SECONDARY EDUCATION. 823 



would prolong this paper to undue limits, but it may be 

 remarked, in passing, that in many schools language-teaching 

 still proceeds on Sturm's unscientific method of "gerund- 

 grinding" before translation ; that inductive teaching has not 

 yet supplanted the pernicious authoritative method ; and 

 that, to refer now to the earliest stages of education, books 

 are made use of before the senses have been adequately 

 trained, and thus words instead of things become the staple 

 of a child's knowledge. 



The importance of developing the science of education 

 must be impressed not only on schoolmasters, but on the 

 whole community. Every individual is more or less affected 

 by its progress or retardation, although he generally becomes 

 aware of this only when the training in his own case has 

 come to an end. But everyone who is in any way responsible 

 for the bringing up of children — and this means one or more 

 in almost every household — is profoundly concerned with the 

 increase of educational efficiency and the advance of educational 

 science. 



The chief modern contribution to the science has come 

 from the connection of mental with physiological phenomena. 

 Though (as Professor Bain points out) the training of the 

 body is not per se a part of education except in the earliest 

 stages, yet the study of physiology (including hygiene) safe- 

 guards the health of the physical constitution ; and, as Mr, 

 Herbert Spencer remarks, " the first requisite to success in 

 life is to be a good animal." But, in spite of our past 

 advances, there is still a wide and promising field for explora- 

 tion. Some of the most important problems still remain to 

 be solved, and what has been done in the past is but the 

 preparation for the greater work of the future. Why, then, 

 do not Austrahan educationists make combined efforts to 

 map out the field of their labours with systematic accuracy ? 

 We may not be able to establish those experimental schools 

 which Kant advocated for the purpose of trying new methods 

 of teaching, but other means are within our reach. It is not 

 necessary to enter upon strange paths for the purposes of 

 investigation, but to utilise to the full all the means of 

 advance which we possess. 



1. Let us glance, first of all, at the present stage of 

 secondary education in Australia. In some respects our 

 schools are scientifically abreast, if not ahead, of tiiose of 

 England, Their curriculum is on the whole more modern, 

 less pedantic, and more rational than that of the great 



