Science in Public Affairs 



the Dick Bequest ; l (5) the establishment, in some 

 districts of large towns, of a new type of elemen- 

 tary school, with much more manual work in the 

 curriculum, for boys who, in the opinion of the 

 teachers, would gain by having a course of train- 

 ing more industrial in character than is appropriate 

 for the ordinary schools ; (6) the provision of a 

 large number of domestic science schools, giving 

 girls from the elementary schools a five months' 

 course of practical instruction in the duties of 

 home life, on the model successfully adopted in 

 Liverpool ; 2 and (7) active encouragement in rural 

 schools of the teaching of natural history, where 

 possible in connection with school gardens, an 

 adaptation of the course of study to the children's 

 surroundings which is approved by the Board of 

 Education and is being promoted by the Essex 

 and other County Councils. This teaching, in- 

 deed, is as valuable in the town as in the country 

 schools, but its omission from the latter is 

 inexcusable. The teacher, as is well said in the 

 " Suggestions " referred to above, "must continually 

 ask himself whether his teaching proceeds from the 



1 The work of such higher departments and of separate 

 higher elementary schools would quickly remedy the defect 

 to which Sir William Mather referred at the inaugural meeting 

 of the British Science Guild on October 30, 1905 : "We have 

 not a sufficient number of the foreman class, the subordinate 

 manager class, to carry out the methods of science which 

 emanate from the top, and sufficiently well educated to second 

 the efforts of those who are at the head of great concerns." 



2 For a description of the domestic science school founded 

 in Liverpool by Miss Calder see " Report on Secondary Educa- 

 tion in Liverpool," pp. 114 ff. Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1904. 



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