A NEW EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT, 1107 
No. 13.—SCIENTIFIC METHODS AS APPLIED TO 
MODERN EDUCATION. 
By Miss E. A. BapHam. 
(Read Tuesday, January 11, 1898.) 
No. 14.—IS THERE A SCIENCE OF EDUCATION ? 
By Mrs. W. L. Arxins, B.A. 
(Read Wednesday, January 12, 1898.) 
No. 15.—A NEW EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT; 
“SPECIAL SCHOOLS,” IN ENGLAND AND GERMANY. 
By Miss M. Hoper. 
(Read Wednesday, January 12, 1898.) 
FIVE years ago, inspired by Matthew Arnold with an intense 
admiration for the German educational system, I spent six months 
in visiting the schools in the Rhine district, in Hanover, Prussia, 
and Saxony. Although I found, for the most part, that the 
teachers and educational authorities were as fully convinced of 
the superiority of their schools over those of the other nations of 
Europe as Matthew Arnold appears to have been, I found myself 
at the close of my visit by no means confirmed in my faith. 
Arnold’s report, however, appeared more than twenty-eight years 
ago, and England has, doubtless, made more rapid progress than 
Germany in the last quarter ofa century ; so that his comparison, 
greatly to the detriment of England, however true it may have been 
then, must be accepted with reservation now. 
It is easy to understand why he was impressed by the German 
system. Education in England was in a chaotic condition ; in Ger- 
many it was orderly and State regulated ; but there were, and are 
still, more fundamental differences between the English and German 
systems. In Germany the appreciation of education is much more 
general. This may be, and probably is, due to the fact that systems 
of national education have been much longer established there. 
(Saxony had a system of national education in 1580 ; Prussia in 
1725.) The Germans as.a nation have apparently long realised 
