The History of Education as a Professional Subject (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from The History of Education as a Professional Subject The President and Secretary of this society have promised me immunity. Accordingly I intend to speak frankly of present conditions. First of all certain noteworthy facts claim attention. Everybody believes in education, yet few believe in studying it. Education represents a universal interest like religion, politics and art, yet few are interested in scientific pedagogy. The control and direction of education are of transcendent importance, and yet the subject which treats of this control and the methods of its direction has seldom until recently had an independent and dignified place in the university curriculum. In Germany, the classic land of education, pedagogy has long sat as a drudge at the academic hearth, and its highest recognition in the great universities has usually been as the handmaid of philosophy. In this country the recognition has sometimes been greater, but in general the educational department has a place of minor importance, and the work of the department is. as investigation shows, often misunderstood and sometimes despised. The financial emolument, which in this country is wont to be the correlative of the dignity and esteem in which a subject is held, has usually been, among the meagre salaries of all academic teachers, still more meagre. Both literally and figuratively, in the words of the Italian proverb, "pedagogy is always poor and naked." Probably there are many reasons for this low esteem of pedagogy. The subject is new. Only recently have scientific methods been applied to the study of education. And again this is a field where all, not only teachers but laymen, have opinions. Everybody has an educational creed. One believes in the system by which one was himself educated or else an opposite system. Any subject of which everyone knows something and nobody knows much is not likely to be regarded as the special field of experts. This relatively low academic standing of our subject, however, would not perhaps be of special significance were it not that pedagogy seems to be conscious of her shame. This is illustrated in many ways. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.