300 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



given to the imparting of knowledge of a formal kind : too great a strain is put on 

 the memory, too little attention is paid to the development of reasoning power, 

 and to the discovery of latent talent through the awakening of interest. 



For many years a fight has been waged against the preponderance of formal 

 training in the public schools. The teaching of mathematics and of science is far 

 more humane than it used to be. Even modern history and the classical studies 

 have now some claim to be grouped among the humanities ! It is easy to point 

 to examples of these changes ; to the Perse School, where the attention of boys 

 is directed towards a classical language itself before being brought to bear on its 

 grammar — the material before the analysis of it ; to the Royal Naval College at 

 Osborne, where from the start the cadets are taught to speak the language they 

 learn, and where the study of history begins with biography, and not with a 

 cram-book of dates ; to Oundle School, where the history of science is read back- 

 wards, and the boys know something of the steam-engine before they bother their 

 heads about the properties of steam, and where mathematics is taught, not as an 

 abstract science, but as a handmaid of the various activities of life. 



Little of this sort has entered, as yet, into the preparatory schools. There 

 are more reasons than one for this, but the chief is that the most famous public 

 schools, in their entrance scholarship examinations, give preponderating weight 

 to a formal knowledge of the classical languages. The preparatory schools are 

 tempted by the kudos which follows success in these examinations to organise to 

 attain it, and the natural avenues of development of the many pupils are closed in 

 order that the few may reach their objective along the other hard path. A new 

 preparatory school, " St. Piran's," in which the instruction will be along the lines 

 indicated above, has now been started near Maidenhead. Major V. Seymour 

 Bryant, who has left Wellington College to undertake this work, is well known, 

 among those interested in the progress of natural science, as a recent chairman of 

 the Science Masters' Association, and as the present secretary of the Neglect of 

 Science Committee. We wish him success, and feel sure that science will profit 

 from his determination to base his training of the small boys under his charge on 

 their natural inquisitiveness about the phenomena which surround them in their 

 daily lives. 



Notes and News 



The " Birthday " Honours list contained only one name which need be mentioned 

 here. Professor Boyd Dawkins, the well-known geologist, of Manchester, received 

 a Knighthood. 



Mme. Curie has received the Great Cross of the Civilian Order of Alfonso 

 XIII, from the King of Spain, and has been elected Professor of Radiology at 

 Warsaw. 



Prof. Soddy has been elected a foreign member of the Swedish Academy of 

 Science in succession to the late Sir William Crookes, and Sir Norman Lockyer 

 has been made an Associate of the Academie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et 

 des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. 



Sir Oliver Lodge's pioneer work on wireless telegraphy has at last been 

 specifically recognised ! The Royal Society of Arts has awarded him its Albert 

 Medal for that reason. 



Prof. Eddington has been granted the Pontecoulant Prize for Astronomy by 

 the Paris Academy of Sciences. 



