
Can we indicate, with any approach to certainty, the effects on either the one or 
the other of any particular scheme of education which may be provided? It is 
very doubtful whether we can say that educational science is yet sufficiently 
advanced to satisfy these tests. 
But although education may not yet fulfil all the conditions which justify its 
claim to be regarded as a science, we are able to affirm that the methods of 
science, applicable to investigations in other branches of knowledge, are equally 
applicable to the elucidation of educational problems. To have reached this 
position is to have made some progress. For we now see that if we are ever to 
succeed in arriving at fixed principles for guidance in determining the many 
difficult and intricate questions which arise-in connection with the provision of a 
national system of education, or the solution of educational problems, we must 
proceed by the same methods of logical inquiry as we should adopt in investigating 
any other subject matter. 
