Educational Progress for 1907

Abstract

Those of us who believe that there exists a profession of education, just as there exist professions of law and medicine, must also believe that such a profession is based on a science of education, on a body of ascertained fact, which is the basis of actual practice. This mass of knowledge cannot be, education any more than any other profession, a fixed quantity; but must be continually a state of flux, taking itself new material, discarding that which has been found valueless, or modifying concepts the light of newly discovered truth. Were this not the case there would be little hope for the future of our profession; for, under the rapidly changing conditions of modern life, a profession which cannot keep itself in touch, so to speak, which does not possess within itself the power of adaptability, will soon cease to fulfil its function and pass, as Carlyle put its, into the dustbin of history. Progress educational science must come, as progress any science must come, from experience. Between the organized body of accepted practice and the wholly unknown methods of the future lies the borderland of experiment: the skirmish line, as it were, of progress. Here or there, perhaps owing to particu1 A report by the Committee on Educational Progress of the Harvard Teachers' Association, read at the annual meeting of the association Cambridge, March 7, I908. Committee: Charles R. Allen, New Bedford High School, New Bedford, Mass., chairman; Henry W. Holnes, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., secretary; Laura Fisher, kindergarten, Boston, Mass.; Florence E. Leadbetter, Roxbury High School, Boston, Mass.; Alice E. Dickinson, Bridgewater State Normal School, Bridgewater, Mass.; Willard Reed, Brown and Nichols School, Cambridge, Mass.; William T. Foster, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine; Charles R. Breck, superintendent, Methuen, Mass.; John W. Wood, Rindge Manual Training School, Cambridge, Mass.; Clair Persons, superintendent, Westerly, R. I.