Sir George Kekewich's Address 215 



We are to-day to hear papers on education in 

 secondary schools. 



Perhaps the scholar in a secondary school is some- 

 what better off as regards opportunities than the 

 scholar in an elementary school, at any rate better 

 off than the great mass of children in our urban 

 elementary schools. Many of our great secondary 

 schools are in rural districts; and even when they are 

 not, the scholar in an urban secondary school can 

 reach the country with less difficulty than the city 

 scholar in these days of cheap locomotion. One may 

 at any rate say this, that the study of Nature is just as 

 essential for the scholar in a secondary school as for 

 the scholar in an elementary school. In some ways 

 it is even more essential, for it is absolutely necessary 

 to a liberal education. And he can carry the study 

 higher as a basis of scientific knowledge. 



There is surely no kind of teaching which confers 

 upon our children so many and such varied ad- 

 vantages. 



It is unrivalled in promoting habits of observation, 

 it rivets the attention of children upon what they 

 observe, it develops intelligence. And the development 

 of intelligence, after all, is the greatest and the most 

 comprehensive of all the objects of education. For 

 you cannot have knowledge, real knowledge, without 

 intelligence. It is no use teaching a child a string of 

 facts which he does not understand. This sounds like 

 a truism, but I fear it is only comparatively recently 

 that many of us have begun to realize it. 



Nature-study is so large a subject, it confers so 

 many benefits actual and incidental upon our schools 

 and children, that time would fail me if I ventured to 



