252 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



rather than a loss. There is abundant evidence in support of this 

 statement in our colleges for women. In them experience has shown 

 that not a few of the students who have displayed marked aptitude 

 for scientific work in their collegiate education, and some of those who 

 have successfully carried on individual research, have had very little 

 instruction in science before entering college. On the other hand, 

 students whose choice in collegiate work is non-scientific, whether 

 their choice be mathematics, classics, or modern languages, find that, 

 unless their early training has been prolonged and thorough, the 

 difiiculties in the way of their ultimate success are almost insuperable. 



If it is agreed, then, that scientific instruction under the present 

 methods already consumes time which should be devoted to letters, 

 it is evident that reform in these methods can not be instituted at the 

 expense of the non-scientific side of education. There is, therefore, 

 but one road to a better state of things. The existing system must be 

 reorganized in such a manner that the whole, or at least a large part, 

 of the time that justice allots to natural knowledge shall be spent on 

 not more than two branches of science. This is really the only way 

 in which a student can derive any training of the eye, the hand, or 

 the deductive faculties, and, as the benefit which a student derives 

 from such training is largely dependent on her being of an age to 

 profit by it, the instruction must be given during the last two years of 

 her school life. Five to six hours a week is, as was said before, the 

 minimum amount of time from which good results can be obtained; 

 and if this time were divided into not more than three periods, it 

 would be possible to arrange something of the nature of laboratory 

 work. Under such a system it is almost impossible that a pupil 

 should not make real progress toward the end in ^dew — that is to say, 

 her mind would be brought into direct relation with Nature at the 

 period of her school life when she is most responsive to the stimulus 

 of such contact. 



Already I feel my elbow jogged by the men of liberal minds, 

 who urge that such a method as that just described would permit 

 students to enter into life halt and blind as regards those of the 

 physical sciences which were not selected for instruction. There 

 is an element of truth in their argument that no girl ought to be 

 in such complete ignorance of any natural science that she is unable 

 to comprehend an incidental allusion to it. But this theory of the 

 purpose of scientific knowledge can be carried out with a very small 

 expenditure of time. The facts which the student needs to grasp are 

 not many, and they ought to be encumbered with as little detail 

 as possible. If, during the two school years immediately preceding 

 those in which systematic instruction in science is to be given, one 

 or two simple lectures were delivered each week on the outlines of 



