Science in National Education 



fact that its work rested upon what is, intellectually 

 speaking, the most carefully organised system of 

 general secondary education in the world. 



The third consequence of the scientific move- 

 ment has been to breathe a new spirit into educa- 

 tional aims and methods. No writer did more to 

 infuse this new spirit into modern teaching than 

 Herbert Spencer, whose essay on Intellectual 

 Education, published in 1854, was imbued with 

 the principles of Pestalozzi. At bottom, it is the 

 spirit of search as contrasted with the spirit of 

 "believe and ask no questions." But, as Spencer 

 said : " There cannot fail to be a relationship 

 between the successive systems of education and 

 the successive social states with which they have 

 co-existed. Having a common origin in the 

 national mind, the institutions of each epoch, what- 

 ever be their special functions, have a common 

 likeness." At the time when he was writing, 

 scientific inquiry was battling against entrenched 

 prejudice. Therefore, to his mind (and similarly 

 to Tyndall's and to Huxley's) scientific teaching 

 seemed inseparably connected with discovery, 

 with the overthrow of false authority, with libera- 

 tion. But it is quite conceivable that in future, 

 when physical science sits on the throne of un- 

 disputed authority, she may wittingly or unwittingly 

 impose upon education as heavy a weight of pre- 

 scribed belief as did any earlier regime, and may 

 come herself to need, as an educational corrective, 

 the sound doctrine of her earlier protagonists. 

 All true education strikes a balance between 



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