516 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



tapping the high pressure electric supply for surreptitiously 

 charging accumulators and kindred purposes. In the same way, 

 father and boy find they have something in common in dis- 

 cussing such matters, whereas paternal interest in Avogadro's 

 hypothesis is limited. Meanwhile, our younger colleagues have 

 themselves had some experience of a science teaching more 

 educative than that at the disposal of their predecessors, whilst 

 the seniors find parental pressure freely brought to bear that 

 boys may have the opportunity of studying the kind of subjects 

 to which I have referred and they also find that they meet 

 schoolmasters of scientific attainments at dinner with compara- 

 tively respectable mutual acquaintances. If not less unsympa- 

 thetic towards our efforts, they are at all events more tolerant 

 of them. In another decade a generation of headmasters will 

 be in office who were at school when the pursuit of science was 

 no longer despised and even the captain of the cricket eleven 

 was a science specialist without loss of prestige ; altogether the 

 future for training in the systematic study of science at public 

 schools looks promising. 



But this very improvement in the conditions affecting the 

 study of science has brought other troubles in its train. 



Consideration of plans for the improvement of special points 

 in connexion with the teaching of the boys who may be regarded 

 more or less as specialists has to some extent excluded reflection 

 upon the more general aspect of our work. Following in the 

 lines of classicists and mathematicians, we have in the past not 

 avoided the danger of evolving schemes as specialists which, 

 though admirable for specialists, were not necessarily the right 

 ones for the average boy. Too frequently the sequence of 

 studies has been determined by considerations of their logical 

 order with a complete disregard for the suitability of the subject 

 matter for the particular boys concerned. 



Experience shows that the order of the boy's mental growth 

 and of his developing interests does not necessarily coincide 

 either with the logical order of the sciences or — though 

 this is suggested more diffidently — with the historical order 

 of the revelation and appreciation of scientific truths in the 

 world's history. 



Thus we find Prof. Porter in " Broad Lines in Science 

 Teaching" making a direct attack on school science, chiefly on 

 the conditions — which he describes as " meagre and restricted " 



