TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 943 



and tlie interpretations put upon them are often wide of the mark ; for the school 

 is asocial organisation which has to do its work under complex social conditions. 



2. Allied to the above may be placed investigations into school appliances, and 

 the physical conditions under which children live while at school. Tliis ia a 

 Lranch of public sanitation, rather than dlstitietively a matter for pedagogics. 



3. The third group is concerned with the organs of sense, eyesight, heaiing, 

 &c. ; and we are slill in regions where the physiologist and the physician are at 

 home, rather than the teacher. Their results need to be handed over for the use 

 of schools, but the methods and processes of research are not a distinctive concern 

 for the teacher. 



4. A fourth group carries us forward to experimental psychology, to research 

 in which the methods of the pyschological laboratory are applied to the features 

 of the growing organism as distinguished from the adult. 



A large mass of very suggestive research has been undertaken, of which the 

 work on ' Fatigue' may be talsen as typical. The most recent results show the 

 grave ditiiculties encountered in endeavouring to interpret physical conditions in 

 terms of mind (see Ellis and Snipe, ' Amer. Journ. Psychology,' 1903, p. 2-j2). 



Experimental psychology, when the subjects of an experiment are children, 

 undoubtedly would appear to have a close bearing upon the problem of the 

 teacher, and a good deal of the work undertaken in Germany under the title of 

 ' Experimentelle Piidagogik' (see Schwarz in ' School Keview,' Chicago, January 

 to September 1907) shows that many investigators would desire to see stations 

 for research in genetic psychology established as part of the eijuipment of Depart- 

 ments of Education. 



It would appear, however, as if the methods of the psychological laboratory 

 are too specialised, and too remote from the positive functions of the school, to be 

 introduced as part of the pedagogical equipment of a university. Rather one 

 would say that such a laboratory ought to be at hand wherever advanced work in 

 the study of education is set on foot ; and the psychologist ought to be asked to 

 pay special attention to genetic studies in view of the practical importance of any 

 results which. he may reach. It is certain that if the laboratory can arrive at new 

 conceptions of the mental life of the young, these results will land an immense 

 field for application in the teaching profession. 



5. Uf an entirely diflerent order are the numberless investigations conducted 

 under the name of Child-study, especially m America by Stanley Hall and Earl 

 Barnes, and more recently in Germany by Kerch ensteiner and others. Here the 

 investigator deals with experience, with mental ' content ' in ideas and feelings, or 

 output in expression, rather than with mental qualities or faculties. These investi- 

 gations, when conducted with real scientific ability, have greatly influenced the 

 schools, for the teacher's business is directly concerned with the child's output: 

 the fundamental difficulty felt by the psychologist as to the nature of mind process 

 ia largely avoided when attention is confined to achievement. 



(J. All the above groups are conducted on well-recognised lines of control 

 experiments, with quantitative measurements. But they only biiug us to the 

 threshold of the school ; experiments which touch directly the business of the 

 teacher encounter several difficulties — (I) they need a long p"eriodof time for their 

 completion ; (2) disturbing and qualifying factors are always presented, and cannot 

 easily be reckoned with ; (;i) methods lor estimating results have scarcely as yet 

 been seriously considered. Such methods must obviously vary for each branch 

 of instruction or s hool management. Both in selection of the material of a 

 curriculum, in methods of teaching, and in the corporate life of school a o-reat 

 amount of experimental vsork is being undertaken, but it can seldom hope to be 

 placed on the same footing as regards exactness such as is attained in the earlier 

 groups. Further, such work can seldom be undertaken without some a priori 

 bias of general principles as to the underlying aim and function of the school. 



It is, however, in this group that the proper business of a Department of 

 Education centres : and it is here that the scientihc attitude is most urgently 

 needed by demonstrators and instructors. Material, Method, Corporate Lite — each 

 of these three sections — can be treated from the standpoint of scientific method. 



