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SCIENCE PROGRESS 



or pre-scientific way of accounting for the facts of nature has been often confused 

 with a religious habit of mind, and thus it is very interesting to see the new 

 interpretation of the word " religion" which is given in this book. "The essence 

 of education is that it be religious ... A religious education is an education 

 which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over 

 the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, 

 ignorance has the guilt of vice. And the foundation of reverence is this perception, 

 that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and 

 forwards, that whole amplitude of time which is eternity " (p. 28). 



The two greatest evils of traditional education — and more particularly mathe- 

 matical education — of which we must beware in training a child to activity of 

 thought are "ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilised or 

 tested or thrown into fresh combinations," that is to say, "inert ideas." " In the 

 history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning which 

 at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit 

 merely pedantry and routine. The reason is that they are overladen with inert 

 ideas. . . . Except at rare intervals of intellectual ferment, education in the past 

 has been radically infected with inert ideas. That is the reason why uneducated 

 clever women who have seen much of the world are in middle life so much the 

 most cultured part of the community. They have been saved from this horrible 

 burden of inert ideas. . . . The result of teaching small parts of a large number 

 of subjects is the passive reception of disconnected ideas not illumined with any 

 spark of vitality. Let the main ideas which are introduced into a child's education 

 be few and important, and let them be thrown into every combination possible. 

 The child should make them his own and should understand their application here 

 and now in the circumstances of his actual life. From the very beginning of his 

 education the child should experience the joy of discovery. The discovery which 

 he has to make is that general ideas give an understanding of that stream of 

 events which pours through his life, which is his life. By 'understanding' I mean 

 more than a mere logical analysis, though that is included. I mean 'under- 

 standing' in the sense in which it is used in the French proverb 'To understand 

 all is to forgive all.' Pedants sneer at an education which is useful. But if 

 education is not useful, what is it? Is it a talent, to be hidden away in a napkin? 

 Of course education should be useful, whatever your aim in life" (pp. 4-6). Every 

 sentence in this extract is weighty, and some of the sentences are developed 

 further on pp. 6-1 1. What Dr. Whitehead calls "the two commandments to be 

 obeyed in any educational scheme" (p. 3) are : Do not teach too many subjects ; 

 and, What you teach, teach thoroughly. The traditional remark, "The mind is an 

 instrument; you first sharpen it, and then use it," is "one of the most fatal, 

 erroneous, and dangerous conceptions ever introduced into the theory of educa- 

 tion. The mind is never passive ; it is a perpetual activity, delicate, receptive, 

 responsive to stimulus. You cannot postpone its life until you have sharpened 

 it. Whatever interest attaches to your subject-matter must be evoked here and 

 now ; whatever powers you are strengthening in the pupil must be exercised here 

 and now ; whatever possibilities of mental life your teaching should impart must 

 be exhibited here and now" (pp. 12, 13). The way to follow this difficult rule is 

 "to eradicate the fatal disconnection of subjects which kills the vitality of our 

 modern curriculum. There is only one subject-matter for education, and that is 

 Life in all its manifestations. Instead of this single unity we offer children — 

 Algebra, from which nothing follows ; Geometry, from which nothing follows ; 

 Science, from which nothing follows ; History, from which nothing follows ; a 



