The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-07-20
CHILD INSTINCT STUDIED.
PAPER BEFORE THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION
By Earl Barnes-ResuIts Reduced from
 Averaged Papers.

Averaged Papers.
 "A Study Based on the Children of State, was the title of a paper read be fore the Department of Trial Study at tbe meeting of the National Education al association in Boston by Earl Barnes of Philadelphia, lecturer of the Amer can Society for the Extension of Uni versity Teaching. MT. Barnes said in part: =
 When explorers first came to Ameri- ca each hoped to do some great new thing; one would discover a road to h. dia another a northwest passage and a third the fountain of perpetual youth. After time these visions of discovery were superseded by common sense recognition os the value and necessity of definitely mapping the coast line and surveying the interior of the country. The few gentlemen adventurers were followed by a host in inquiring workers. Iii child study we have had much this sane experience. The early gentlemen adventurers cared only for new invest;- gations. and they pridcd themselves most of all on the number of theIr data. At present. child study workers are lookt1g, not for new lines If investiga- tion, but for truthful lines not for great masses of data. but for just enough. facts to settle Co lelusions; Tot for startling generalizations, but for true on.s. It is being steadily recognized that here, as in all branches Of natural science, comparative studies will yield valuable results; and Siiat to set com- par.s ons at their best and to settle the gene ralizations to wkich they iagiti- xnptely lead, the same study must often be repeated again and again. Our facts are at present in much the same condi- tion that the facts of polilicat and otll- CT institutional activities were in four or five years after Johns Hopkins be gan her investigations and publications Much IS asserted. little is settled: and there are few competent critics.
 EDUCATION BUREAU NEEDED.
 The definite studies we need are labo- rious and expensive and for their sue cessful prosecution we increasingly need the support of city, state and na- tional departments of pedagogical in vestigation. If we could have in this country a central bureau of investiga- tion which would do for the science of education, through the direct study of children, what the fish commission has done for the study of fishes of America . it would greatly strengthen the work of a individual Investigators everywhere. At present the national government is spending more money on studies of fishes and reindeer than on the study of it's children.
 A TEST CONSERVATION
 In the first place. We might hope through such multiplied data to estab- fish fundamental conclusions touching the points involved in the investigation Of course, we all know that merely multiplying ogservations does not ne- cessarily increase the certainty of our conclusions. With any good test it is possible to reach a limit beyond which variations do not appear if conditions remain constant. In most of our stud- les so far made two hundred papers by boys of each age and an equal number by girls give us returns that remain constane, when we add more papers from the schools or homes. To illust- rate the uselessness of accommodating observations beyond 8 certain point I have just worked over one thousand papers all written by eleven-y year-old girls from Hudson county, New Jersey. The girls had written answers to the rwell-known test on ideals: What per- son whom you have known or of whom you have heard or read would you most wish to be like? Why? We divided the papers into ten packages of one hundred each, and then classified the answers to see what per cent. chose an acquaintance, what per cent. charac- ter in public life, and what per cent, chose some man or boy as an ideal. Z
 The results are sufficiently uniform to Justify our statement that for all simi- lar work two hundred papers of each age and sex make us sufficient basis for safe generalization. If, however, we further combine, the results so as to < have five hundred papers in each pack age, the results from the two sets are exactly the same. We have thirty per cent. of acquaintances, seventy per cent, of characters from public life, and fifty-four per cent. of the opposite sex chosen in each lot. Thus we see that there is a point beyond which it is use less to multiply data as the results will remain unchanged. \ DIFFERENT LINES OF GROWTH.
 But the different rapidity with whic ' the lines of growth develop is as strik- ing as the general agreement in tenden- cies. If in any community many of the boys choose acquaintance ideals the same holds true of the girls; if many efght-year-old children in a city choose public characters a corresponding pro portion of the ten-year-old children for that place do the same. In such stud les we are really dealing with the gene ral social intelligence of the community, that subtle thing which it is the aim of all forms of education to mould and which at the same time largely deter mines the education which is possible for the.locality Along with the general laws established by the massing of such collections of data there. is re- yeaIed the peculiar qualities of each community represented. Local feeling is, however, so sensitive in America that at present it seems almost impossi- bIe to discuss the ble to discuss the 70 localities Still