■682 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 279. 



countries were supposed to be well adapted 

 to the ends in view, and educational exhibits 

 have been generally regarded as important 

 features of international expositions. But 

 within the memory of most of those now 

 before me signs of serious discontent have 

 not been wanting. Education has not al- 

 ways been found to furnish the required 

 safeguards for order and liberty. Highly 

 educated men have often been found sing- 

 ularly lacking in mental balance. Schools 

 for the inculcation of ' common sense' have 

 never yet been established. Even the great 

 development of psychology as an experi- 

 mental science, which has occurred chiefly 

 within the last twenty-five years, though it 

 has served to establish many laws of mental 

 action, has thus far failed to justify the 

 hope that pedagogy may find in psychology 

 a foundation for the erection of rational 

 systems of education. Indeed we have re- 

 cently been told by one of the ablest ex- 

 pounders of this science that it is a great 

 mistake for teachers to ' ' think that psy- 

 chology, being the science of the mind's 

 laws, is something from which they can de- 

 duce definite programs and schemes and 

 methods for immediate schoolroom use. 

 Psychology is a science and teaching is an 

 art. A science only lays down lines within 

 which the rules of the art must fall, laws 

 which the follower of the art must not 

 transgress : but what particular thing he 

 shall positively do within those lines is left 

 exclusively to his own genius."* 



Even this general guidance has been 

 very imperfectly afforded, for the limits set 

 by the science of psychology to the art of 

 teaching have never been precisely defined. 

 In fact the most fundamental question of 

 all, viz, the relation of mental to physical 

 development has not yet been settled, though 

 much material for its study has been col- 

 lected. It is not therefore surprising that 

 in many countries teachers have made too . 

 * W. James, ' Talks to Teachers,' p. 7. 



great demands upon the time and strength 

 of growing children. 



This has been clearly the case in some parts 

 of Germany where schoolboys from eight to 

 fifteen years of age have found their vital 

 energy so far exhausted by the school work 

 required of them that they have lost all in- 

 clination for vigorous athletic amusements 

 so naturally indulged in by Anglo-Saxon 

 boys. The deterioration of the race as a 

 result of too close application to intellectual 

 pursuits, to the neglect of the physique, has 

 been fortunately obviated, in the case of 

 Germany, by the army system which takes 

 entire possession of the youth before it is 

 too late and, by requiring him to devote 

 three years to the education of his body, 

 turns him out, at the end of that period, a 

 young man with mind and body, trained to 

 a high degree of efiiciency, well fitted for 

 civil as well as military pursuits and com- 

 paring favorably in all respects with men of 

 his age in other nations. Looked at from 

 this point of view the German army must 

 be regarded as an important part of the 

 educational system of the country though as 

 a piece of educational machinery its work- 

 ings cannot be considered economical. In 

 fact the absurdity of depending upon the 

 army to remedy the defects of the school 

 system has long since been forced upon the 

 attention of German educators and the di£B- 

 culties above alluded to are now in a fair 

 way to be removed. 



In our own country difficulties of quite a 

 different kind have been met with. Here 

 the great danger which threatens our system 

 of popular education arises from its close 

 association with party politics. The office 

 of a school committee man in one of our 

 large cities has been well described as ' ' the 

 smallest coin in which politicians pay their 

 debts," and as long as the education of our 

 children continues to be entrusted largely to 

 men who consider their position on a school 

 board as the lowest step of the political 



