Educational and School Science¹

Abstract

THE Educational Science Section of the British Association, which attains its majority this year, was established to consolidate the claims staked out by workers in different educational provinces, and promote common interest in their development as a whole. As Prof. H. E. Armstrong explained at the opening meeting, it was proposed to devote attention to education in all its branches with the object of introducing scientific conceptions into every sphere of educational activity; that is, conceptions which imply such exact and profitable treatment of a subject as should come from full knowledge. Educational science signifies, however, much more than methods of teaching or the theory of the curriculum. It involves conditions of physical, mental, and moral health, with their manifold types and variations, and the determination of the most appropriate, and therefore most effective, factors of growth at every stage of development. In its present stage educational science must be largely empirical, but in this respect it does not differ from meteorology, for example; and the laws which govern the perpetually varying contents and conditions of a child's mind are not much less precisely known or applied than those by which atmospheric changes are determined.