42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



there are exceptional cases and some brilliant examples of improve- 

 ment since these words were written, but generally throughout the 

 country teaching in science is a name rather than a reality. The 

 Technical Commission which reported last year can only point to 

 three schools in Great Britain in which science is fully and adequately 

 taught. AVhile the commission gives us the consolation that England 

 is still in advance as an industrial nation, it warns us that foreign 

 nations, which were not long ago far behind, are now making more 

 rapid progress than this country, and will soon pass it in the race of 

 competition unless we give increased attention to science in public 

 education. A few of the large towns, notably Manchester, Bradford, 

 Iluddersfield, and Birmingham, are doing so. The working-classes 

 are now receiving better instruction in science than the middle classes. 

 The competition of actual life asserts its own conditions, for the chil- 

 dren of the latter find increasing difficulty in obtaining employment. 

 The cause of this lies in the fact that the schools for the middle classes 

 have not yet adapted themselves to the needs of modern life. It is 

 true that many of the endowed schools have been put under new 

 schemes, but, as there is no public supervision or inspection of them, 

 we have no knowledge as to whether they have prospered or slipped 

 back. Many corporate schools have arisen, some of them, like Clifton, 

 Cheltenham, and Marlborough Colleges, doing excellent educational 

 work, though as regards all of them the public have no rights, and 

 can not enforce guarantees for efficiency. A return just issued, on the 

 motion of Sir John Lubbock, shows a lamentable deficiency in science- 

 teaching in a great proportion of the endowed schools. While twelve 

 to sixteen hours per week are devoted to classics, two to three hours 

 are considered arajjle for science in a large proportion of the schools. 

 In Scotland there are only six schools in the return which give more 

 than two hours to science weekly, while in many schools its teaching 

 is wholly omitted. Every other part of the kingdom stands in a bet- 

 ter position than Scotland in relation to the science of its endowed 

 schools. The old traditions of education stick as firmly to schools as 

 a limpet does to a rock ; though I do the limpet injustice, for it does 

 make excursions to seek pastures new. Are we to give up in despair 

 because an exclusive system of classical education has resisted the as- 

 saults of such cultivated authors as Milton, Montaigne, Cowley, and 

 Locke? There was once an enlightened Emperor of China, Chi 

 Ilwangti, who knew that his country was kept back by its exclusive 

 devotion to the classics of Confucius and Mencius. He invited five 

 hundred of the teachers to bring their copies of these authors to Pe- 

 king, and, after giving a great banquet in their honor, he buried alive 

 the professors along with their manuscrij)ts in a deep pit. But Con- 

 fucius and Mencius still reign supreme. I advocate milder measures, 

 and depend for their adoption on the force of public opinion. The 

 needs of modern life will force schools to adapt themselves to a scien- 



