Need for a Comprehensive Restatement of Educational Theory

Abstract

Among the notable contributions made by the nineteenth century to the twentieth are two that must always have a profound importance for educational thought and practice. The first of these is the illuminating thought of John Fiske that the human species has reached its supreme position in the evolutionary scale very largely through the gradual lengthening of the period of infancy. The other is the equally significant thought, which has been given its most convincing statement by John Dewey, that the ideal of education is social insight, social interest, and social executive power-the school having no rational end or aim apart from the thought o,f participation in social life. As principles of interpretation or standards of value, these two thoughts are now accepted by the most progressive students of education as fundamental. The first furnishes the startingpoint for modern genetic psychology with its rationalizing influence upon method in education. The second furnishes an intelligible end or aim which vitalizes educational theory and gives substance and motive to the work of the school. With two conceptions so comprehensive and far-reaching in their application, it might reasonably have been expected that before now we should have a philosophical exposition of educational theory adequate to the demands of twentieth-century life and culture. Every important enlargement of the intellectual horizon and every significant change in social conditions, of course, makes necessary both a restatement of educational theory and a reorganization of educational practice. The varied and radical character of the intellectual and social movements of the