CHAPTER XXII

THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION

SCIENTIFIC METHODS OF STUDYING SCHOOLS

Each of the preceding chapters has aimed to set forth certain practical school problems and to suggest the sources of information on the basis of which these problems are to be solved. Some of the information to which reference has been made is confessedly incomplete; some of it is in a form which renders very difficult exact and final inferences as to its meaning. Taken in the aggregate, however, the body of information at hand regarding schools is so great that we are justified in speaking of a science of education. Furthermore, the use of the term “science” would be justified even if we were in possession of fewer solutions of school problems than we now have, for the essence of science is its method of investigation, not its ability to lay down a body of final rules of action.

A complete transformation of the method of approaching school problems has come about in recent years. The time was when opinion, especially if it was backed by even a little practical experience, was urged as sufficient reason for all kinds of school practices. To-day it is only the rashly ignorant who talk about education or aim to influence actual school operations without informing themselves through a study of known and recorded facts. A host of practical school officers and special students of school problems have carried out laborious investigations and have created a technical literature which promises to reach every phase of school work.

DEFINITION THROUGH ENUMERATION OF METHODS

It is not too early, therefore, to define the scope and methods of the science of education. Such a definition need in no wise limit the further development of the science, while it may serve to stimulate more exact formulation of its problems and methods. Our effort to frame such a definition naturally leads us to review the courses which have commonly been given to teachers-in-training.

THE HISTORY OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY AND PRACTICE

The historical method of studying education was the first which was cultivated in institutions which undertook the training of teachers. The history of education divides readily into two branches: one deals with the history of educational theories, the other with the history of actual school practices. The history of theories is the easier of the two branches to cultivate because it consists chiefly in a review of the writings left behind by writers who discuss educational problems. Thus the earlier histories of education laid great emphasis on the writings of Plato and Quintilian, of Comenius and Locke, of Rousseau and Pestalozzi. Reviews of earlier writers were, however, of little real influence in molding modern practice, and the history of theories had only a very indirect influence on teachers.

More significant by far is the recent movement which studies practices in schools, especially the schools of one’s own country. The development of arithmetic or grammar in American schools is illuminating as showing both the direction in which we are moving and the kinds of forces which operate in reformulating the course of study. Earlier chapters have aimed to suggest the value of such studies, especially Chapters II and III.

COURSES IN PSYCHOLOGY

Along with the study of the history of education there has commonly been prescribed in training schools for teachers a course in psychology. Herbart pointed out more than a hundred years ago the importance of the study of mental processes as a basis for the proper direction of educational practices. The science of psychology has also by its own developments encouraged the practical educator to expect help in the solution of school problems. There was a period when so-called child psychology flourished in this country and aimed to contribute to the development of school methods as well as to the solution of problems of the curriculum and school management.

EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

A friendly alliance will always exist between the science of psychology and the science of education. Psychology has given to education certain methods and such special results as it has worked out with regard to memory and learning and the nature of behavior; education has taken the psychological material and developed a special branch of science under the name “educational psychology.”

There are two fruitful psychological methods which have been borrowed in this way and put to work for education. These are the statistical method and the experimental method.

STATISTICAL STUDIES

An impressive example of the statistical method is given in the studies of individual differences. For example, Thorndike has made a careful study of the degrees of likeness between twins, and between brothers and sisters who are not twins, for the purpose of defining more fully the meaning of the term “individual differences.”

THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD

The experimental method has been employed in many ways. Thus, Freeman has recorded with the aid of suitable apparatus the rate at which one writes long and short letters. This study he has made with individuals of various ages and degrees of training and under different conditions. One result which he derived from these records is the fact that a given writer’s rhythm of movement is the same in letters of different sizes and becomes more regular and more fixed with increase in skill.

EXTENSION OF USE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL METHODS

In taking over the methods of psychology and applying them to the solution of educational problems, a secondary advantage of the greatest importance has come to the science of education. These methods are capable of adaptation to a much broader range of problems than psychology would have attempted to solve. Both the statistical method and the experimental method have accordingly been carried over in the science of education to the widest possible range of applications.

STUDIES OF RETARDATION

One of the first and most fruitful statistical studies made in education dealt with the retardation of pupils. Those who fell behind their grade were counted, and the problem which they presented was stated emphatically enough to bring about the organization of all kinds of special devices for the training of retarded individuals and groups.

SCHOOL EXPERIMENTS AND LABORATORY STUDIES

The experimental method was carried over and applied to whole classes. For example, two parallel classes were measured with reference to the effects of supervised study.

The experimental method has also been productively applied in detailed, analytical studies of particular subjects. Thus, to recall an example presented in an earlier chapter, reading has been investigated in the cases of slow and fast readers when they were reading orally and silently, when they were trained by the ordinary methods of the school, and when they were trained by special methods adapted to their individual cases. Like studies have been made of the movements performed in writing and of the stages passed through in various learning processes.

EXAMPLES THROUGHOUT EARLIER CHAPTERS

Further examples will, however, be unnecessary for the reader who has had the patience to go through the earlier chapters of this volume. There are numerous illustrations in those chapters of statistical and experimental investigations of educational problems. These investigations show the extent to which the new science has borrowed from the old and the extent to which a new structure has been erected which has a right to claim an independent name and rank among the social sciences.

STUDIES OF ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS

The recognition of the science of education as a separate discipline can be urged on the ground that the scientific methods which were first applied to the problems of mental development have opened up every aspect of school organization to scientific study. Thus, in the field of administration more than in any other field the value of scientific studies has been recognized. The promotion of pupils, the grading system, the construction of buildings, and the organization of financial systems are all spheres in which exact scientific methods have in recent years worked most important transformations in practice.

METHOD OF COMPARISON

In many investigations the method of comparison has been brought to a degree of perfection which justifies reference to it as a special method of scientific research. All the previous discussions of standardization show how a single school system profits by the effort to evaluate its own practices in the light of the experiences and results of other school systems.

RECORDS NECESSARY TO SCIENTIFIC STUDY

The scientific methods which have been referred to imply as their necessary basis a series of detailed and accurate records. Some of these records, as, for example, those which show school attendance and those which deal with expenditures, are kept in ordinary routine. Some have to be made especially for the purposes of scientific studies. Here belong all those records which are made through tests. Tests are merely devices for showing clearly and explicitly how far educational practices have succeeded in special cases.

SUBDIVISIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION

The subdivisions into which the science of education naturally breaks up are dictated in part by the needs of different individuals within the school system and in part by the methods which are employed. Thus the supervisor needs a different type of training from that which is required by the classroom teacher. Again, the functions of the different supervisors are so different that some require full information on problems of school finance, while others are in more direct contact with the problems of promotion and of the curriculum. A second line of cleavage is that which is described most fully in this chapter and results from the use of different methods of investigation. Thus, laboratory studies of reading and writing naturally separate themselves from statistical studies of administrative problems.

Another line of division is that dictated by school organization. High-school problems are likely to be considered in special courses, elementary-school problems in others.

There is no need in a general introduction of the type here offered of attempting to consider these subdivisions. Our purposes are adequately served if we can show what the science as a whole is by referring to typical examples of scientific work undertaken in several of the subdivisions.

RAPID EXPANSION OF THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION

Furthermore, it is to be understood explicitly that the science of education is in process of rapid expansion. Any effort to describe its methods and content in full would of necessity fail. The rapid enlargement of the science and its methods in recent years is the most impressive fact which can be recorded in a chapter describing the scope and purpose of such a study. A simple definition within which there is wide room for expansion is therefore the only definition which is appropriate at the end of this introduction.

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.