July 5, 1917] 



NATURE 



;67 



THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION. 



SIR NAPIER SHAW has done good service 

 to the cause of education by the timely 

 publication of his trenchant "Open Letter" and 

 other essays,^ and although the brochure is a 

 small one, its intrinsic value is not to be 

 measured by the exiguity of its pages. The 

 author writes with first-hand knowledge, gained 

 partly in earlier years at Cambridge, and partly 

 m the course of his experience as head of the 

 Meteorological Office. In the latter capacity he 

 is naturally brought into contact not only with 

 newly finished products of the university mill who 

 are seeking employment, but with men of affairs 

 to whom the science of common life ought to be 

 as generally familiar as, actually, it is not. 



Thoughtful persons who happen to be conver- 

 sant with the anomalies and anachronisms so 

 obvious in the educational systems of this country 

 will find themselves, although not perhaps in com- 

 plete agreement, at any rate in sympathy with 

 much that is so admirably set forth in this little 

 volume. Of course, some effective shots are 

 fired at the universities in which compulsory 

 classics are still so strongly entrenched. The 

 defenders of a position rapidly becoming hope- 

 less might perhaps have been expected long ago 

 to have recognised the common sense of the 

 shrewd old poet who laughed at their prototypes 

 in his own days : — 



. . . nisi quae terris semota suisque 

 Temporibus defuncta videt, fastidit et odit. 

 Perhaps in their hearts they may have done so, 

 but custom and vested interests have always 

 proved serious obstacles in the way of progress. • 

 Things are changing now, but whilst we want to 

 destroy the loaded dice which have enabled the 

 classical side of the great schools unfairly to win 

 a wholly undue proportion of the ablest boys, we 

 do not desire to see the aggrandisement of the 

 modern side effected by the establishment of 

 countervailing malpractices of a similar kind. 



As soon, however, as we attempt to arrive at 

 any conclusion as to what part science is to play 

 in the education of the future, we encounter a dis- 

 tracting diversity of opinion. The war has 

 brought many things home to us, and few things 

 more forcibly than a recognition of the immense 

 importance of scfence to the national safety. But 

 on what lines are we going to move in the future ? 

 Sir Napier has pungent things to say about much 

 of the stuff that passes for science in too many 

 of our schools and colleges. He makes a strong 

 appeal, based on utilitarian as well as on educa- 

 tional grounds, for the more adequate recognition 

 of the "observational sciences." Those who 

 have had to do with ordinary boys and girls are 

 hkely to agree with him in the main, and, as a 

 matter of fact, beginnings have been already 

 made m more than one of our great schools. The 

 results have shown how well suited for young 

 people a properly devised course of education on 

 these hnes can be made. 



" ^^ Lack of Science in Modern Educati( 

 M.ght Be." By Sir Napier Shaw. Pp. T 

 »9»6.) Price is. net. ^ * 



NO. 2488, VOL. 99] 



ion, with Some Hints of What 

 (London : Lamley and Co., 



A deplorable ignorance of the common, though 

 fundamental, facts of Nature is by no means so 

 rare as it ought to be amongst those who have 

 acquired their knowledge of science in the labora- 

 tory. Perhaps this need not excite surprise, for 

 even in high quarters we find curricula in science 

 recommended which, although admirably adapted 

 to enable a boy to win a scholarship under the 

 existing defective methods of selection, are 

 assuredly not calculated to stimulate his interest 

 in the big experimental laboratory of Nature. 



A distinguished professor has urged, in a re- 

 cently published book, that the ideal school 

 curriculum in science should begin with mathe- 

 matics, to be followed by physics, chemistry, and 

 mechanics, "and that wholly subordinate import- 

 ance should be attached to the biological sciences, 

 because [sic] the elementary stages of these latter 

 subjects, necessarily largely descriptive, are in- 

 susceptible to broad treatment as illustrative of 

 scientific reasoning and method." Perhaps it 

 would not be easy to find a more complete lack 

 of appreciation of the psychology of the ordinary 

 boy and girl, or a more profound misapprehen- 

 sion of the relative values of the various branches 

 of natural knowledge in earlier school education 

 compressed into fewer words. A moderate 

 amount of the physical sciences (particularly such 

 parts as do not demand a broad treatment illus- 

 trative of scientific reasoning and method) is 

 certainly desirable. What is, however, most 

 needed for the average boy or girl is a training 

 in accurate observation and elementary analysis 

 of natural phenomena, not the formal science 

 of the laboratory — that should come later — 

 but in the field, on the hillside, in the cloud, and 

 in the river. The good teacher will see to it that 

 scientific reasoning will inevitably develop in the 

 minds of the children. They will, and practice 

 shows they do, become interested in common 

 branches of natural knowledge, the very existence 

 of which escapes so many grown-up people who 

 were not shown how to observe these things when 

 they themselves were young. 



There is just as much danger of falling into a 

 groove in the teaching of science as in that of 

 other subjects, and it behoves all who have the 

 interests of higher as well as school education 

 at heart to keep a sharp eye on the specialist 

 fiend. Mathematics is not the only gateway to 

 science, any more than Greek grammar is the only 

 avenue to the best literature. It takes all sort's 

 of people to make a world, and it needs an 

 acquaintance, elementary perhaps, but certainly 

 not superficial, with all sorts of subjects to make 

 an educated man or woman. It is the business of 

 education to stimulate the development of all sides 

 of the healthy mentality of boys and girls (whilst 

 not neglecting their own natural bias) before the 

 imperious needs of specialising in order to equip 

 them for particular paths of life impose limita- 

 tions on the area covered by instruction. 

 Properly considered, if the foundations have been 

 well and truly laid, and on a broad basis, it would 

 seem that specialised instruction may be justly 

 likened to the rising" edifice, and it should form 



