194 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



diagnosing mental deficiency and in awarding scholarships. As a rule, 

 however, those due to sex and race are smaller than is popularly sup- 

 posed. How far these differences, and those associated with social 

 status, are inborn and ineradicable, and how far they are due to 

 differences in training and in tradition, can hardly be determined without 

 a vast array of data. 



II. Teaching Methods. 



The subjects taught and the methods of teaching have considerably 

 changed during recent years. In the more progressive types of schools 

 several broad tendencies may be discerned. All owe their acceptance 

 in part to the results of scientific investigators. 



(1) Far less emphasis is now laid upon the disciplinary value of 

 subjects, and upon subjects whose value is almost solely disciplinary. 

 Following in the steps of a series of American investigators, Winch and 

 Sleight in this country have shown very clearly that practice in one 

 kind of activity produces improvements in other kinds of activities, only 

 under very limited and special conditions. The whole conception of 

 transfer of training is thus changed, or (some maintain) destroyed; 

 and the earlier notion of education as the strengthening, through exer- 

 cise, of certain general faculties has consequently been revolutionised. 

 There is a tendency to select subjects and methods of teaching rather 

 for their material than their general value. 



(2) Far less emphasis is now laid upon an advance according to strict 

 logical sequence in teaching a given subject of the curriculum to children 

 of successive ages. The steps and methods are being adapted rather to 

 the natural capacities and interests of the child of each age. This 

 genetic standpoint has received great help and encouragement from 

 experimental psychology. Binet's own scale of intelligence was in- 

 tended largely as a study in the mental development of the normal child. 

 The developmental phases of particular characteristics (e.g., children's 

 ideals) and special characteristics of particular developmental phases 

 (e.g., adolescence) have been elaborately studied by Stanley Hall and his 

 followers. Psychology, indeed, has done much to emphasise the im- 

 portance of the post-pubertal period — the school-leaving age, and the 

 years that follow. Such studies have an obvious bearing upon the 

 curriculum and methods for our new continuation schools. But it is, 

 perhaps, in the revolutionary changes in the teaching methods of the 

 infants' schools, changes that are already profoundly influencing the 

 methods of the senior department, that the influence of scientific study 

 has been most strongly at work. 



(3) Increasing emphasis is now being laid upon mental and motor 

 activities. Early educational practice, like early psychology, was ex- 

 cessively intellectualistic. Eecent child-study, however, has em- 

 phasised the importance of the motor and of the emotional aspects of 

 the child's mental life. As a consequence, the theory and practice 

 of education have assumed more of the pragmatic character which has 

 characterised contemporary philosophy. 



The progressive introduction of manual and practical subjects, both 

 in and for themselves, and as aspects of other subjects, forms the most 



