l62 



NATURE 



[December 14, 1899 



many of the subjects of the new curriculum can. (2) The 

 demand for useful information did not affect the old curriculum ; 

 — it seriously diminished the exercise of the knowledpe-making 

 power in the new. (3) Written examinations might stimulate 

 such exercise in the old curriculum ; — they could not but repress 

 it in the new. (4) Competent teachers could readily be secured 

 for the old curriculum ; — they have not generally been available 

 for the new. (5) Incompetent teachers could not largely ex- 

 clude practice in knowledge-making under the old curriculum ; — 

 they could not fail to exclude it largely under the new. 

 Obviously, therefore, the more intensely modern the curriculum 

 has become, i.e. the more linguistic study has been excluded 

 and science study introduced, the less efficient in general must 

 the curriculum have become, so far as practice in knowledge- 

 making is concerned. 



If the above discussion is sound, any system such as our 

 modern system, from which the method of investigation is 

 largely excluded, must be distinctly inferior, as a means of pre- 

 paring young people for the work of life, to a system such as 

 the one which has become old-fashioned, in which it is given 

 abundant exercise. It is difficult, however, to establish an 

 inferiority in a case of this kind from experience. For in any 

 trial that may be made of the two systems there must always be 

 extraneous circumstances on which the burden of any observed 

 inferiority may be laid. On the present occasion I cannot 

 take time even to summarise such evidence as goes to show 

 that the inferiority which is to be expected has been found to be 

 actual. I must -content myself with a mere reference to the 

 result of what is perhaps the most decisive of all the trials 

 which have been made, viz., that made in Prussia as to the 

 relative educational efficiency of the Gymnasium, with its 

 largely classical course, and the Realschule, with its largely 

 scientific course. Both institutions had been conducted with 

 characteristic German thoroughness with respect to the training 

 of teachers and the provision of equipment, and the written 

 examination system had been applied in a non-centralised form. 

 Except in so far as tradition and the wider privileges of 

 Gymnasium graduates may have led the more promising men to 

 enter the Gymnasium, the two institutions seem to have worked 

 under equally favourable conditions. Yet when in 1880, after 

 a trial of more than ten years, the question of continuing to 

 admit graduates of the Realschule to certain courses of the I 

 University of Berlin came up for discussion, even the scientific | 

 professors testified that for the work of their departments, 

 mainly scientific research, the men nurtured in the Gymnasium 

 had been fountl better qualified than those who had come up 

 from the Realschule. The effect of tradition and privilege may 

 have had much to do with this result ; and the means of instruc- 

 tion in science twenty years ago were of course not so elaborate 

 as they are now. But it is significant, that in the light of the 

 present discussion, it was to be expected that for success even in 

 scientific research, i.e. the making of new knowledge of natural 

 phenomena, power of knowledge-making, though cultivated on 

 linguistic study only, would be of greater importance than the 

 stock of scientific knowledge which it is the aim of the modern 

 curriculum to afford. 



Our own experience in Nova Scotia is less definite. We have 

 not had the two systems running side by side, and can only 

 compare the present state of things with the past ; and the 

 comparison is complicated by the fact that the present state of 

 things is in many respects in advance of the past. But there 

 is no doubt that the country is full of a deep and growing dis- 

 content, which, though it finds vent at times in ill-grounded 

 criticism, rests in the main on a solid basis. The farmer, to 

 take a single example, finds that the boys he sends to the High 

 School rarely return to the farm. He blames the school, with 

 its Latin and its multiplicity of sciences, and demands the pro- 

 vision of something more practical, such as the teaching of 

 agriculture. There are probably many reasons why the farmer's 

 boy does not return to the farm ; but there can be little doubt, 

 if my position is sound, not merely that he is not fitted, but 

 that he is actually unfitted, by his liigh School course, for the 

 farmer's work. The farmer must, above all things, be able to 

 learn quickly and accurately from his own experience. His 

 boy, after passing through an intensely modern curriculum, 

 under the pressure of a centralised examining system, and under 

 the guidance of teachers in w hom, for the most part, the colleges 

 have failed to develop the investigating spirit and power, must 

 almost inevitably be less able to make knowledge for himself 

 out of his own experience, than he would have been, had he 



NO. 1572, VOL. 6t] 



