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INTRODUCTORY
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no little of it I believe to be positively mischievous. But the study of psychology, in the broadest meaning of that term, as the science of human mental life, especially in the genetic way; the study of the history of education, as it sets forth the changing and developing convictions and practises of the race touching the needs of the educational process and the best means of satisfying them; the study of the lives and experiments, and of the results of the experiments, of the few men and women whose work has been epoch-making in education; the study, either by reading or at first hand of the social and educational conditions and needs of our own land and day—all these and other closely allied studies constitute the basis of experience on which we must try to place our philosophy of education, if we expect it to win and keep the confidence and respect of others, not to say our own confidence and respect.

But I have announced my topic as "The Teacher's Practical Philosophy." I might almost equally well have used the word "ethical," or the word "moral" to express my intention. For the sphere of the ethical or moral is the practical; and in the broadest and best meaning of the words, the teacher's practical philosophy is the moral philosophy which deals with the principles of conduct that underlie the teacher's work. Education, as the professional teacher undertakes it, is a species