hows us that progress
is not made by repudiating the lessons of experience. Theory is the last
word, not the first. Theory should explain: it should take successful
practice and find out what principles condition its efficiency; and if
these principles are inconsistent with those heretofore held, it is the
theory that should be modified to suit the facts, not the facts to suit
the theory.

My opponents may point to medicine as a possible example of the opposite
procedure. And yet if there is anything that the history of medical
science demonstrates, it is that the first cues to new discoveries were
made in the field of practice. Lymph therapy, which is one of the
triumphs of modern medicine, was discovered empirically. It was an
accident of practice, a blind procedure of trial and success that led to
Jenner's discovery of the virtues of vaccination. A century passed
before theory adequately explained the phenomenon, and opened the way to
those wider applications of the principle that have done so much to
reduce the ravages of disease.

The value of theory, I repeat, is to explain successful practice and to
generalize experience in broad and comprehensive principles which can be
easily held in mind, and from which inferences for further new and
effective practices may be derived. We have a small body of sound
principles in education to-day,--a body of principles that are
thoroughly consistent with successful practice. But the sort of
principles that are put forth as the last words of educational theory
are often far from sound. Personally I firmly believe that a vast amount
of damage is being done to children by the application of fallacious
principles which, because they emanate from high authority, obtain an
artificial validity in the minds of teachers in service.

I cannot understand why, when an educational experiment fails
lamentably, it is not rejected as a failure. And yet you and I know a
number of instances where certain educational experiments that have
undeniably reversed the hypotheses of those who initiated them are
excused on the ground that conditions were not favorable. That, it seems
to me, should tell the whole story, for precisely what we need in
educational practice is a body of doctrine that will work where
conditions _are_ unfavorable. We are told that the successful
application of mooted theories depends upon the proper kind of teachers.
I maintain that the most effective sort of theory is the s