586 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



the subject of such schools was largely occupied with the 

 social factors involved in their formation. 



The outstanding feature of this side of the conference was, 

 however, the great stress laid on the need for adult education. 

 The Master of Balliol's racy paper on " The Education of the 

 Citizen," and the substance of what was said by the speakers 

 at the joint conference on Adult Education under Canon J. H. 

 B. Masterman, all served vigorously to press home upon the 

 educational workers present the too often forgotten fact that 



one's education is only ended (if then) when one is dead. 



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The Januarymeetings of the Geographical, Science Masters', 

 and Mathematical Associations dealt, in the main, with technical 

 matters. Mr. W. W. Vaughan's presidential address to the 

 science masters, however, took the form of a most inspiring 

 call upon them to recognise their great responsibilities in the 

 immediate future. Furthermore, the general question of the 

 value to teachers of the history of their subject was touched 

 upon both in Sir Richard Gregory's plea for general science 

 courses separate from the laboratory work, and in Mr. R. C. 

 Fawdry's paper to the Mathematical Association on the teaching 

 of mechanics. Finally an important matter of principle was 

 raised in the discussion on the paper read to the latter Asso- 

 ciation by Mr. C. Godfrey, in which it was contended that 

 the informal stage of teaching should be extended over the 

 whole of elementary plane geometry — use being made of the 

 notions of symmetry and similarity — logical methods being 

 reserved for a subsequent formal recapitulation. The danger 

 here is not the informality itself, but that such courses may 

 degenerate, in less expert hands than Mr. Godfrey's, into the 

 acquirement of sense knowledge only, to the exclusion of all 

 reasoning. But there is not this sharp alternation in the child's 

 own development. " All the elementary mechanisms essential 

 to formal reasoning are present before the child leaves the 

 infant department, i.e. by the mental age of seven " is the 

 conclusion of Mr. Burt in the papers referred to below. And 

 that accounts for the practical failure of purely measurement 

 courses as substitutes for Euclid. At any rate, Prof. T. P. 

 Nunn's advice to strike the mean : to deal with the concrete 

 (even solids), to take the obvious for granted ; but to introduce 

 rigid reasoning of a simple kind from the very first — would seem 

 a desirable correlative to Mr. Godfrey's claim. 



The following is a selection of references to recent work bear- 

 ing on the subjects mentioned above : 



E. Rignano, Monist (1918), 28, 3, pp. 373-93, in " The School of To- 

 morrow," urges on all educationists the pressing need of the time for deliberate 

 and conscious attention to the problems raised by schooling. 



