August i8, 1923] 



NATURE 



255 



University and Educational Intelligence. 



Cambridge. — Mr. T. Basil Buxton has been ap- 

 pointed as the first occupant of the newly created 

 chair of animal pathology. 



Leeds. — The University has appointed Mr. J. A. S. 

 Ritson to be professor of mining in the University, 

 in succession to Prof. Granville Poole, who has been 

 elected to a professorship at Armstrong College, 

 Newcastle-on-Tyne. Mr. Ritson was educated at 

 Uppingham and at Durham University (Armstrong 

 College), where he graduated with distinction in 

 mining and surveying, and has had considerable 

 practical experience of colliery management in various 

 parts of the country. He acted for some time as 

 personal assistant to Sir William Walker, late Chief 

 Inspector of Mines, and is at present senior inspector 

 of mines in the Cardiff district. 



According to Science, the degree of doctor honoris 

 causa of the University of Strasbourg has been 

 conferred upon Dr. Simon Flexner, director of the 

 Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. 



The honorary degree of doctor of science of the 

 University of Wisconsin has been conferred, according 

 to Science, upon Prof. The. Svedberg, of the Uni- 

 versity of Uppsala, in recognition of his work on 

 colloid chemistry and as director during the past 

 term of the research work of the University. 



A PROSPECTUS of the Faculty of Engineering of 

 the University of Bristol, which is provided and 

 maintained by the Society of Merchant Venturers in 

 the Merchant Venturers' Technical College, Bristol, 

 has just reached us. Courses of study are available 

 at the College for persons intending to engage in civil, 

 mechanical, electrical, or automobile engineering, and 

 particulars of these courses are given in the prospectus. 

 The ordinances and regulations relating to degrees and 

 diplomas in engineering subjects are included, and 

 some particulars of the Bristol Sandwich system of 

 training engineers are also given. The prospectus 

 can be obtained from the Registrar of the Merchant 

 Venturers' Technical College, Bristol. 



The May issue of the Phoenix, the magazine of the 

 Imperial College of Science and Technology, contains 

 a brief account of two comparatively recent diploma 

 courses inaugurated at the Royal School of Mines, 

 dealing with the technology of oil and mining geology. 

 The former course was started in 191 3 in order to 

 provide the petroleum industry with men thoroughly 

 trained in certain branches, especially oil-geologists 

 and chemists. The principles of drilling and allied 

 oilfield-engineering are dealt with exhaustively, but 

 the practical work is wisely left to the post-graduate 

 stage of a student's training, when, engaged on work 

 in an actual oilfield, he acquires that experience under 

 far better conditions and in much shorter time than 

 would be possible with an experimental rig designed 

 for intermittent academic instruction, even if this 

 were available. The application of geology to metalli- 

 ferous mining is another advance made within recent 

 years, and ciualified mining geologists, as distinct from 

 mining engineers, have not been long available in Great 

 Britain. This state of affairs was remedied by the 

 mtroduction of a mining geology course, which, like 

 the older established course in mining, requires four 

 years for its completion ; arrangements are also made 

 whereby an associate in either subject may, on work- 

 ing for a fifth year, acquire the double associateship 

 in both mining and mining geology, the combined 

 knowledge of these two subjects, and the wider train- 



NO. 2807, VOL. 112] 



ing and qualification obtained, constituting attain- 

 ments in every way essential to those whose ambition 

 it is to rise high in their future profession. In both 

 the technology of oil and mining geology courses, 

 the importance of outdoor field-work is insisted on, 

 and a great deal of the student's time is taken up with 

 geological and topographical surveying. 



Statistics of Public High Schools in the United 

 States (Bulletin, 1922, No. 37) show that the school 

 population has been doubling itself fairly regularly 

 every ten years since 1890, the actual figures for that 

 year and the end of each subsequent decade being : 

 202,963 ; 519,251 ; 915,061 ; 1,857,155. This rate 

 of increase is about the same as that shown by 

 statistics of secondary-school pupils in England and 

 Wales during the past ten years ; but whereas in the 

 United States the pupils in the public high schools 

 in 1920 were 1-76 per cent, of the total population, in 

 England and Wales the percentage in secondary 

 schools was only about half that figure. Of all 

 secondary pupils, those in public high schools in 1920 

 formed 91 per cent, (in 1890, 1900, and 1910 — 68, 

 82, and 89 per cent, respectively), those in Roman 

 Catholic high schools and academies 4 per cent., and 

 those in other private institutions 5 per cent. The 

 number of pupils to a teacher in the public high 

 schools, after rising from 22-3 in 1890 to 25-5 in 1900, 

 fell to 22 in 1910 and 20-5 in 1920. In private in- 

 stitutions the number fell from 13-2 in 1890 to 10-9 

 in 1900 and 10-5 in 1910, and rose to 12-3 in 1920. 

 The tendency towards concentration of pupils in 

 large schools is reflected in a sharp rise in the number 

 of pupils per school from 89-6 to i39"5 in the public 

 schools and from 65-9 to 88 in the private schools 

 between 1910 and 1920. 



The role of the text-book in the public schools of 

 America is subjected to some candid criticism in the 

 annual report for 1922 of the president of the Carnegie 

 Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 

 Where text-books are prescribed by the State legis- 

 lature the publishers' contracts run into millions of 

 dollars, and editions vie in size with the season's 

 " best-seller " novels. The criticisms are directed 

 not so much at the dangers of collusion between 

 publishers and legislators, which have been greatly 

 diminished, as at the influence on school curricula of 

 the large profits incidental to such large editions. To 

 a teacher the production of a new text-book which 

 shall obtain the approval of the State education 

 department is the only road whereby his professional 

 knowledge, experience, and talents may lead to 

 affluence, and a vast amount of industry and ability 

 has been devoted to this work. Many of the books 

 produced are excellent, but their very excellence has 

 accentuated two vmfortunate tendencies : towards 

 the multiplication of courses and of studies, and 

 excessive separatism in teaching. " A reform of the 

 school curriculum, planned to return once more to 

 a conception of the school along simpler and more 

 sincere lines, would find itself confronted with the 

 fact that the means of instruction provided by the 

 text-book publishers and the text-book writers and 

 accepted by the authorities are . . . small doses 

 administered at fixed times from stated text-books." 

 This pigeon-holing system, under which the pupil's 

 separate unrelated studies neither interest him nor 

 give him a perspective, is of course not peculiar to the 

 United States, nor are there wanting systematic 

 attempts to displace it there. It is by way of revolt 

 against it that the " project " method is now being 

 encouraged in America, especially in elementary 

 schools. 



