Undoubtedly, the guidance of science is not everything to a teacher; the better part is given him through his own moral perfectionment.
4. The biographic history completes the individual study of the pupil and prepares for his diagnosis: combining, to this end, the work of the school with that of the home.
Sergi, in his memorable work, First Steps in Scientific Pedagogy, expresses himself as follows: "the biographic chart is a methodical means for learning to know the body and spirit of the pupil through direct observations.... And, since pupils may be classified according to tendencies, character and intelligence, the master may rationally divide them into various groups, to which he will give varied treatment, according to the direction in which each group shows the greatest need of education.... And he will place himself in closer association with the pupils' families, who should communicate to him their earliest observations regarding the physical and psychological nature of their children."
As a matter of fact, the anthropological movement, through the inquiries necessitated by the compilation of biographic charts, often proves illuminating to the members of the family, in regard to facts and conditions of which they had hitherto remained ignorant (sexual hygiene); in regard to the view they should take of their own children (those who had been regarded as "bad," and who were really ill), in regard to the way they should watch over them and take care of them, etc. Hence it has made a beginning of the practical application of a pedagogic principal that hitherto has only been abstractly visioned, of coordinating the educative work of the family with that of the school. A pedagogic institution which practically realizes this conception, which was hitherto only a utopian dream of pedagogy, is the "Children's House;" because by having school in the home and by having teachers and mothers living together, it results in harmonizing the environment of the family with that of the school, for the furtherance of the great mission of education.
5. The biographic chart will furnish everyone with a document capable of guiding him in his own subsequent self-education.
Sergi says further in the work above quoted:
"The biographic chart should become a precious document to every man, if the sort of record of which I speak were continued through a series of years, from the kindergartens upward through the entire course of the secondary schools, because it would contain, in compact and methodical form, the history of his physical and mental life, and he would find it of inestimable advantage both in practical life and in his various social relations."
6. "Lastly, the biographic chart with its gathering of positive data, prepares a great body of scientific material which will be useful, not alone to pedagogy, but also to sociology, medicine, and jurisprudence."
And in the same aforesaid work, Sergi adds: "If, for example, we should gather" (under the guidance of his biographic chart) "biographic notes in the city of Rome alone and in the elementary schools for both sexes, we should have for a single year, an average of fifty thousand observations, taken on entering and leaving school; if we could have them throughout the whole course of elementary instruction, the number of observations would amount to two hundred and fifty thousand.
"Then we should be able to see in every social class all the individual variations in physical and physiological condition which contribute to the development of the intelligence and to the manifestations of sentiments which play an active part in practical life. And all this would have a value of a sociological character."