Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/389

 COLLEGE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 3^3

social background of his future educational work and of the significance of human culture and the educational sciences for his methods and • program in the school. He should be able to say, at the end of such a course, that he has found himself, not merely his teachers, or some books, and book answers. The principles which he carries away with him should be his own, wrought out in his own intelligence, and ex- pressing his own capacity for service in the world.

This program, the expression of his own personality, should enable his instructors to determine more definitely his probable value as a teacher: whether he has, or can attain, that actual intelligence and power of performance which will make him a constructive force in his future school community, able to recogivize and analyze problems, capable of self-expression and initiative, and therefore capable of wel- coming and developing the self-expression and initiative in the children whom he is to teach«

There will be many other particular phases of the field of educa- tional theory and practise which the prospective teacher will want to investigate: advanced work in theory, principles of administration and supervision, special problems in psychology, and various aspects of the social side of educational development. These should be provided for with such freedom as will permit the further extension of the students intelligence into the eventual sense of mastery of education as a social function.

There is another aspect of the work of such a department to which attention must turn for a moment. This is the field of constructive research work, for the most part the task of the instructors in the de- partment, with perhaps the help of advanced graduate students. From the point of view here presented this research work is inseparable from the work of training prospective teachers. At the present time, or up until the present, research work in the field of educational theory has been largely devoted to the special investigation of problems in psychol- ogy. It has seemed that this part of the field was the only part pos^ sessing sufBcient scientific dignity to warrant reputable research.

But this would seem to be a mistaken view. The great field of research in educational theory may yet come to be found in the social sources of educational experience. Let this be illustrated concretely. Education is a social function. It begins with the children of the com- munity, it proceeds in the midst of the community, its outcome is to be the community of the future. Not all of education goes on in the school. President Wilson's recent statement that *'the government can not generate thought is true also of the school: the school can not generate thought. Experience, thought, emotion, appreciation: these are all social products, not the products of the schools. At the best the schools can create the conditions under which these products appear, and can criticize them, and organize them as they do appear.

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