554 



Nm^URE 



[January 13, 19 16 



INTENSIVE WORK IN SCHOOL SCIENCE.^ 



IN a presidential address, and to this audience, a 

 preliminary reminiscent note may be .pardoned. 

 As a boy 1 had the common experience of fifty years 

 ago — teachers whose sole object was to spoon-feed 

 classes, not with the classics, but , with syntax and 

 prosody, forcing our empty wits,. as Milton says, to 

 compose " Theams Verses and Orations," wrung from 

 poor striplings like blood from the nose, with the 

 result that we loathed Xenophon and his ten thousand, 

 Homer was an abomination, while Livy and Cicero 

 were names and tasks. Ten years with really able 

 Trinity College, Dublin, and Oxford teachers left me 

 with no more real knowledge of Greek and Latiji 

 than of Chinese, and without the free use of l^e 

 languages as keys to great literature. Imaginje thp 

 delight of a boy of an inquisitive nature to itt'eet a 

 man ^ who cared nothing about words, but who Jchew 

 about things — who knew the stars in their cdiirses, 

 and could tell us their names, whose delight .was in 

 the woods in springtime, who told us about the frog- 

 spawn and the caddice worms, and who read to us 

 in the evenings Gilbert White and Kingsley's 

 *'Glaucus," who showed us with the microscope the 

 marvels in a drop of dirty pond water, and who on 

 Saturday excursions up the river could talk of the 

 Trilobites and the Orthoceratites, and explain the 

 formation of the earth's crust. No more dry husks 

 for me after such a diet, and early in my college life 

 I kicked over the traces and exchanged the classics 

 with "divers" as represented by Pearson, Browne, 

 and Hooker, for Hunter, Lyell, and Huxley. From 

 the study of nature to the study of man was an easy 

 step. 



My experience was that of thousands, yet, as I 

 remember, we were athirst for good literature. What 

 a delight it would have been to have had Chapman's 

 "Odyssey" read to us, or Plato's "Phsedo," on a Sun- 

 day evening, or the "Vena Historia." What a tragedy 

 to climb Parnassus In a fog ! How I have cursed the 

 memory of Protagoras since finding that he introduced 

 grammar into the curriculum, and forged the fetters 

 which chained generations of schoolboys In the cold 

 formalism of words. How different now that Mon- 

 taigne and Milton and Locke and Petty have come to 

 their own, and are recognised as men of sense In the 

 matter of the training of youth. 



Neither Montaigne nor Milton nor Locke had the 

 -wide national outlook on education displayed by Petty, 

 who alone almost of his generation realised that the 

 problems of natural philosophy, as It was then called, 

 must be attacked In a systematic and co-operative 

 study b}'^ a group of men " as careful to advance the 

 arts as the Jesuits are to propagate their religion." 



To come now to the subject-matter of my address — 

 the earlier and more Intensive study of science at 

 school to save time at the university. 



At fifteen years of age a boy should have had 

 sufficient general education — the three R's, a fair 

 knowledge of the history and literature of his country, 

 and In the public schools enough classics to begin a 

 technical training and to pass the ordinary entrance 

 examination. Now comes the fateful period in which 

 the bent of the boy's mind Is determined. A difficulty 

 ■exists in only a small proportion, a large majority 

 have already selected careers, and the work of the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth years should be determined 

 by this choice, whether professional, commercial, 

 academic, or the Services. The classical, modern, and 



^ From an addre s HelivereH to 'he A^i^^-c ation o' PutiH Sch'^o' Science 

 Masters by the p' evident, Sir William Osier, Bart , F.R S., Regius Professor 

 of M -Hicinc, Oxf >rH. 



2 Rev. W. A. Johnson, Warden and Founder of Trinity College School, 

 Canada. 



seientiiic departments of the schools now meet these 

 demands. 



The profession of which I can speak is In a serious 

 qudndar\ . With the rapid development of science the 

 subjects' <jf study have become so multiplied that the 

 curriculum is overburdened, and the five years is found 

 to be insufficient. Men come up to the university 

 later, remain longer, and the twenty-fifth or twenty- 

 seventh vear is reached before the qualification to 

 practise is obtained. A measure of relief to this 

 heavy burden— and it is one not likely to lighten 

 during the next decade — is in your hands. Devote the 

 slxt^,^nth and seventeenth years to the .preliminary 

 sciences— i^hyslcs, chemistry, and biology — and send us 

 at eighteen men fit to proceed at once with physio-, 

 logical chemistry, physiology, and anatomy. 



To do this three things are needed : teachers, labora- 

 tories, and a systematic organisation of the courses. 



I put the personal first, as the man is more impor- 

 tant than his workshop. Your association Indicates 

 the position which the science master has reached 

 in our public schools, , not without long years 

 of struggle. The glamour of the .classics lingers, but 

 the shock which the nation has had in this great war 

 will make us realise In the future that to. keep in^the 

 van we must be In the van Intellectually in all that 

 relates to man's control of nature. Science "Heads." 

 at Winchester, Eton, and Harrow would give th* 

 death-blow to the old-time Anglican tradition so well 

 expressed in a Christmas sermon by the late Dean 

 Gaisford, that classical learning "not only elevates 

 above the vulgar herd, but leads not Infrequently to 

 positions of considerable emolument," 



Brains, not bricks, should be , the . school motto In 

 the matter . of laboratories. A , young Faraday in a 

 shed is worth a dozen scientific showmen in costly 

 buildings with lavish outfits. The accommodation, I 

 am told, is at present ample in the larger schools. I 

 have. Indeed, seen laboratories which the .most up-to- 

 date college would envy. In the smaller schools it 

 has not always been easy to get either the men, the 

 space, or the equipment for teaching all the branches, 

 and if an attempt is made- to give earlier and more 

 intensive science teaching there will have to be im- 

 provement all round. 



The real crux is not with men or with buildings, 

 but so to organise the teaching of the school as to 

 have a continuous science course through two years. 

 What Is done now occasionally by the individual, I 

 should like to see done by all the science men coming 

 up to the universities or to the medical schools. The 

 plan I virge would make a radical change in the 

 constitution of some schools. Not that science is 

 not taught and well taught, but it should be given 

 Its proper place, as the dominant partner In the educa- 

 tional family, not a Cinderella left in the kitchen. 

 From an Intellectual point of view the advantages are 

 obvious. The mental exercise of the physical and 

 mathematical sciences, combined with the technical 

 training in the use of apparatus, gives a type of educa- 

 tion singularly stimulating to boys. How many of our 

 great inventors have lamented colourless careers at 

 school I Things, not words, appeal to most boys. 

 What an evolution of mind and hand is wrought by 

 a year In a well-conducted ohvsical laboratory. The 

 fascination of making and fitting the apparatus, the 

 wonders of electricity, and the marvellous laws of heat 

 and light — Into this new and delightful world a boy 

 of sixteen may pass safely for a thorough training. 

 Only It must not be a mere dabbling, to which the 

 physical laboratory too often lends itself, but a serious 

 day by day, week by week, gradual progress. The 

 senior boys could keep their knowledge of the subject 

 fresh by acting as demonstrators In the junior classes. 



NO. 241 I, VOL. 96] 



