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INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION.
THE CANDIDATE FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF
PEPAGOGY SHOULD BE ABLE TO MAKE ORIGINAL
INVESTIGATIONS IN EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY.
BY EDGAR DUBS SHIMER, SCHOOL OF PEDAGOGY, UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY
OF NEW YORK.
Since pedagogy is one of the fields of applied psychology, it is reasonable to assume
shat a candidate for the degree of doctor of pedagogy can have no adequate grasp of his
subject without an intimate laboratory knowledge in experimental psychological work.
fle should not only know all the chief methods of research, but also be able to observe
‘or himself all the more important phenomena of mind, and to aid simple introspection,
sxtrospection, and ejection by scientific variation of one condition after another until the
lefinite influence of each factor in the problem has been traced.
Psychology is not specially interested in pedagogy. It seeks to keep conditions nat-
aral ; pedagogy seeks to superinduce new conditions in its efforts after an ethical ideal.
The student of pedagogy must therefore go down to the fundamental science, and learn
at first hand the facts of mental life, good, bad, and indifferent, before he can select
chose that are desirable, and contrive the means of reaching ends in the best and quick-
sst way ; or, in other words, establish educational values in school curricula.
To know what psychical facts are, how to get at them, record and classify them, to
Jetermine what is normal, how to study mental defect, and to make systematic measure-
ments so that the child mind may be studied as an object of natural science, are matters
2f more than simple introspection or commonplace observation.
Our laboratories and journals show that exact methods have been applied to mental
investigations. To know in the main what has been done and is doing in this direction,
the candidate for the degree of doctor of pedagogy should be required to familiarize
himself with the standards in the literature of the subject, to sift what is current, and
to verify results experimentally.
Slowly but surely the results of experimental physiological psychology have been
carried over into pedagogy. Yet there are some teachers of prominence and of ac-
knowledged success who see no profit for education in psychologic experiment, On
every possible occasion they deny that the so-called new psychology has brought about
any changes in education, or that it has anything of value to offer. Let us consider
chis.
The play instinct has long been recognized as one of the strongest instincts of child-
hood, but it has only lately been held that play is the most serious business of a child’s
life. As a direct outgrowth of the experimental study of the psychology of play, the
kindergarten has come into existence with its multiform curriculum for training sense,
refining the emotions, and regulating the will. The spirit of this new institution has
permeated the higher schools; corporal punishment has largely disappeared, and greater
efforts are made to give the pupil opportunity for self-activity and self-regulation both
as to curriculum and discipline.
The experimental study of sense-perception, especially in the intuition of space, has
developed a new theory of vision, and brought out the paramount use of touch in edu-
cation, culminating through the handling of objects in natural science observation
lessons, through plaiting, weaving, folding, modeling, making, painting, drawing. and
the like, into fuil-fledged manual training, against the introduction of which into the
zsurriculum conservatism has struggled and is vet struggling in vain. Modeling and
