7 2 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



than not to pretend. The conventional " fourteen weeks " in sci- 

 ence gives no contact with nature, no training of any sort, no 

 information worth having ; only a distaste for that class of scat- 

 tering information which is supposed to be science. 



There is a charm in real knowledge which every student feels. 

 The magnet attracts iron, to be sure, to the student who has 

 learned the fact from a book, but the fact is real only to the 

 student who has himself felt it pull. It is more than this, it is 

 enchanting to the student who has discovered the fact for himself. 

 To read a statement of the fact gives knowledge, more or less 

 complete as the book is accurate or the memory retentive. To 

 verify the fact gives training ; to discover it gives inspiration. 

 Training and inspiration, not the facts themselves, are the justifi- 

 cation of science-teaching. Facts enough we can gather later in 

 life when we are too old to be trained or inspired. 



What is true of one science is true of all in greater or less de- 

 gree ; and I may take the science of zoology for my illustration 

 simply because it is the one nearest my hand. In very few of our 

 high schools has the instruction in zoology any real value. For 

 this unfortunate fact there are several causes, and some of these 

 are beyond the control of the teachers. In the first place, the 

 high-school course is overloaded, and the small part of the course 

 given to the sciences is divided among too many of them. A 

 smattering of one science is of little value, either for discipline or 

 information. A smattering of many sciences may be even worse, 

 because it leads the mind to be content with smattering. Indeed, 

 so greatly have our schools sinned in this respect that many 

 writers on education seem to regard science as synonymous with 

 smattering, and they contrast it with other branches of learning, 

 which are supposed to have some standard of thoroughness. 

 Most of our colleges have, at one time or other, arranged courses 

 of study not approved by the faculty, in response to the popular 

 demand for many studies in a little time. Such a course of odds 

 and ends is always called " the scientific course," and it leads to 

 the appropriate degree of " B. S." Bachelor of Surfaces. 



The high school can do some things very well, but it will fail 

 if it tries to do too much. Unfortunately, the present tendency in 

 our high schools is in the direction of such failure to do many 

 things poorly rather than a few things well. Each high school 

 aims to give a general education ; to be a university in a small 

 way a university for the poor a poor university. In the words 

 of Lowell, " The public schools teach too little or too much ; too 

 little, if education is to go no further ; too many things, if what is 

 taught is taught thoroughly. And the more they seem to teach, 

 the less likely is education to go further; for it is one of the 

 weaknesses of democracy to be satisfied with the second best, if it 



