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TO MY STUDENTS

THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

PREFACE

THE present work is the outgrowth of actual class-room experience in teaching the subject for two years in the State Normal School at Milwaukee and eight years in the State University of Iowa. Previous to this experience, many of the ideas here expressed had been gradually shaping themselves while the author was teaching and supervising in public schools. All of the material has been carefully tested in junior and senior university classes, and much of it in advanced normal school classes. Portions of several chapters have been given many times in teachers' institutes and associations. The distinct aim, however, has been to produce a text-book of college grade for beginners in the study of educational science.

It is hoped that ten years of public school experience has given the book a practical flavor. No science or art is worthy of pursuit unless it has some relation-direct or indirect-to the every-day pursuits of life. The end of all science should be better and higher living. The science of education should contribute richly to the solution of the every-day problems of the teacher and the parent. This contribution should be in the form of underlying principles, rather than prescriptions and devices. The one who is seeking recipes for doing specific things will seek here in vain.

Parents and other citizens need an interpretation of life. Ꭺ . study of the principles underlying the great problems of education gives certain phases of interpretation in a singularly helpful way. I have been much encouraged by the numbers of students who have spontaneously spoken of the new interpretation of all their studies and of life which came through a study of the science of education. It is unfortunate that education and teaching have been regarded as synonymous terms. It is

hoped that this book may help to modify that notion. In reality, the study of educational principles, the function of education in society, and the history of education are important for lawyers, doctors, ministers, journalists, and parents, as well as for teachers. It is important that these phases of the study of education should come to be regarded as truly liberalizing as languages, literature, science, or mathematics.

During the last quarter of a century an unprecedented amount of attention has been devoted to the scientific study of educational problems. Much research and experimentation have been carried on and the results recorded largely in periodical literature. A rich and interesting literature of education has thus been accumulated. But very inadequate attempts have been made to gather the fruits of the old and the new into convenient hand-books. Consequently much valuable material has been practically inaccessible to beginning students, who are usually obliged to study in large classes. The author has felt keenly the handicap due to the lack of such manuals and hopes that this work may in some measure remove the difficulty which college teachers of education everywhere have recognized.

The chief claim made for this book is that it assembles the main, well-tested results of the scientific study of education from the psychological and biological view-points and presents them in a way which secures continuity, correlation, and a unified interpretation of them. It was originally planned to include a discussion of the sociological phases of education, but the magnitude of the task and the limits of the size of the book have prevented. It is not assumed that all of the possible or valuable principles of education are discussed in this book. Neither is it claimed that they are stated in the most critically logical order. From the stand-point of apperception and interest the order here given has seemed to be justified by experience. Doubtless the order of chapters may be varied considerably with equally satisfactory results. There has been no attempt at making a "comprehensive system" which should. excite only the interest of the "logic chopper." It is believed

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