5 2o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SCIENCE TEACHING.* 



By Pbof. FKEDEKICK GUTHRIE, F. E. S. 



AT the outset of our inquiry into science teaching, we are, of 

 course, met by the old question as to the purpose of educa- 

 tion. There are those who regard education as an intellectual 

 arming and equipment for the battle of life. Others look upon it 

 rather as an end than as a means. The first would supply to the 

 individual only those weapons which he is likely to require in 

 making his way in the world. The second advise a wider, and 

 therefore more dilute, education (the time given to education be- 

 ing the same), and would relegate the acquirement of specialties 

 to the exigencies of the career. I suppose that it need scarcely be 

 insisted on, nowadays, that both of these views are fallacious on 

 account of their partiality. The most favorable product of the 

 first is the " successful " specialist, who is for the most part a bur- 

 den to himself. The second gives us the shallow " prig/' who is 

 for the most part a burden to his fellow-creatures. 



A good citizen — and by citizen I mean, of course, a citizen of 

 the world — must be a man of large sympathies. Though color- 

 blind, he must have common feeling with painters, and, if tone- 

 deaf, the works of musical composers must not be without interest 

 to him. And through all it must not be forgotten that distinc- 

 tion is a noun of limited number. The time may come when 

 they who know as much mathematics as Newton shall be counted 

 by scores. The time has come when they who know as much 

 geometry as " Euclid " are to be counted by thousands ; and they 

 who know as much chemistry as Dalton, by tens of thousands. 

 But we are as badly in want of Newtons, Euclids, and Daltons as 

 ever. 



Here, as elsewhere, it appears that an apparently insuperable 

 difficulty is half surmounted when fairly confronted. It is, with- 

 out doubt, the conviction of those whose opinions of to-day will 

 count as truisms to-morrow, that, up to a certain stage, and as far 

 as the presenting of opportunities is concerned, the education of 

 one should be the education of all. Liberal variations should be 

 recognized in accordance with the tastes, and especially with the 

 distastes, of the individual ; yet there is a certain nucleus of some- 

 what indefinite boundary which should be offered habitually to 

 each. When I say " somewhat indefinite," do not, I pray, imagine 

 that I want to shirk a difficulty ; on the contrary, my purpose is 

 to accentuate and try to deal with it. 



It is perhaps in matters of taste which, in their developments, 



* Abridged from the Journal of the Society of Arts. 



