are constantly expressed and re-expressed, shows among other things
that reasonable, or practically untried education has certain principles
which are as axiomatic as those of mathematics. Every reasonable
thinking man must as certainly discover anew these pedagogical
principles, as he must discover anew the relation between the angles of
a triangle. Spencer's book it is true has not laid again the foundation
of education. It can rather be called the crown of the edifice founded
by Montaigne, Locke, Rousseau, and the great German specialists in
pedagogy. What is an absolutely novel factor in our times is the study
of the psychology of the child, and the system of education that has
developed from it.
In England, through the scientist Darwin, this new study of the
psychology of the child was inaugurated. In Germany, Preyer contributed
to its extension. He has done so partly by a comprehensive study of
children's language, partly by collecting recollections of childhood on
the part of the adult. Finally he experimented directly on the child,
investigating his physical and psychical fatigue and endurance,
acuteness of sensation, power, speed, and exactness in carrying out
physical and mental tasks. He has studied his capacity of attention in
emotions and in ideas at different periods of life. He has studied the
speech of children, association of ideas in children, etc. During the
study of the psychology of the child, scholars began to substitute for
this term the expression "genetic psychology." For it was found that the
big-genetic principle was valid for the development both of the psychic
and the physical life. This principle means that the history of
the species is repeated in the history of the individual; a truth
substantiated in other spheres; in philology for example. The psychology
of the child is of the same significance for general psychology as
embryology is for anatomy. On the other hand, the description of savage
peoples, of peoples in a natural condition, such as we find in Spencer's
Descriptive Sociology or Weitz's Anthropology is extremely instructive
for a right conception of the psychology of the child.
It is in this kind of psychological investigation that the greatest
progress has been made in this century. In the great publication,
Zeitschrift fur psychologie, etc., there began in 1894 a special
department for the psychology of children and the psychology of
education. In 1898, there were as many as one hundred and six essays
devoted to this subject, and they are constantly increasing.
In the chief civilised countries this investigation has many
distinguished pioneers, such as Prof. Wundt, Prof. T. H. Ribot, and
others. In Germany this subject has its most important organ in the
journal mentioned above. It numbers among its collaborators some of the
most distinguished German physiologists and psychologists. As related to
the same subject must be mentioned Wundt's Philosophischen Studien, and
partly the Vierteljahrschrift fur Wissenschaftlichie Philosophie. In
France, there was founded in 1894, the Annee Psychologique, edited
by Binet and Beaunis, and also the Bibliotheque de Pedagogie et de
Psychologie, edited by Binet. In England there are the journals, Mind
and Brain.
Special laboratories for experimental psychology with psychological
apparatus and methods of research are found in many places. In Germany
the first to be founded was that of Wundt in the year 1878 at Leipzig.
France has a laboratory for experimental psychology at Paris, in the
Sorbonne, whose director is Binet; Italy, one in Rome. In America
experimental psychology is zealously pursued. As early as 1894,
there were in that country twenty-seven laboratories for experimental
psychology and four journals. There should also be mentioned the
societies for child psychology. Recently one has been founded in
Germany, others before this time have been at work in England and
America.
A whole series of investigations carried out in Kraepelin's laboratory
in Heidelberg are of the greatest value for determining what the brain
can do in the way of work and impressions.
An English specialist has maintained that the future, thanks to the
modern school system, will be able to get along without originally
creative men, because the receptive activities of modern man will
absorb the cooperative powers of the brain to the disadvantage of
the productive powers. And even if this were not a universally valid
statement but only expressed a physiological certainty, people will some
day perhaps cease filing down man's brain by that sandpapering process
called a school curriculum.
A champion of the transformation of pedagogy into a psycho-physiological
science is to be found in Sweden in the person of Prof. Hjalmar Oehrwal
who has discussed in his essays native and foreign discoveries in
the field of psychology. One of his conclusions is that the so-called
technical exercises, gymnastics, manual training, sloyd, and the like,
are not, as they are erroneously called, a relaxation from mental
overstrain by change in work, but simply a new form of brain fatigue.
All work, he finds, done under conditions of fatigue is uneconomic
whether one regards the quantity produced or its value as an exercise.
Rest should be nothing more than rest,--freedom to do only what one
wants to, or to do nothing at all. As to fear, he proves, following
Binet's investigation in this subject, how corporal discipline, threats,
and ridicule lead to cowardice; how all of these methods are to be
rejected because they are depressing and tend to a diminution of
energy. He shows, moreover, how fear can be overcome progressively,
by strengthening the nervous system and in that way strengthening
the character. This result comes about partly when all unnecessary
terrorising is avoided, partly when children are accustomed to bear
calmly and quietly the inevitable unpleasantnesses of danger.
Prof. Axel Key's investigations on school children have won
international recognition. In Sweden they have supplied the most
significant material up to the present time for determining the
influence of studies on physical development and the results of
intellectual overstrain.
It is to be hoped that when through empirical investigation we begin to
get acquainted with the real nature of children, the school and the home
will be freed from absurd notions about the character and needs of the
child, those absurd notions which now cause painful cases of physical
and psychical maltreatment, still called by conscientious and thinking
human beings in schools and in homes, education.
By Helen Key
The Century of the Child
Cr. 8vo. With Frontispiece. Net, $1.50
CONTENTS: The Right of the Child to Choose His Parents, The Unborn Race
and Woman's Work, Education, Homelessness, Soul Murder in the Schools,
The School of the Future, Religious Instruction, Child Labor and the
Crimes of Children. This book has gone through more than twenty German
Editions and has been published in several European countries. "A
powerful book."--N. Y. Times.
The Education of the Child
Reprinted from the Authorized American Edition of "The Century of the
Child," With Introductory Note by EDWARD BOK.
Cr. 8vo. Net 75 cents
"Nothing finer on the wise education of the child has ever been brought
into print. To me this chapter is a perfect classic; it points the way
straight for every parent, and it should find a place in every home in
America where there is a child."--EDWARD BOK, Editor of the Ladies' Home
Journal.
Love and Marriage Cr. 8vo
Ellen Key is gradually taking a hold upon the reading public of this
country commensurate with the enlightenment of her views. In Europe and
particularly in her own native Sweden her name holds an honored place as
a representative of progressive thought.
New York G. P. Putnam's Sons London
Clever, original, and fascinating The Lost Art of Reading Mount Tom
Edition New Edition in Two Volumes
I. The Child and the Book
A Manual for Parents and for Teachers in Schools and Colleges
II. The Lost Art of Reading or, The Man and The Book
Two Volumes, Crown 8vo. Sold separately. Each net, $1,50
By Gerald Stanley Lee
"I must express with your connivance the joy I have had, the enthusiasm
I have felt, in gloating over every page of what I believe is the most
brilliant book of any season since Carlyle's and Emerson's pens were
laid aside. The title does not hint at any more than a fraction of
the contents. It is a highly original critique of philistinism and
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in general. It is full of humor, rich in style, and eccentric in form
and all suffused with the perfervid genius of a man who is not merely
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longer whine that we have no worthy successors to the old Brahminical
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"I have been reading with wonder and laughter and with loud cheers. It
is the word of all words that needed to be spoken just now. It makes
me believe that after all we have n't a great kindergarten about us
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conceive that the date of the publication of this book may well be the
date of the moral and intellectual renaissance for which we have long
been scanning the horizon."--WM. SLOANE KENNEDY in Boston Transcript.