£42 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
oart, or the ‘“ Allgemeine Pédagogik” of the Herbartian, Waitz, or the * Erziehungs 
ind Unterrichts Lehre ” of Benecke. 
The thesis is the proper test of originality and power of research, and for this peda- 
gogy affords a wide range of profitable work. The history of education has rich fields, 
still but imperfectly explored. The question of the relative educational efficiency of 
groups of studies has not yet reached any generally accepted solution. The work so 
well begun by Preyer and Perez admits, under favorable circumstances, of a wide and 
profitable extension. The contents of the youthful intelligence at various stages of 
development will richly repay a systematic investigation, the best means for which still 
await the ingenuity of some explorer. More than eighty years ago Herbart clearly saw 
what the mass of teachers still but dimly apprehend—viz.: the difficulties arising from 
she inability of the mature mind to conceive and adapt itself to the child's point of view 
and mode of approaching subjects—and he proposed a curious expedient for obviating 
shis difficulty in the special case of languages. Can a better and more general solution 
of this problem now be offered ? These are but hints, which need not be multiplied, of 
ines of investigation in which originality may be shown and a philosophical grasp of 
tacts manifested. 
Whether theses for the doctor’s degree in pedagogy should be required to be of such 
originality and excellence as to warrant their publication as contributions to pedagogic 
science, is a question that need not detain us here. 
The question of successful experience in teaching as a requisite for the doctorate pre- 
sents greater difficulties. It will doubtless seem to many that to confer it on merely 
literary requirements, such as have been proposed, would be to ignore the important 
fact that practical skill in applying pedagogical principles to the work of education and 
instruction is the chief reason for the study of pedagogy as a science, that ability to do 
as well as to know is here of paramount importance. Yet, useful as training classes 
anquestionably are when they are attainable by our universities, it is more than doubtful 
whether they afford any reliable test of the real educative efficiency of the candidate for 
she doctorate. Their exercises can at best do no more than afford some indication of 
probable skill in instruction. This question may rightfully demand the careful consid- 
eration of the congress. Meanwhile, it may not be amiss to suggest that where the 
aspirant for the doctor’s degree is not already a person of approved experience in teach- 
ing, it might be expedient, when the literary requirements have been fulfilled, to delay 
the conferring of the degree until skill in the application of principles has been proved 
by the successful management of schools. 
Should the terms here proposed seem to any to be too stringent, they may at least 
suggest the care with which such new degrees need to be guarded, that they may not 
incur the risk of becoming at once contemptible. 
DISCUSSION. 
T. B. StoweLL, Pa.D., Principal of the State Normal and Training School at Pots. 
dam, N. Y.: The discussion of these requirements for the doctorate of pedagogy admits 
of three modes of treatment—the historical, the philosophical, and the practical. 
In the hisforical mode, il would be proper to tabulate the courses of study which have 
led to the degree, or to a degree for whose attainment the requirements are chiefly or 
exclusively pedagogical. It is known to this body that in German and in English uni- 
versities the course in pedagogy is not yet differentiated from the courses in letters, and 
ieads to the doctorate of philosophy, and is accessible to graduates of the gymnasium, 
or to juniors in a first-class American college with the standard of Yale. 
Among our American colleges, the University of Michigan, the first to introduce a 
course in pedagogics into the college curriculum, regards the course as it does any 
course in science which leads to the doctorate of philosophy. Columbia confers the