SCHOOL EDUCATION 21 



has been improving so slowly during the last twenty 

 years, must be stimulated and some scientific 

 method of selecting 'and co-ordinating the science 

 subjects to be taught must be introduced. It 

 would seem rational that mathematics should be 

 the earliest science dealt with, followed by physics, 

 chemistry and mechanics, and that wholly subor- 

 dinate importance should be attached to the bio- 

 logical sciences, because the elementary stages of 

 these latter subjects are necessarily largely descrip- 

 tive and insusceptible to broad treatment as illus- 

 trative of scientific reasoning and method. That 

 our schools do not keep in view the fundamental 

 scheme which correlates all the natural sciences is 

 obvious; it becomes especially evident when the 

 large amount of time often devoted to botany is 

 contrasted with that allotted to physics and 

 chemistry, particularly in our girls' schools. Ele- 

 mentary botany, as frequently taught in schools, 

 has scarcely any educational value; the botanical 

 work of the last fifty years has been enormously 

 fruitful, but its scientific results are in the main 

 only to be studied by the specialist of wide scientific 

 training. 



The introduction into the public school curri- 

 culum of proper methods of teaching modern 

 languages and of sound methods of teaching the 

 principles of the fundamental physical sciences 

 would result in an output of young men capable 

 of forming a sound judgment as to what subjects 



