Definition of the Science of Education
The science of education aims to collect by all available methods full information with regard to the origin, development, and present form of school practices and also full information with regard to social needs. It aims to subject present practices to rigid tests and comparisons and to analyze all procedure in the schools by experimental methods and by observation. It aims to secure complete and definite records of all that the school attempts and accomplishes. The results of school work are to be evaluated by rigid methods of comparison and analysis. To direct studies of the school the science of education must add full studies of the social life of which the school is a part and of the individual nature which is to be trained and molded through the educational processes. In the light of such studies the science of education is to suggest such enlargements and modifications of school practices as seem likely to promote the evolution of the educational system.
This program is so comprehensive in its scope that it becomes evident at once that the science of education is a composite science requiring the coöperation of many investigators. In its formulations it may deal in a broad way with general problems, or it may break up into numerous subdivisions appealing to the specialist.
It would therefore be more accurate to describe it as a group of specialized studies rather than as a single discipline.
EXERCISES AND READINGS
This chapter furnishes an opportunity to study the contributions of other sciences to the study of educational problems. What does biology contribute? In this connection Spencer’s first essay is perhaps one of the clearest examples of application of biology to education. Stanley Hall has carried to an extreme the use of biological hypotheses (“Adolescence,” D. Appleton and Company). Fiske in his essay on the “Meaning of Infancy” (Houghton Mifflin Company) furnishes another example. The student should raise pointedly the question whether biological principles apply without modification to human education.
The discussions of biology pass directly into the consideration of psychology. James’s “Talks to Teachers on Psychology” (Henry Holt and Company) is a very good beginning of readings in this line. One of the most recent and productive books is Freeman’s “The Psychology of the Common Branches” (Houghton Mifflin Company). There are many general psychologies. The student will be led by a study of some of these books to the problem of distinguishing between general psychology and educational psychology.
Another type of related science is to be found in the mathematical sciences which contribute to educational studies. Thorndike’s “An Introduction to the Theory of Mental and Social Measurements” (Science Press) was the first systematic effort to put statistical methods into form for educators. A much more satisfactory treatment of statistical methods is to be found in H. O. Rugg’s “Statistical Methods applied to Education” (Houghton Mifflin Company). Numerous examples have been cited in earlier chapters of applications of statistics to education. To that list might be added Ayres’s “Laggards in our Schools” (Russell Sage Foundation, New York City) and the statistical volumes of the reports of the Commissioner of Education, which both in the facts presented and in the summaries represent the most elaborate collection of educational statistics in any report on schools anywhere in the world.
By way of an independent exercise under this chapter let the student describe a particular scientific study which it would be appropriate to require each of the following school officers to carry out: a superintendent, a supervisor of drawing, a principal of a high school, a principal of an elementary school, a high-school teacher of Latin, a teacher in charge of a third grade.