SCIENCE IN EDUCATION 



value and place as compared with the teaching of the 

 classics. 



The elements of the science of Nature, when properly 

 taught, have a claim to a very high place in early general 

 education, since Nature is always close about us as a living 

 intelligence and power, which responds to the questions 

 put to her by experiment. The young mind finds itself 

 no longer in the realms of the dead, deciphering from 

 the inscriptions on their tombstones, the history and 

 opinions of past generations, invaluable as is such know- 

 ledge in its proper place, but in the open of light and life 

 where Nature holds her school, taking all things, great and 

 small, as the object lessons of her teaching. 



Two faculties of the mind which it is of the highest 

 importance, especially in early youth, to enlarge and 

 develop by exercise, are wonder and imagination. Under 

 the ordinary premature language teaching of the Grammar 

 Schools, even the wonder and imagination natural to 

 young minds become so stunted in their growth as to 

 remain more or less dormant throughout life. On the 

 other hand, natural science brings them into full activity, 

 and greatly stimulates their development. Nature's 

 fairy-tales, as read through the microscope, the telescope, 

 and the spectroscope, or spelt out to us from the blue 

 by waves of ether, are among the most powerful of the 

 exciting causes of wonder in its noblest form, when free 

 from terror it becomes the minister of delight and of mental 



stimulation. 



in 



