146 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
SHOULD ORIGINAL INVESTIGATION BE REQUIRED IN 
SOME BRANCH OF (* ""D-STUDY FOR THE DOCTOR 
NEF PEDAGOGY DEGREE? 
BY EARL BARNES. PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, LELAND STANFORD JR. 
UNIVERSITY, CALIFORNIA. 
PERSONALLY, the writer of this paper has no sympathy with academic degrees, and 
he laments their multiplication. But since we cannot yet abandon them, we must 
define the conditions under which they shall be granted. A debased academic degree, 
like a debased silver dollar, can breed only ruin. 
If the doctor’s degree is to be given in pedagogy, it should be given for a grade of 
scholarship equal to that demanded for the doctor’s degree in philosophy —that is, a 
rood undergraduate course of four years plus a three years’ post-graduate course— other- 
wise the degree will fall into deserved disgrace. 
The most of the post-graduate work, I should say, should be in the nature of origi- 
nal investigation, and the results of the investigation should be embodied in a thesis of 
merit. This thesis for the doctor of pedagogy degree might be on any subject connected 
vith educational work. 
Teachers deal with children. In an ultimate analysis that is all they deal with. 
Buildings, organization, books, studies, and systems interest them only because of their 
possible application to children. To grant to a pedagogue the highest academic honors 
to which he can attain, without his knowing the materials with which he is to work, 
would seem to me utterly absurd. Hence I should say the candidate for the doctor's 
degree in pedagogy should pass an examination which would show that he was conver- 
sant with the results of the latest and best studies made on children. 
But if we are to keep pace with other professions, more than this is necessary. The 
candidate for the highest honors in the medical profession to-day must not only have 
read the latest works on anatomy, physiology, medicine, and surgery, but he must have 
actually worked with the real things with which his profession is concerned, in the dis- 
secting-room, the chemical laboratory, and the hospital. The candidate for the degree 
of mechanical engineer must not only have studied the latest works on mechanics, but 
he must have worked with wood and iron in the workshops, and with actual machines. 
The whole educational movement of our times is in the direction of demanding work 
with the realities which are being studied. Hence it would seem that a teacher who is 
a candidate for the highest degree known to his profession, should have studied in a 
scientific spirit the children, with which he is to work through life, under the direction 
of a competent professor. 
This demands an experimental school in connection with the department of educa- 
sion, which shall have the same relation to the department of education that the hos- 
oital has to the medical school. As the New York Evening Post said some years ago : 
“The time must soon come when it will be considered as absurd to have a department 
of education without children as it would now seem to have a department of chemistry 
without a chemical laboratory.” 
The doctor of pedagogy should then, I should say, not only know what has been 
learned up to date in the scientific study of children, but he should have studied chil- 
dren himself under competent direction. These studies need not, I should say, be in 
the nature of original investigation, except in spirit. They need not necessarily add an 
increment to the sum of human knowledge, providing his thesis, dealing with the his- 
torical or administrative aspects of education shows a superior grasp of intellect, and 
the ability to stand alone and reach sound and independent conclusions.