X PROCEEDINGS. 



More or less successful attempts ar being made in some of the 

 colleges to teach science. But divided and scattered as they are five 

 degree conferring institutions in a small province of scarcely half a 

 million inhabitants, with no preparatory schools capable of giving a 

 proper preliminary science training, it is small wonder that they take 

 little interest in the teaching of new subjects which require expensive 

 apparatus and hard work. 



I should have said that there is one preparatory school, Pictou 

 Academy, which still retains the preeminence in science-teaching which 

 it reached when Dr. McKay, as Principal, filled its halls with students 

 drawn from all parts of the province. 



From what I have said it will be evident that taking the schools as a 

 whole there is but little of science-teaching, and that little is poorly done. 



2. "What place should science occupy in the schools 1 



Our Nova Scotia educationists say that it is entitled to twelve per 

 cent, of the time devoted to the compulsory subjects, or on an average, 

 to ten per cent, of the whole time. In Germany the gymnasia (or 

 classical schools) through all the grades devote seven per cent, of their 

 time to science, and a considerable amount of time besides to physical 

 geography. In the real-gymnasium and real-schulen, science is the lead- 

 ing subject. We all have some idea of what the German colleges and 

 universities are doing for theoretical science. 



As might be expected in these circumstances technical education has 

 received an enormous development. In the small kingdom of Saxony, 

 considerably less than one-third the size of Nova Scotia, there are 111 

 technical institutes. Prussia has 200 such schools and 12,000 pupils. 

 Hesse with a population of 1,000,000 has 83 schools of design, 43 for 

 manufacturing industries and many others for artisans of various trades. 

 How many such schools has Nova Scotia? 



It might here be asked : which was cause and which, effect, the 

 -science-teaching of the gymnasia or the technical schools ? The fact 

 that so long ago as 1837 there was nearly as much science prescribed for 

 the gymnasia as at present, would suggest an answer. 



England, slow in adopting reforms, has at last been awakened to a 

 sense of the danger in which she stands of losing her industrial supre- 

 macy unless she gives heed to the wise teachings of her great prophet, 

 Herbert Spencer, who years ago said : " Paraphrasing an eastern fable, 



