NA TURE 



433 



THURSDAY, MARCH 8, li 



PHYSICAL SCIENCE AND THE WOOLWICH 

 EXAMINA TIONS. 



TIJE are interested to learn that the views we have 

 * * expressed on this subject are probably shared by 

 representatives of military opinion ; for we are informed 

 that the treatment of scientific candidates for Line cadet- 

 ships, under the similar regulations for admission to 

 Sandhurst that were introduced in 1884, met with a very 

 unfavourable reception from at least one of the service 

 journals. At the time of their introduction, the Army 

 and Navy Gazette pointed out, as we have done, the 

 serious objections that exist to giving modern languages so 

 great an ascendency as is allotted to them in the present 

 Sandhurst competitions. All that was said on this sub- 

 ject in 1884 applies with much greater force to the 

 proposed mode of selecting officers for the scientific 

 branches of the Army. We do not underrate the 

 value of modern languages to soldiers, or to any 

 other class, but an education in which mathematics 

 and modern languages occupy so dominant a posi- 

 tion as they are likely to possess in the education of 

 many of the successful Woolwich cadets of the future ^ is 

 scarcely more defensible than would be the adoption now 

 of the purely classical training of former years. We 

 trust, therefore, that no pains will be spared by those 

 who are interested in this question to further the efforts 

 that are being made to bring about the adoption of a 

 more liberal scheme, which shall encourage early 

 specializing on the part of the candidates to a less 

 degree, and be more just to the particular class whose 

 claims we have urged. 



These regulations seem calculated to perpetuate the 

 system of education of which it has been repeatedly 

 complained that "it has too much to do with books and 

 too little to do with things " ; and, apart from their unfair- 

 ness, they will tie the hands of those head masters who 

 are willing, or even anxious, to adapt the work of their 

 schools to the needs of the times, by forcing upon them 

 a narrow curriculum of which they do not approve. This 

 is not only unfortunate but unnecessary, for there is no 

 real obstacle in the way of formulating a scheme of 

 examination that shall both give fair play to all the can- 

 didates, and leave the hands of the teachers compara- 

 tively unshackled. 



Much as the claims of science are still underrated by 

 the unthinking among us, it was hardly to be expected 

 that the representatives of a scientific profession would 

 sanction regulations which will tend to prevent the admis- 

 sion to that profession of youths of scientific power, and 

 which are also calculated to discourage any element of 

 science teaching in the previous education of those who 

 may wish to join it. Complaints of the absence of such 

 training are familiar enough, and regulations intended to 

 encourage such preliminary work are not uncommon. This 

 adds not a little to our surprise at the proposals of the War 

 Office Committee. We regret to perceive in them a fresh ; 



' Since mathematical and modern languages will count for 12. coo marks 

 out of a maximum of 16.500, and as about 5000 will be suffic ent for success 

 in future, it is not unlike'y that many candidates may deem it safest or 

 easiest to almost confine their studies to these two branches. 



Vol. XXXVII. — No. 958. 



illustration of the tendency of Examining Boards to 

 sacrifice the interests of the examined to a desire for 

 simplicity in their schemes of examination, a tendency 

 that constitutes a source of serious danger to proper 

 freedom of education in these days, when admission to 

 all the higher avocations is so jealously guarded by 

 competitive or qualifying examinations. 



In the discussion of this subject that has occurred in 

 our columns a statement has been made, and repeated, 

 by one of our correspondents, that requires notice. We 

 allude to the contention that chemistry, physics, and 

 geology are not good educational subjects for boys under 

 sixteen years of age. This is a statement with which very 

 few who have given these sciences a fair trial will agree ; 

 moreover, it is not pertinent to the question under 

 discussion. Successful candidates for the Woolwich 

 cadetships are, we believe, on an average, not much 

 less than seventeen and a half years of age, and in 

 future the average of age is more likely to rise than 

 to fall in consequence of the increased severity of 

 the examination in obligatory mathematics. No liberal- 

 minded man will deny that the above-named sciences are 

 exceedingly good educational subjects, between the ages 

 of fifteen and seventeen and a half years, in the case of 

 those who have ability and liking for them, by whom 

 alone they will as a rule be studied among the candidates 

 for Woolwich. Of course there are some for whom such 

 studies are unfitted, but we very much doubt whether 

 the military authorities will greatly regret the rejection 

 of such as these. Their powers are likely to be more 

 profitably employed in other directions. 



If we may judge from the memorandum lately issued 

 with the Army Estimates by Mr. Stanhope, we may con- 

 clude that the present time affords a good opportunity for 

 urging upon his notice the thoroughly unpractical cha- 

 racter of the proposed changes. The frankness with 

 which Mr. Stanhope admits other deficiencies in the 

 system of our military administration encourages the 

 expectation that in this matter also he will act with an 

 equal degree of practical sense, and that it will not be 

 long before we shall hear that the efforts of those who 

 have taken up this matter are bearing fruit. 



PROFESSOR FLEEMING JENKIN. 

 Papers, Literary, Scientific, &'c., by the late Fleeming 

 Jenkin, F.R.S., LL.D. Edited by Sidney Colvin, M.A., 

 and J. A. Ewing, F.R.S. With a Memoir by Robert 

 Louis Stevenson. 2 vols. (London ; Longmans, Green, 

 and Co., 1887.) 



THIS is a work of great interest to many classes of 

 scientific men, as well as to the public at large. Its 

 contents are of an extremely varied character. Readers 

 of Nature, as such, are not deeply concerned with dis- 

 cussions of Female Dress in ancient Greece, with Rhythm 

 in English verse, or with the characteristics of Mrs. 

 Siddons as an actress. Nor will they, as a body, care 

 much for the merits and demerits of Trade L'^nions, the 

 relations of Supply and Demand, or other branches of the 

 would-be science called Political Economy. The literary 

 and economic Journals, on the other hand, will probably 

 regard these as among the more valuable contents of these 

 volumes. 



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