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The basis of this book is a series of lectures, delivered during the winter session of 1898, on the practice of education. It would hardly, however, have been written, it would certainly not have been published, but for the welcome extended by both critics and general readers to the volume edited by me and published in 1897 under the title of Teaching and Organisation, which was an attempt to cover the whole of the ordinary field of education in chapters written by specialists who are also experts, teachers as well as teachers of special subjects.

When Teaching and Organisation first appeared, the value of the several chapters was acknowledged generously, but some critics of unquestionable authority thought that the book suffered somewhat, in spite of the Editor’s efforts, from lack of a common point of view, of organic interconnexion.

Common Sense in Education does not presume to take the place of Teaching and Organisation. It is meant rather to serve as preliminary to it, as an introduction to the systematic study of education, less perplexing because more uniform, being the record of the experience and observations of one person, whose business it is to form an opinion about teaching and teachers in both primary and secondary grades, and who is concerned particularly to discover what things most profitably occupy the attention of the teacher at the beginning of his career. With all its obvious imperfections, it has at all events been written from one point of view.

It is not too much to say that every teacher and every one concerned in education should have some acquaintance with most of the subjects broached or discussed in the following pages; they are all directly or indirectly related to the practice and organisation of education as teaching.

An endeavour has been made throughout to keep discussion as clear as possible from the formalism that comes of attempts to systematise a science before it has passed out of the empirical stage, and if technical language is anywhere used, it is used because it could not well have been avoided. I have always had before me the warning not to complicate simple things by giving them hard names. A hard name is usually a step farther in abstraction, and argument on abstractions is argument in vacuo, safe only so long as we do not forget that its conclusions are to be accepted without qualification in vacuo only.

One word I should like to say in support of the expert against the specialist. In these days of subdivision of labour and divided interests we are sadly exposed to bullying at the hands of the patrons of special “subjects”. It is the business of teachers and of all practical friends of education to defend jealously the general and liberal gymnastic against the attacks of those who, interested in a particular study or impressed by the immediate practical results of a particular pursuit, would monopolise with it the greater part of the school Time Table. A school Time Table, like all syllabuses, is best when it is simplest, for excessive prescription and definition of duty are the refuge of helplessness and pedantry. The more minutely the subjects of school work are delimited, the less copiously and effectually will pupils be taught.

I am indebted to many friends and friendly critics for hints embodied in the pages that follow, to so many that I dare not print their names. I cannot, however, evade the duty of thanking my friend and former pupil Mr. R. Delaney for his equal kindness and skill in the compilation of my index.

P.A. BARNETT
June 1899

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