COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY ERNEST CARROLL MOORE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 215.12 563756 The Athenæum Press PREFACE This volume owes its inception to my efforts to teach college students and teachers how to study. As I have attempted year after year to discuss with my classes the ways and means of performing the student's work, the conviction has grown upon me that one of the greatest needs both of teachers and of students at present is an elementary knowledge of the philosophy of education. Two conclusions have shaped themselves from this conviction, which stand out above all the rest. The first is that education is one and the same process in all grades of schools, and that the activities which we learn to perform with the help and guidance of teachers are the very activities which we shall have to continue to perform until we die. The second is that the confusion as to the nature of their undertaking, which hangs like a thick cloud about the efforts of teachers and students, cannot be dissipated save by an attempt to answer the question, What is knowledge? The theory of knowledge has long been the battle ground of contending philosophical armies. It was the vital question of the great apostles of education, Socrates and Plato, before it became the private property of highly technical philosophical schools. It must once more, I believe, become one of the chief concerns of educators. [v] |