Measurement of the method. ing respectively. Other scales to measure ability in the several high school subjects may be expected soon. Studies are also being made in several universities to determine the relative importance of the numerous factors in methods of teaching. This is done by conducting experiments with hundreds or thousands of children to find out by the most accurate measurement yet devised the amount of progress in learning that is wholly due to the presence of some one factor of method in the technique of class-room exercises. Educational psychology has revealed the qualitative significance of many of the single elements in the very complex procedure that we have called a 'method of teaching,' and this new type of research aims to determine the quantitative significance of each of these several elements of method as factors in the production of abilities. A. Duncan Yocum of the University of Pennsylvania has formulated a considerable number of tests, and, by preliminary experimentation, has determined the conditions under which they may with a high degree of accuracy be given to groups of students engaged in actual school work under ordinary class-room conditions. His students have made a number of tentative, but suggestive studies, which have not yet been published. Milo B. Hillegas of Columbia University and others are engaged on certain aspects of this general type of research. There is reason, therefore, to believe that we may sometime be able to measure with as much accuracy the efficiency of well-defined educational processes as we are now able to measure educational products. If this can be attained, the technique of class-room teach Fig. 56.-Indian house constructed in Dewey's experimental school by children between seven and eight years of age, while studying the development of primitive life. (Reproduced from the Elementary School Record by permission of the University of Chicago Press.) 13 Then the carelessly dressed gentlemane stepped lightly into Warren's carriage and held out a ished behind the bushes and the car reage moved along down the driveway. The audience of passers-by which had Then the carelessly dressed gentleman stepped lightly into Warren's carrige and. Then the carelessly dressed gentlemen stepped lightly into Warren's carriage and This Fig. 57. Specimen No. 13 taken from the "Thorndike Writing Scale.' specimen constitutes the approximate quality of handwriting that may reasonably be expected of pupils in the seventh or eighth grade. In the complete scale the specimens are numbered from 4 to 18. ing and of educational supervision will begin to rest on a really scientific basis. Moreover, by the use of the improved statistical method and of scales, studies of greatly increased value have been made of fatigue, retardation, elimination, Other mental and of other social and mental phenomena of individual and social children. And in 1911, with the reports of Paul H. measurements, Hanus of Harvard University and Ernest C. Moore of Yale University upon the school systems of Montclair and East Orange, New Jersey, there began to be instituted those measurements and consequent criticisms and 'edof whole school systems, known as 'educational surveys.' surveys.' These scientific reports have been extended to the educational work of a large number of cities and states throughout the Union. They are intended to enable school officers and patrons to comprehend with more definiteness the absolute, as well as the relative, achievements of their children. ucational New attitude Education and the Theory of Evolution.-A most toward intellicharacteristic influence in education to-day has come gence. through the theory of evolution of Darwin (Fig. 51). This fruitful hypothesis came to be generally accepted during the last quarter of the nineteenth century as the guiding principle of education, and has constantly increased the illumination it has shed upon the educational process. It has given an entirely new meaning to education, and has greatly modified the course of study and revolutionized the method of approaching educational problems. It has wrought very much the same changes in the treatment of intelligence that it did in the biologi- Studies of mental developcal sciences. Consciousness is no longer regarded as a ment in the fixed set of entities, but as a developmental process. In- dividual. race and in Change in imagery and vocabulary. stead of classifying and cataloging mental processes in fixed groups, efforts are made to study their growth from the standpoint both of the race and of the individual. Studies of mental development in the race, begun by Darwin's Descent of Man, which recognized 'sexual' and 'social selection,' as well as 'natural selection,' have been continued by numerous investigators, and equally extensive researches have also been latterly made in genetic psychology, child study, mental development, and adolescence. Both observation and experimentation have been introduced into the study of mental processes. Even more revolutionary than this actual increase in knowledge, however, is the change that has taken place in the conception, imagery, and terminology of education. Writers upon education constantly employ the language of evolution. Educational discussions are now filled with such terms as 'variation,' 'selection,' ‘adjustment,' and 'adaptation,' and such concepts dominate all educational thinking. If educational leaders of half a century ago could be present to-day at a gathering of educational thinkers, they would find themselves listening to what would seem to them almost a foreign language. Enlarging Conceptions of the Function of Education.Such are a few of the chief tendencies and advances that are being made in education to-day. There is also a great variety of other educational movements, almost too numerous to be mentioned. In the organization and administration of the public schools there is a decided tendency toward centralization in educational activities, Centralization; corresponding to the centralization in industrial and political affairs. The United States Bureau of Educa |