SECTION L : CARDIFF, 1920. 



ADDEESS 



TO THE 



EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE SECTION 



BY 



SiK EGBERT BLAIR, LL.D., 



PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 



Introduction. 



The requirements of the Act of 1918 and the endeavoui' to frame 

 scales of salaries for teachers on a national basis are, at present, absorb- 

 ing so much of the energy of those engaged in educational administra- 

 tion that I have thought it advisable to turn our attention from the 

 immediate needs of the day to two of the wider aspects of our educa- 

 tional activities, which belong to the spirit rather than to the form of 

 our educational system. 



It is natural that in this meeting of the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science I should take first the Science of Education. 



I. 



The value to education of science and the scientific method has 

 hitherto been for the most part indirect and incidental. It has con- 

 sisted very largely in deductions from another branch of study, namely, 

 psychology, and has resulted for the most part from the invasion into 

 education of those who wei'e not themselves educationists. A moment 

 has now been reached when education itself should be made the subject 

 of a distinct department of science, when teachers themselves should 

 become scientists. 



There is in this respect a close analogy between education and 

 medicine. Training the mind implies a knowledge of the mind, just 

 as healing the body implies a knowledge of the body. Thus, logically, 

 education is based upon psychology, as medicine is based on anatomy 

 and physiology. And there the text-books of educational method are 

 usually content to leave it. But medicine is much more than applied 

 physiology. It constitutes an independent system of facts, gathered 

 and analysed, not by physiologists in the laboratory, but by physicians 

 working in the hospital or by the bedside. In the same way, then, 

 education as a science should be something more than mere applied 

 psychology. It must be built up not out of the speculations of 

 theorists, or from the deductions of psychologists, but by direct, 

 definite, ad hoc inquiries concentrated upon the problems of the class- 



