SCIENCE IN EDUCATION 



ance with elementary science is obvious. Would it be 

 thought possible that any nation could act so absurdly 

 as to teach its children other languages, and leave them 

 in complete ignorance of the tongue of the land in which 

 they would have to pass their lives ? Would it not then 

 be incredible, if it had not become a too familiar fact, 

 that the public schools have, until recently, excluded all 

 teaching of the science of Nature from their scheme of 

 studies, though man's relation to Nature is more intimate 

 than to his fellow-countrymen ? We live, move, and 

 have our being in Nature ; we cannot emigrate from it, for 

 we are part of it. Yet our higher education leaves men, 

 who in other directions are well informed, much as deaf- 

 mutes in the presence of Nature. They do not hear her 

 most imperative warnings, and can only get on haltingly 

 in their everyday intercourse with the natural forces to 

 which their lives are subjected, by means of the arbitrary 

 signs of empirical custom. The recent introduction of 

 some amount of science teaching into our Higher Schools is 

 quite inadequate, alike in kind and in degree. It can be 

 only through a reform of the scheme of their examinations 

 by the Universities, that we can hope to see science take 

 the equal part with the humanities in general education, 

 to which she is entitled. 



The place of science in general education may be 

 considered under two distinct aspects : the intrinsic 

 value of the teaching of science as a means of enlarging 



the powers of the mind ; and secondly, its relative 



no 



