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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE AIM OF EDUCATION It seems proper that non-professional teachers, who though they cannot be regarded as regulars in the great army of teachers are yet its most important auxiliaries, should know something of educational tendencies, of the aim of education. At least, they will not be content like mere attendants to follow in the track of the regulars without intelligence or with dumb incuriosity. They will seek to know how far the advance has been pushed and what is the destination. Whither are we going? A knowledge of the goal we are striving for will affect the means by which we hope to reach it. What is the goal of education ? ' We, look you, boast ourselves to be far better than our fathers,' says a character in the ' Odyssey.' But when you read the history of educational ideals and survey the maelstrom of theories that the student of education must navigate, when you find the most contrary doctrines preached in the most positive terms, you may well be excused for doubting whether in the matter of educational aim we are any nearer the truth than our fathers. ' The greatest and most difficult problem to which aman can devote himself is that of Education,' says Kant; and the greatest intellects of nearly all periods have tried to enunciate some theory that would harmonise with the ideals current in their time. It is precisely because ideals change that new theories of education are evolved, and there is little certainty that the commonly accepted doctrines of the age of steam and motor-cars will satisfy the idealists of the age of marconigrams and aeroplanes It is something to be thankful for that common sense usually rides roughshod over fine distinctions, and it may be safely asserted that the average parent does not greatly concern himself with inqu...