172 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



a rule, they leave no room for individual initiative or independence of 

 thought. The teachings of history, so far as the facts are concerned, 

 must also be more or less arbitrary and authoritative. But history 

 teaching and language teaching, and even mathematics teaching, are 

 rapidly becoming humanized in a modem, scientific sense. 



The teaching of science, introduced into the schools in comparatively 

 recent times, has been too much influenced by the methods of the older 

 teachers of the older subjects. While the other subjects have felt the 

 influence of the scientific age, the science teachers have failed to develop 

 the possibilities of their own material. Science teaching needs indeed 

 to be humanized, but not by being assimilated to the mechanical, formal 

 teaching of the older school disciplines, but along the lines of its pecul- 

 iar possibilities. We mnst not expect general discipline from special 

 work in science; but we must turn to general application the special 

 ideas and principles of science. 



We can humanize our science teaching by relating it to the idea of 

 human achievement. Achievement in science is an essential part of 

 human history, and a very significant part. It can be made to appeal 

 to the imagination and to stir the emotions quite as effectively, and to 

 as good purpose, as achievement in other directions. The history teacher 

 may be obliged to neglect this side of his history — at any rate, he gener- 

 ally does neglect it. But the science teacher can not afford to detach 

 the great ideas which he wishes to impart from the animal species in the 

 course of whose evolution these ideas emerged. We can humanize our 

 science teaching by making clear the idea, and making it impressive, 

 that human progress, as illustrated by the growth of science, depends 

 upon most intimate kinds of cooperation ; by making the pupils feel the 

 interdependence of the living of all lands, by making them feel our 

 dependence also upon those who have gone before. High-school girls 

 and boys can appreciate the fact that the reason why one carried on the 

 shoulders of another sees farther than the latter is not necessarily the 

 superior optical apparatus of the first. 



We can humanize our science teaching by making clear in the 

 thought of the pupil the idea that the progress of science consists of a 

 successive refinement of hypotheses; by teaching them to appreciate 

 the difference between hypothesis and fact, on the one hand, and between 

 fact and conclusion, on the other. We can teach an appreciation of the 

 value of facts as the only sound basis for judgment, and we may hope 

 to establish the habit of searching for facts during the suspension of 

 judgment. 



We can humanize science teaching by giving up the attempt to make 

 scientists out of high-school students; that is not our function. It is 

 our business not to make scientists, but to make as many children as 

 possible appreciate first the service of science, and second the method 



