692 



NATURE 



[November 10, 1923 



variations occurred in cases where the distance between 

 the transmitting and receiving station was great — 

 being rarely Itss than loo miles and in some cases 

 as great as 1500 miles. Also the waves had travelled 

 for considerable distances over land. These ' facts 

 probably account for the changes fn the ap|jarent 

 direction of travel of the wave front necessary to 

 produce the large variations observed. Fortunately 

 m the application of radio direction finding to 

 navigation such conditions as a rule do not occur. 

 Ships usually require their positions or bearings to be 

 given when they arc neanng land, and there is a 

 considerable amount of evidence to show that, in the 

 case of the shorter waves, as used by ships, passing 

 entirely over sea for distances of the order of 50 to 

 80 miles, individual l>earings very rarely show a maxi- 

 mum error of more than 5°, while simultaneous observa- 



tions carried out on the same waves after passing 

 over land frequently show variations of the order 

 of 40". 



From the experimental evidence available it would 

 seem that with a suitably situated shore di-^ *• - 

 finding station a ship at a distance of the < 

 50 miles can be given a bearing, under normal lon- 

 ditions, with an accuracy to i** to 2". A single 

 direction finding station can only give a ship her 

 bearing from the receiving station, but if a second 

 direction finding station suitably placed <ct 



to the first is available, two bearings can I md 



the position of the ship can be fixed by their mter- 

 section. Experience has shown that such an inter- 

 section is usually sufficiently correct to enable a ship's 

 position to be given with all the acr-'-' r,,. ,...,, ^. 

 for safe navigation. 



The Education of the People.' 

 By Prof. T. Percy Nunn. 



IN education, as in all the great fields of practice, 

 there are, and must constantly arise, problems 

 that can be solved only by patient application of the 

 methods of science, but however far the scope of 

 educational science may extend, the critical educational 

 issues will always lie beyond it. For in its origin 

 education is a biological process which does not wait 

 for deliberation to call it into existence or for science 

 to guide it, but has the inevitability of behaviour 

 rooted in instinct. 



What is it, then, that determines the general character 

 of the educational process at a given point in the 

 history of a human society ? The answer is that the 

 same Han vital which brought the society to that 

 point urges it so to train its young that they may 

 maintain its tradition and ways of life. It follows that 

 the education a nation gives its children is, perhaps, 

 the clearest expression of its ethos and the best epitome 

 of its scheme of life. Thus the ideas of too many of 

 our Georgian forefathers upon the education of the 

 masses corresponded faithfully with their belief in the 

 great principle of subordination about which Johnson 

 and Boswell talked so often and agreed so satisfactorily. 

 One remembers, for example, how hotly Miss Hannah 

 More denied the scandalous rumour that she was 

 teaching the poor of Cheddar to write ! Similarly, the 

 liberal curriculum of our elementary schools reflects 

 the prevalence to-day of a widely different view of the 

 nature and purpose of society. In brief, it is an 

 expression of the steadily growing belief, first, that 

 every member of society has an equal title to the 

 privileges of citizenship ; and, secondly, that the 

 corporate strength of society should be exerted to 

 secure for him actual as well as theoretical possession 

 of his title. 



How the movement based upon that belief will 

 ultimately affect the happiness of our people no one 

 can with certainty foresee ; nevertheless, I am bound 

 to record my opinion that in its main tendency it ought 

 wholeheartedly to be accepted. I think this chiefly 

 because it seems to be inspired by the Christian 



» From the presidential address delivered to Section L (Educational 

 Science) of the British Association at Liverpool on September 14. 



NO. 2819, VOL. I 12] 



principle of the immense value of the individual life, 

 or, if you prefer to put it so, by the Kantian principle 

 that no man ought to be treated merely as a means but 

 always also as an end in himself. But if the movement 

 is accepted, public education must correspondingly 

 assume a character which would follow neither from 

 the principle of subordination nor from the prin- 

 ciple of laissez /aire. The view I submit is that the 

 educatipn of the people should aim at enabling every 

 man to realise the greatest fullness of life of which 

 he is by nature capable — " fullness " being, I add, 

 measured in terms of quality rather than of quantity, 

 by perfection of form rather than by amount of content. 

 That view is the basis of all I have to say. 



During the last century we learnt, following Darwin, 

 to look upon all biological phenomena as incidents in 

 a perpetual struggle wherein the prizes to be won or 

 lost were the survival of the individual and the con- 

 tinuance of his species. From this point of view there 

 could be only one object of life, one causa tiWwJi, namely, 

 to continue living, and the means by which it was to be 

 attained were adaptations to environment achieved 

 by an individual, and perhaps handed on to its off- 

 spring, fortunate germinal variations, or lucky throws 

 of the Mendelian dice. It was natural, if not logically 

 necessary, that the doctrine should fuse with the view, 

 as old as Descartes, that life is but an intricate complex 

 of physico-chemical reactions. Upon that \dew, even 

 to speak of a struggle for existence, is to use a metaphor 

 admissible only on account of its picturesque vigour ; 

 when we study the forms, processes, and evolution of 

 living beings we are spectators merely of the operation 

 of physical and chemical laws in peculiar forms of 

 matter. 



These ideas, in either their more moderate or their 

 more drastic form, affected the attitude of men towards 

 matters lying far outside the special province of biology- . 

 National policies have been powerfully influenced by 

 them, and it has been widely held that the education 

 of children should be shaped mainly, if not solely, with 

 the view of " efficiency " in the struggle for existence. 

 It is, therefore, relevant to point out what tremen- 

 dous difficulties are involved in their thorough-going 



