REFORMS IN THE TEACHING OF ELECTRICITY^ 525 



pursue an academical career after leaving school ; it is in the 

 intellectual equipment of such boys for their future life that 

 the public schools seem most open to criticism. A study 

 of the subsequent careers of public school boys reveals 

 many startling discordances between the estimates of their 

 abilities formed by their teachers and by the world, which are 

 too numerous to be accounted for on the plea of occasional late 

 development. It may well be that the faulty methods of ap- 

 praising ability at school are due not only to the imperfections 

 of examinations but also to unsatisfactory treatment of the 

 subjects of study — a consequence of the teaching being neces- 

 sarily entrusted to experts who tend to work along the lines 

 which they think best adapted to producing experts. There 

 is much to be said for the view that what the world needs 

 most is the genius and next the well-balanced mind ; and that 

 the mere specialist tends to become narrow and unfit to be 

 trusted with great responsibilities. The true genius rises 

 superior to mistakes in his early training, whilst the ordinary 

 boy may be forced by wrong treatment into an attitude of 

 antagonism towards intellectual effort which will handicap him 

 throughout his life. To design machinery for discovering and 

 training experts at the expense of the average boy may 

 therefore be ill advised. Our public schools are admirable 

 institutions for fostering talents and may not be destructive 

 of genius ; but it is only of late years that they have under- 

 taken seriously to provide for the large number of boys who 

 leave from forms below the sixth — perhaps because such boys 

 drop out quietly and the great stimulus of endowments has 

 never affected them. 



But even if this view be a mistaken one and the primary 

 object of schools be to produce specialists, it still remains true 

 that it is of great importance to them to get the best out of their 

 work in subjects which they drop early because they are not 

 those in which they will specialise. 



As an illustration, let us consider the course of Physics 

 which is usually provided for public school boys. Arguments 

 for teaching science to all schoolboys are not far to seek 

 but does the science taught them always fully justify the 

 arguments used? It is hardly an exaggeration to say that 

 the ordinary grown man just at present regards science as 

 synonymous with electricity — at any rate he would think first 



