SCIENCE AND THE AVERAGE BOY 517 



— but also on the teaching — which he suggests is " pure cram." 

 But the logical deduction from the argument he uses is that the 

 study of all science should be postponed till mechanics have 

 been thoroughly studied under the wide and generous conditions 

 of University teaching. 



Now this would limit any study of science to those whose 

 profession would lead them eventually to college classes and an 

 intensive study of science. 



It is a repetition of a now familiar plea. Every specialist 

 wants his own subject taught from the beginning as though all 

 the students were also to be specialists. Modern geographers 

 recommend methods admirable for future specialists in geography 

 and would force them on all boys alike ; mathematicians argue 

 as though all students were to be pure mathematicians ; scientists 

 are now following a similar course, though some of them are 

 consistent and maintain that the whole civilised world must 

 ultimately consist of trained, perhaps heuristically trained, 

 scientists. But the average boy is not going to be a specialist 

 in either geography or pure science or mathematics. The world, 

 some would say unfortunately, needs a certain number of pure 

 mathematicians to establish formulae which other men will apply 

 successfully. But these latter would never have discovered the 

 formulae themselves and their ability to use them is delayed and 

 not helped by the attempt to train them to discover the formulae. 

 The expert work of one man is the raw material of another and 

 surely the division of labour implied by this fact is the founda- 

 tion of any progress whether in social or educational systems. 



To Prof. Porter's contention that good teaching of mechanics 

 should precede the study of physics many will agree when 

 considering boys who are to have the opportunity of studying 

 physics. But if one of the consequences be that, in order to 

 attain this ideal for a certain few, all other boys must be deprived 

 of the opportunity of any work at scientific subjects, there are 

 many who will disagree. For we have to deal with practical 

 problems under present conditions and not with ideals. 



The nature of the problem is something like this. The 

 specialists and those who pursue the systematic study of the 

 subject are receiving due attention. Further reform for them de- 

 pends now chiefly on the nature of examinational requirements. 

 So long as the Universities elect to Science Scholarships in 

 Chemistry boys who do not know anything about such daily 



