| Summary: | "During the last ten years the foundations for the teaching and learning of the elementary-school subjects have changed from experience and opinion to experiment and science. This is true particularly of the subjects of reading, arithmetic, handwriting, and spelling. It is true in part for language, but only to a small extent for the subjects of history, geography, general science, art, home economics, and manual training. It is the purpose of this book to give teachers and those interested in the scientific study of education an introduction to the scientific studies which have given us this new foundation for the psychology of the elementary-school subjects. Most of these studies have hitherto appeared only in professional journals where they are inaccessible to the majority of teachers. They also lack organization, and give the reader the impression of a vast aggregation of facts having little connection with each other. Every so often it is necessary to summarize and interpret the accumulation of scientific research, to take our bearings anew, to find out how far we have progressed, and to take a view of the new fields which lie ahead of us. This was done in 1916 by Professor Freeman in his "Psychology of the Common Branches." Because of the small, amount of scientific literature existing at that time most of his discussion was necessarily limited to general principles. It was again done in 1919 by Professor Starch in the third part of his "Educational Psychology." Since then, separate books and monographs have appeared on reading and arithmetic, but no single book has brought to the reader the results of the researches on all or most of the elementary-school subjects. I have tried to do this for the subjects of reading, arithmetic, handwriting, spelling, language, history, and geography"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
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