642 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Science Masters' Association (G. H. J. Adlam, M.A., B.Sc). 



The annual meetings of the Science Masters' Association were held in 

 January at the London Day Training College. The effect of the recent 

 changes in the rules, removing restrictions as to membership of what was 

 formerly the Association of Public School Science Masters, was at once 

 apparent, for nearly two hundred attended the various meetings. The 

 Association is much strengthened by its larger and more representative 

 membership, and thus another step has been taken towards the elimination 

 of that misleading term " public school," which for a long time has been 

 little more than a catchword, and has tended to create an artificial distinction 

 between men belonging to the same profession and doing the same kind of 

 work. 



The President (Mr. W. W. Vaughan, Master of Wellington College) chose 

 as the subject of his address " The Responsibilities of Science Teachers." 

 During the years of the war, many educational ideals had to be set aside ; 

 technical efficiency was all-important ; the need was urgent, and conse- 

 quently the shortest and quickest road had to be taken ; instruction rather 

 than true education was to a great extent the order of the day, and 

 systematic teaching had to give way to short intensive courses for special 

 purposes. 



The habits acquired even in four or five years are not easily shaken off, 

 and there is a danger that some teachers, particularly Science teachers, may 

 be tempted to respond to the noisy clamour for technical efficiency, forget- 

 ting that at the basis of national prosperity there lies something which is 

 higher and greater than this, and which cannot be measured by the volume 

 of trade returns. 



What the ideals of education are, and how constant they have remained 

 throughout the ages, was brought out very forcibly and clearly by four 

 quotations given by Mr. Vaughan. The first, from Plato, is very appro- 

 priate, particularly at a time such as the present, when lawlessness is rife 

 and when deeds of violence figure so prominently in the daily papers : " Man, 

 if he enjoys a right education and a happy endowment, becomes the most 

 divine and the most civilised of all living things ; but he is the most savage 

 of all the products of the earth if he is inadequately and improperly trained." 

 The second quotation was from Milton's letter to Master Samuel Hartlib : 

 " A complete and generous education fits a man to perform justly, skilfully 

 and magnanimously all the offices both public and private of peace and 

 war." To Milton, of course, a generous education meant fear of God and 

 love of the Classics ; technical instruction, apart from education, probably 

 did not enter into his thought ; yet " justly, skilfully and magnanimously " 

 covers all requirements, because the greater includes the less. 



The third quotation was from Dr. Johnson : " Whatever makes the 

 past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present advances us 

 in the dignity of thinking beings." The last quotation, from the speech of 

 a London schoolmaster delivered only a few years ago, sums up in few words 

 the most exalted aim of education : " Whatever subject we may be called 

 upon to teach, our real object is always the same : to give the soul a chance." 

 With these clear and indisputable precepts in mind, schoolmasters would 

 hardly consent to a course of action which, as the President said, would be 

 tantamount merely to exchanging the God of Mammon for the God of War. 

 Organic Chemistry. — The teaching of Organic Chemistry in schools was 

 discussed, and it was pointed out that, of the boys who leave school having 

 " done Chemistry," only a few have any knowledge of the carbon compounds, 

 since the division between " organic " and " inorganic " is still retained just 

 as rigidly as it was in the days when belief in a " vital force " existed. This 

 is doubly unfortunate, for many of the common commodities of life are 



