Suggestions of Modern Science Concerning Education
Foreword
Ethel Sturges Dummer
THE Joint Committee on Education was formed to arouse an intelligent interest in public schools. Its work was threefold: to secure newspaper publicity for educational topics, to encourage school visiting based on recent school surveys and a study of experimental schools, and to seek what new light on the subject might be obtained from modern science.
Some mothers whose daily care of little children during the years when they were acquiring knowledge and developing their powers naturally, instinctively, were convinced that school hampered rather than helped them. They argued — if "sensation tends toward motion," why, during the years when life is largely sensation, do we screw our children into desks five hours a day ; if variety of type is desirable, why strive for uniformity; if surplus energy is necessary to further evolution, why not conserve that wonderful superabundant vitality of childhood ? Might not biology, psychology, psy-
( vi) -chopathology, sociology offer suggestions concerning a school program which should secure physical, mental and moral health, and the development of individual initiative and creative power?
The committee feel in duty bound to share with all parents and teachers the remarkable series of papers written in response to their need.
E.S.D.
For the Committee.
CHICAGO, 1917.
