NATURE 



549 



THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 187S 



SIXTH REPORT OF THE SCIENCE 

 . COMMISSION 



TH REE times within the last twelve years a Royal 

 Commission has reported on the science teaching 

 of our higher schools. In 1864 the Public Schools Com- 

 mission announced that from the largest and most famous 

 schools of all it was practically excluded. In 1868 the 

 Endowed Schools Commission declared that the majority 

 of school teachers had accepted it as part of their school 

 work. The Science Commissioners of 1875, in their 

 Sixth Report, on Science Teaching in Schools, testing this 

 statement by inquiry, reports that of 128 endowed schools 

 examined by them not one-half has even attempted to 

 introduce it, while of these only 13 possess a laboratory, 

 and only 10 give to the subject as much as four hours a 

 week. And this statement is curiously illustrated by the 

 statistics of the recent Oxford and Cambridge School 

 Examination, which show that out of 461 candidates for 

 certificates from 40 first-class schools, while 438 boys 

 took up Latin, 433 Greek, 455 Elementary Mathematics, 

 305 History ; only 21 took up Mechanics, 28 Chemistry, 

 6 Botany, 15 Physical Geography. 



In a volume whose research and condensation make it 

 not only a monument of conscientious toil, but an invalu- 

 able handbook to all who arc labouring to work out prac- 

 tically the great problem of which it treats, the Commis- 

 sioners investigate the obstacles which have caused the 

 endowed schools to defy the weighty recommendations of 

 former Commissions, the unanimous verdict of educa- 

 tional authorities outside the scholastic profession, and 

 the increasingly urgent demands of English public 

 opinion. They find the schoolmasters' excuses to be 

 threefold ; absence of funds, want of time, and scepticism 

 as to the educational value of science in comparison with 

 other subjects. A large portion of the Appendix is de- 

 voted to the consideration of these difficulties ; to sifting 

 the allegations on which they rest, and to balancing 

 against them the experience of those teachers who have 

 faced and successfully met them. Showing in detail the 

 comparatively trifling cost at which indispensable appa- 

 ratus can be obtained, the Commissioners nevertheless 

 admit the 'rarity, in the present state of Enghsh culture, 

 either of independent science teachers suited to the larger 

 schools, or of men, such as poorer schools desiderate, 

 combining literary with scientific knowledge. This, how- 

 ever, is an evil of the past rather than of the future, since 

 not the least amongst the advantages expected from a 

 reformed system of school teaching is the creation of a 

 race of able teachers, general as well as special. The 

 relative value of science as an implement of mental train- 

 ing is next discussed. Its peculiar excellence is briefly 

 vindicated, as cultivating in a way attainable by no other 

 means the habits of observation and experiment, of clas- 

 sification, arrangement, method, judgment ; and its suita- 

 bility to the capacities of the very youngest boys is 

 testified to by Faraday, Hooker, Rolleston, Carpen- 

 ter, and Sir W. Thomson. Lastly, it is shown that, 

 if this be so, the argument from want of time is no argu- 

 ment at all ; that the hours are already wasted which 

 condemn the half of a boy's faculties to stagnation and 

 Vol. xii.— No, 313 



render education one-sided and incomplete ; and that 

 the claims of different branches of instruction may be 

 easily adjusted by economy of time, improvement in 

 methods, and excision of superfluous studies. 



On a review of all these objections and of the answers 

 offered to them, and taking into account the dicta of 

 former Commissioners and the practice of other countries, 

 the Report advises that literature, mathematics, and 

 science should be the accepted subjects of education up 

 to the time at which boys leave school, and should all 

 three be made compulsory in any School Leaving-Exa- 

 mination or University Matriculation ; but that after 

 entering the University students should be left to choose 

 for themselves amongst these lines of study, and need 

 pass no subsequent examination in subjects other than 

 the one which they select. As regards the teaching of 

 science, they recommend that it should commence with 

 the beginning of the school career ; that not less than six 

 hours a week should be devoted to it, and that in all 

 school examinations as much as one-sixth of the marks 

 should be allotted to it. 



These recommendations possess the two great excel- 

 lences of authoritativeness and clearness. They are sup- 

 ported by a host of experienced witnesses, as well as by 

 the eminent names whose signatures follow them. Their 

 ideal of school education is simplicity itself. The supre- 

 macy of Classics is to be dethroned ; the artifices of 

 stratification and bifurcation are to be discarded ; litera- 

 ture, mathematics, and science are to share a boy's intel- 

 lect between them from the very first, until a leaving- 

 examination which shows his progress to have been 

 satisfactory in all three sets him free to follow his in- 

 clination by pursuing exclusively the subject which suits 

 him best ; happy since eminence in that one will not have 

 been purchased by entire ignorance of all the others. 

 Unfortunately, though most necessarily — for this Report 

 concerns schools only — the curtain drops upon this interest- 

 ing moment of transition, shutting out of view the influence 

 which University Scholarships and Exhibitions exercise 

 upon school work, and thus ignoring an obstacle to the 

 realisation of the programme far greater than want of 

 money, want of time, or want of appreciation, in the 

 schools themselves. 



What is the avowed object and purpose of the higher 

 English school education 1 Is it the even and progressive 

 development of young minds? the strengthening in equal 

 proportion of the faculties of imagination, memory, reason, 

 observation ? the opening doors of knowledge in the plastic 

 time of youth, which if not opened then will be fast closed 

 in later years by the pressure of active work, or habitual 

 exclusiveness, or energies paralysed through disuse "i 

 Nothing of the kind. It is constructed entirely with the 

 aim of winning certain prizes ; for scholarships with 

 which a costly University bribes men to come to it for 

 education ; for class-lists leading up to College Fellow- 

 ships ; for the lucrative posts of military and civil service. 

 In all these, but most of all where the Universities can 

 determine the ordeal, one principle of success has been 

 established, and that principle is one-sidedness. The 

 candidate for India, for Woolwich, for Cooper's Hill, must 

 at an early age select certain subjects and throw over- 

 board all the rest. The childish aspirant to the entrance 

 scholarships of a public fchool is placed in the hands 



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