246 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



SCIENTIFIC mSTKUCTION IN GIRLS' SCHOOLS. 



Br CAROLINE W. LATIMER, 



INSTRUCTOR IN' BIOLOGY, WOMAN's COLLEGE OF BALTIMORE. 



IT is impossible to turn one's attention in tlie direction of education 

 to-day without being reminded that the present century has been 

 characterized not only by a steady advance in our knowledge of the 

 natural sciences, but by an ever-widening popularization of that 

 knowledge. And one of the facts that strike us most forcibly in con- 

 nection with this educational growth along scientific lines is that it 

 has been coincident in time with the recent extension of educational 

 rights and privileges for women. The physical sciences have there- 

 fore assumed prominence in women's education from the time that 

 public attention was first focused upon them, and scientific instruc- 

 tion given to girls has been, from the time it was introduced into 

 their education, in no way different from, or inferior to, that provided 

 for their brothers. 



The late Professor Huxley, in his speech on Scientific Edu- 

 cation, delivered in 1869, described very forcibly the movement 

 then arising toward a reform in school education from the side 

 of natural knowledge — a movement which owed its existence in 

 large part to his own persistent exertions. " The head masters," 

 he says, " of our public schools — Eton, Harrow, Winchester — 

 have addressed themselves to the problem of introducing instruc- 

 tion in physical science among the studies of those gTcat educa- 

 tional bodies with much honesty of purpose and enlightenment of 

 understanding, and I live in hope that, before long, important 

 changes in this direction will be carried into effect in those strong- 

 holds of ancient prescription." Such was the provision, or lack of 

 provision, for scientific training in the English public schools little 

 more than a quarter of a century ago; and it is only necessary to 

 glance at the prospectus issued by any one of the secondary schools 

 for either sex, on both sides of the Atlantic, in the present year of 

 grace, to find abundant evidence that, so far as " important changes " 

 are concerned, Professor Huxley's very modest hope is now more 

 than fulfilled. So radical a change in the old order could not, how- 

 ever, be effected without opposition; and this opposition found its 

 most distinguished supporter in a man whose efforts toward the im- 

 provement of education were no less earnest than Professor Huxley's 

 own. In 1871 Matthew Arnold wrote as follows: "If there is 

 any other body of men which strikes one ... as having before it a 

 future still more brilliant than its present it is the friends of physical 

 science. Now, their revolt against the tyranny of letters is notorious. 



