Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/384

 378 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLT

ing off of all extrinsic and useless elements and characteristics. Any innovator must expect and must welcome this treatment.

In the second place^ the department has inevitably inherited and brought into the university some of the flavor of the normal school, and has suffered somewhat from this fact Originally, in many schools, the department went under the name of '* Pedagogy/' and this ^ blight'' has not yet been completely cured. The significance of this will appear in the next statement.

In the third, and most important, place, the department of educa- tion has been severely criticized because it has not, everywhere, fully caught the spirit of science. The spirit of the modern xmiversity is, on the whole, scientific. The department of education is one of the youngest of university departments. Coming into the university by the sufferance of the older departments, its place in the university muf't depend upon its ability to win the respect of these other department i^, in which the spirit of science largely prevails. This has not always happened.

In some of the larger schools of education and teachers' colleges ex- tensive differentiation of work and a Considerable development of the spirit of inquiry have appeared, at least in certain lines. But in the colleges and universities where this work is still carried on within a department, there is large foundation for the suspicion that little work of a genuinely scientific character is done. It is probable that a thorough inquiry would reveal similar conditions in many departments which pride themselves upon their scientific standing. But that is aside from the point. Our question is: Can a college department of education really become a scientific department?

This question takes two directions: first, what is the real work of such a department? and second, can such work really take upon itself the scientific spirit? These are, however, not two distinct problems: the first suggests two answers and appeal must be made to the second for a decision as between these two.

What, then, is the real work of the college department of education? The two answers, suggested above, may be called, without invidious dis- tinction, the intellectual and the social programs in education. (Such a distinction appeared in a recent discussion of this subject among a group of teachers of psychology and education in certain colleges and normal schools.)

The answer, which is here called intellectual, seems to conceive the educational situation somewhat as follows: The school exists as a fixed institution having the task of training the children of the community. The curriculum of the school is pretty clearly defined; the methods are, in the main, well worked out; the constructive principles to be obeyed are in the books; the machinery of administration and control is estab- lished and in working order.

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