/18 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
tremendous engine to drive the child organism. Five hours a day, five 
Jays in the week, and nine months of the year—history shows no other 
such test of child-nature. It is an irremediable bad, if the child’s health 
or system is in any way seriously impaired ; better let children grow up in 
.dyllic ignorance than vitiate their health. 
These are four lines of child study ; now for two points farther. First, 
‘ot us look ahead and see what is to come of it. As I see it, there are two 
movements in the air at present. One of these, shown in art, govern- 
ment, or other lines, is a “back to nature,” even to primitive peoples and 
ways. This tendency is especially in place in our country, which is with- 
out historic background ; we are freer to accept and use a good idea when 
found. Wagner, it is said, got his fundamental movements from the 
Hungarian folk-songs; and he is reported to have said the next great 
composer would make his fame by working over the negro melodies of 
America. So, the school of the future must be based on original child- 
sature. ‘The other movement is engaged in an effort to reconstruct the 
zrammar-school course. To do this work well, there is needed a union of 
-eachers, who can tell what the people will stand being taxed for, and how 
much can be put in a course, with scientific men who can give insight into 
wider relations. But both of these movements are parts of a far larger 
one which desires that school-hours, curricula, exercise, buildings, etc., 
shall all be reconstructed in accordance with child-nature, the true norm, 
‘1 order to obviate the dangers inherent in our present great machine. If 
‘he showing of bad bodily results made by investigators of European 
schools shall be found to hold good of our schools also, public opinion will 
no longer give them the support they now have. Our public school sys- 
tem is our pride ; we must keep it efficient if we wish it to retain con- 
fidence. 
0HILD STUDY AS THE BASIS OF PEDAGOGY. 
ABSTRACT OF PAPER BY WILLIAM H. BURNHAM, CLARK UNIVERSITY, 
WORCESTER, MASS. 
I Do not deem it necessary to maintain the thesis involved in my sub- 
ject, namely, that the study of children 4s the basis of pedagogy ; for if 
there be any pedagogy, what else could be the basis of it ? I wish, rather, 
to recount very briefly some of the pedagogical principles that seem 
already to have been settled by child study. And when I speak of the 
study of children, I use the word in the broadest way. Teachers and 
psychologists are by no means the only ones who have studied children. 
Some of the most important studies have been made by physicians, neu- 
vologists, and anthropologists. The child study upon which pedagogy is 
based should include every scientific study, wherever made, relating to a