THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 
ADDRESS TO SECTION L (EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE) BY 
T. PERCY NUNN, M.A., D.Sc., 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 
In consonance with the general aim of the British Association, the 
special purpose of our Section is the advancement of educational science. 
The Section owes its existence to a group of persons who saw clearly 
that in education, as in all the great fields of practice, there are, and 
must constantly arise, problems that can be solved only by patient 
application of the methods of science. The range and importance of 
these problems were illustrated by Sir Robert Blair in his Presidential 
Address to the Cardiff Meeting, but I do not propose working over 
any of the ground which my distinguished predecessor then surveyed. 
My intention is to take advantage of the customary right of a President 
to travel outside the strict bounds of his science and to deal with 
questions which, the results of inquiry within its limits illuminate but 
do not themselves answer. 
To a President of Section L the temptation to use this wider liberty 
must always be strong; for, however far the scope of educational science 
may extend, the critical educational issues will always lie beyond it. 
Tf the term ‘ education’ is used, as it sometimes is, to include all the 
influences which affect mind and character, it is obviously much more 
than an applied science. But so it is if the term is restricted, as I 
shall restrict it, to those formative influences which are brought to bear 
with some degree of purpose upon the minds of the young. In its 
origin education is a biological process found not only in all human. 
societies, however primitive, but even in a rudimentary form among 
the higher animals. By calling it biological I mean that it is a native, 
not an acquired expression of the race’s life, correlative to the race’s 
needs; that it does not wait for deliberation to call it into existence or 
for science to guide it, but has the inevitability of behaviour rooted 
in instinct. Thus, as I have argued elsewhere, educational science 
stands to education in much the same relation as hygiene stands to the 
physical life; it is a critic rather than an originator; it scrutinises and 
pronounces judgment upon ways and means, but does not and cannot 
prescribe the general direction which the educational process shall take. 
At most it can only help to stabilise the movement by lifting it from 
the level of instinctive impulse or vague opinion to the plane of ends 
clearly envisaged and consistently pursued. 
What is it, then, that determines the general character of the 
educational process at a given point in the history of a human society ? 
