688 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L, 
Secrion L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE 
PRESIDENT OF THE SecTION.—PrRoressor Joun Apams, M.A. 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5. 
The President delivered the following Address :— 
An Objective Standard in Education. 
Or those who deny to Education a place among the sciences the name is legion, 
for they are many. The mere classification as a science is not perhaps of much 
consequence, but it is useful for the student of Education to examine the popular 
view, and see how far it is justified. The following statement, the words of a 
former occupant of this chair, will be generally accepted as representing the 
prevailing opinion :— 
“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 these facts and prin- 
ciples conters, can we say that there exists an organised and orderly arrangement 
of educational truth, or that we can logically, by any causative sequence, connect 
training and character either in the individual or in the nation? .. . It is very 
doubtful whether we can say that educational science is yet sufliciently advanced 
to satisfy these tests.’ 
First with regard to organised knowledge, there is certainly a great mass of 
matter available in the subject of Education. It is true that there is nothing 
easier than to show that this matter is not at present well organised. It is only 
too easy to find examples of contradictions among those who make a study of 
Kducation and venture to write or speak on the subject. We are told that there 
is hardly any important statement made by a writer on Education that cannot 
be met by a direct contradiction in the works of some other educ&tional writer. 
It has to be admitted that writers on Education in the past have been strangely 
opinionative and dogmatic in view of the very complex and delicate problems 
they have had to handle. Too frequently they assumed a simplicity in their 
subject-matter that was certainly not there. Even the massive common-sense of 
Dr. Johnson was not able to keep him from regarding Education as a study that 
had reached its limits long before his time. But between those who regard 
Education as too simple to need any further examination, and those who treat it 
as so complex as to defy human analysis, there are those who take the view that 
Education is a science like any other, though they admit that there may be room 
for wide difference of opinion regarding the stage of development it has reached. 
At the present moment it is becoming increasingly evident that educational 
theory is consolidating : it can now be claimed that there exists a great body of 
educational doctrine that is of general acceptation. It goes without saying that 
there are many and deep differences among the various schools of educational 
writers. But if we compare any two schools we shall find that the points of 
agreement far outnumber the points of difference. This was true even in the 
