56 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



" The Schools ! " Nine out of ten, I suppose, of those who would assent 

 to my contention, would turn automatically in this direction. 



To forestall doubt about my just appraisement of the school, the 

 college, the university, in educating the young, I refer to an article 

 ("Feeling in the Interpretation of Nature," The Popular Science 

 Monthly, August, 1911) in which I have taken the ground that these 

 instruments ought to and could do vastly more than they do toward 

 making the people appreciative of and intelligent toward nature. Here 

 I would insist that no matter how efficiently and broadly the tasks of 

 institutional instruction might be performed, they would still have to 

 be extensively supplemented before the real saving power of knowledge 

 could be realized. This supplementing would have to be done in two 

 places particularly: In the home, for young children before school age 

 is reached; and for grown-ups after the school period is passed. 



Our eyes must be opened in some way to the fact that education, 

 taken in the full sweep of its meaning, is too life-and-death a matter 

 for us as a nation to be left to the formalities of the schoolroom, the 

 university lecture hall and the laboratory, even though these be excellent 

 beyond the possibility of improvement. This truth is being forced 

 upon us at a few points. As one instance, it is becoming clear that 

 wider instruction on sex matters is imperative, and that parents and the 

 home primarily, and the school secondarily, must be looked to for the 

 broader, better knowledge. Again the simply incalculable power of the 

 press and the speaker's platform for educating and influencing the 

 voting part of the population are recognized and resorted to upon oc- 

 casion. 



I may now state my views summarily: Biological science, as now 

 developed, contains numerous facts and generalizations of very great 

 moment to the higher intellectual and spiritual life of the people gen- 

 erally. The essence of these can be stated in language readily com- 

 prehensive to persons of average intelligence and education. Most, if 

 not all, the facts and generalizations are of such nature as to make 

 their strongest appeal to the majority of people only from their bear- 

 ings on problems of personal experience, so that in the nature of the 

 case they can be of living interest and significance to such persons only 

 after the period of formal schooling is past and the business of actual 

 living is on. Instruction concerning them must, consequently, be given 

 by other means than the school. Some of the most important instru- 

 mentalities for such instruction are the botanical and zoological garden, 

 the natural history museum, the aquarium, the library, the lecture plat- 

 form and, in some ways most important of all, the public press. 



And now for the culminating point: In the main the instruction 

 given through all these instrumentalities must be by professional biol- 

 ogists. It will never be done well, that is, in a manner at the same 



