The Modern Educator’s Library.
General Editor: Professor A. A. COCK.
The present age is seeing an unprecedented advance in educational theory and practice; its whole outlook on the ideals and methods of teaching is being widened. The aim of this new series is to present the considered views of teachers of wide experience, and eminent ability, upon the changes in method involved in this development, and upon the problems which still remain to be solved, in the several branches of teaching with which they are most intimately connected. It is hoped, therefore, that these volumes will be instructive not only to teachers, but to all who are interested in the progress of education.
Each volume contains an index and a comprehensive bibliography of the subject with which it deals.
EDUCATION: ITS DATA AND FIRST PRINCIPLES.
By T. PERCY NUNN, M.A., D.Sc.,
Professor of Education in the University of London; Author of “The Aims and Achievements of Scientific Method,” “The Teaching of Algebra,” etc.
Crown 8vo. Cloth. 6s. net.
Dr. Nunn’s volume really forms an introduction to the whole series, and deals with the fundamental questions which lie at the root of educational inquiry. The first is that of the aims of education. These, he says, are always correlative to ideals of life, and, as ideals of life are eternally at variance, their conflict will be reflected in educational theories. The individualism of post-reformation Europe gradually gave way to a reaction culminating in Hegel, which pictured the state as the superentity of which the single life is but a fugitive element. The logical result of this Hegelian ideal the world has just seen, and educators of to-day have to decide whether to foster this sinister tradition or to help humanity to escape from it to something better. What we need is a doctrine which, while admitting the importance of the social element in man, reasserts the importance of the individual.
This notion of individuality as the ideal of life is worked out at length, and on the results of this investigation are based the conclusions which are reached upon the practical problem of embodying this ideal in teaching. Among other subjects, the author deals with Routine and Ritual, Play, Nature and Nurture, Imitation, Instinct; and there is a very illuminating last chapter on “The School and the Individual.”
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION.
By SOPHIE BRYANT, D.Sc., Litt.D.
Late Head Mistress of the North London Collegiate School for Girls Author of “Educational Ends,” etc.
Crown 8vo. Cloth. 6s. net.
In this book, Mrs. Bryant, whose writings on educational subjects are widely known, takes the view that in order to produce the best result over the widest area, the teaching of morality through the development of religious faith, and its teaching by direct appeal to self-respect, reason, sympathy and common sense, are both necessary. In religion, more than in anything else, different individuals must follow different paths to the goal.
Upon this basis the book falls into four parts. The first deals with the processes of spiritual self-realisation by means of interest in knowledge and art, and of personal affections and social interest, which all emerge in the development of conscience. The second part treats of the moral ideal and how it is set forth by means of heroic romance and history, and in the teaching of Aristotle, to build up the future citizen. The third presents the religious ideal, its beginnings and the background of ideas implied by it, together with suggestions for study of the Bible and the lives of the Saints. In the fourth part the problem of the reasoned presentment of religious truths is dealt with in detail.
There is no doubt that this book makes a very considerable addition to what has already been written on the subject of religious education.