remained on the farm ; while even that part of his large stock 

 of acquired knowledge which bears upon agriculture must con- 

 sist in general of inaccurate and ill-digested epitomes of sciences, 

 in which he has little, if any, genuine interest. The farmer's 

 discontent is therefore probably justified ; but he is wrong in 

 the details of his criticism. With the teachers who are at pre- 

 sent available, Latin is the subject from which his boy will 

 acquire, more than from any other, the essential power of 

 putting that and that together. Although it is true that the 

 usual synoptic study of the whole circle of the sciences will 

 make his boy neither a farmer nor anything else, it is also 

 true that a more informal study, a knowledge-making; as 

 distinguished from a mere information-supplying study, of 

 bodies and the changes they undergo, and of plants and ani- 

 mals, rocks and soils, would cultivate in him the power of 

 using his experience, give him, not much perhaps, but certainly 

 some real knowledge bearing on agriculture, give him the 

 scientific experience requisite for the reading of agricultural 

 books, and give him a living interest in all the operations of 

 the farm. Fruitful teaching in agriculture, however, is im- 

 possible. The teacher could teach it only if he were a some- 

 what experienced farmer himself; and even if he were, he 

 could not teach it adequately to beings with such limited 

 experience as boys. 



Nor is the farmer the only exponent of discontent. The 

 feeling of dissatisfaction is general. And if my position is 

 sound it might be expected to be general. For if our school 

 discipline fails to cultivate in our youth the power of learning 

 by experience, it fails to give them what is at least one great 

 essential of success, not in farming merely, but in whatever 

 form of work they may be called upon to undertake. 



There is one other educational experience, perhaps specially 

 characteristic of our time, to which I should like to refer, viz. , 

 the frequency of the success of the self-made man. His success 

 is usually attributed to innate ability, organising power, push, 

 knowledge of men, and what not. To my mind it is largely 

 due to a well developed power of learning by experience ; and 

 he owes that in great measure to the school of practical life in 

 which he has had his training. This school provides an 

 entirely different curriculum from the one we have been con- 

 sidering. It furnishes its pupils with no outfit of information 

 whatever ; but compels them to hunt out for themselves such 

 information as they may require. And instead of devising 

 cunning ways of stopping the putting of that and that together, 

 it compels its pupils, by sending them early into active life, to 

 cultivate that power for themselves. Many of them of course 

 go down ; for no helping hand is extended to them, and the 

 method is rough. But many manage to obtain the knowledge 

 they require, learn how to put the that and that of their ex- 

 perience together, and graduate, often, as we should say, with 

 high honours, in one or other of the departments of active 

 work. They may not have been brought into contact with 

 much that makes for sweetness and light, and may thus be 

 deficient in literary and general culture ; but for all forms of 

 activity that demand the generalising of experience, their rough 

 school has given them a training which is, in some respects at 

 least, admirable. Can we wonder then that the practical man, 

 who rightly regards ability to tackle the main work of life as 

 the most important component of a complete culture, and who 

 sees daily the comparative helplessness of the products of the 

 modern curriculum, decides to send his son as early as possible 

 to the school of practical life ? 



If, notwithstanding the imperfect manner in which I have 

 presented the value of the knowledge-making power, you are 

 convinced of its great importance, you cannot fail t6 be in- 

 terested in the question : How are we to secure its cultivation 

 in the school and college ? 



We may dismiss at once the proposal suggested by what has 

 been said as to the efficiency of the old-fashioned school, that 

 we should return to the classical curriculum, or, at any rate, to 

 language, as the chief means of educational discipline. Such 

 harking back, even looked at from our present point of view 

 only, would be bad policy, for two reasons, (i) because a com- 

 bination of language and science study, if both are properly 

 carried out, affords a far better training in knowledge-making 

 than either singly, and (2) t:ecause, though an outfit of know- 

 ledge of science, adequate for use in the work of life, is no 

 longer capable of being provided beforehand as part of a course 

 of liberal training, the acquisition of power of acquiring know- 

 ledge demands considerable scientific experience. A curriculum 



