Educational psychology.

Abstract

Educational Psychology at First the Handmaiden of Educational Reform.-From the beginning of the modern period there has been a close connection between psychology and education. The early educational reformers appealed to psychological principles in support of their proposals-as indeed they do today. vVe must note, however, that all too often the appeal was to a psychology specially tailored to fit the theory. Strongly convinced that they had a vast improvement to make in education, Komensky, Pestalozzi, Rousseau.L and other great prophets of educational advance looked about them for the facts that would support their beloved projects.And here became manifest the almost fatal limitation of all armchair theorizing-one can find support for almost any theory if one is allowed to select the facts. If, for example, one sincerely believes in the unspoiled innocence of the child, as did Rousseau, one ex-..--... . ~-------....'" Great psychologist that he was (and great educator, also). Herbart none the less failed to realize the extent to which the school was a magnificent laboratory in which to test the truth or error of the psychology.* The same evolution seems to be taking place in other parts of applied psychology. The earlier dependence of applied psychology upon general theory is greatly lessened; the applied fields tend to develop theories of their own appropriate to the facts with which they have to deal. The relationship between general and applied psychology will, to be sure, always remain intimate, but th~day is not far distant, apparently, when a major task of general psychology W1U be to correlate and assimilate the facts discovered in the several applied fields.* None the less, children-and the anthropoids--do sometimes (tape" what they see and hear, and by so doing learn.