is that the principles of teaching
have not yet been worked out satisfactorily. Our knowledge of the
operations of the mind develops very slowly and those who carry out
investigations in this field of research are few in number. Their
conclusions are not necessarily related to teaching practice but cover
a wider field. The study of applied psychology with special reference
to the work of the teacher needs to be encouraged since it will serve
to enlarge that body of scientific principle which should form the
basis of teaching work. It is by no means necessary, or even
desirable, that teachers should be expected to spend their time in
psychological research. Their business is to teach and this requires
that they should devote themselves to applying in practice the truths
ascertained and verified by the psychologists. For this purpose it
will be necessary that they should know something of the method by
which these truths are sought and proved. It is also an advantage for
teachers to learn something of the history of education, not as a
series of biographies of so-called Great Educators but rather with the
object of learning what has been suggested and attempted in former
times. Such a knowledge furnishes the teacher with the necessary power
to deal with new proposals and with the many "systems" and "methods"
which are continually arising. Instead of becoming an eager advocate
of every novelty or adopting an attitude of indiscriminate scepticism
he will be in some measure able to estimate the true merit of new
proposals, and his knowledge of mental operations will serve as an
aid in judging whether they have any germ of sound principle. The
alternative plan of leaving the teacher to learn his craft solely by
practice often has the result of confining him too closely to narrow
and stereotyped methods, based either on the imperfect recollection of
his own schooldays, or on the method of some other teacher. Imitation
is cramping and serves to destroy the qualities of initiative and
adaptability which are indispensable to success in teaching.

It will be noted that no extravagant demand is put forward on behalf
of what is called training in teaching. The methods of training
hitherto practised have been based too frequently on the assumption
that it is possible to fashion a teacher from the outside, as it were,
by causing him to attend lectures on psychology and teaching method
and to hear a course of demonstration lessons. Thi