Jan. 1 8, 1872] 



NATURE 



233 



THE FOUNDATION OF A TECHNOLOGICAL 



EDUCA TION* 



T^ECHNOLOGICAL education is taken up by many writers on 

 ■^ the subject at the time when a youth is supposed to enter 

 the School of Technology ; and scientific men, as a rule, do not 

 seem to set sufficient stress upon the necessity of laying the founda- 

 tion for it at a much earlier age. It is not indeed scientific men 

 alone who are interested in this question, but they are the autho- 

 rities who should speak out upon it, for they nlone are competent 

 to pronounce an opinion upon the value of scientific education. 

 It cannot be expected that men who themselves know nothing of 

 science, care nothing for its progress, and recognise none 

 of the obligations under which they lie to it, should favour 

 its introduction into our schools, and thus depart from the 

 stereotyped and antiquated system of education, that brings up 

 our youth but partially fitted or altogether unprepared for a 

 majority of the occupations they are destined to pursue, and ex- 

 posed at every point to suffer from their own ignorance and the 

 impositions of others. Every one now-adays should have such 

 a knowledge of scientific principles and methods as will enable 

 him to form a just idea of the value of science, and to distin- 

 guish between knowledge and pretence — between science and 

 quackery. The political economiit, who has to legislate regard- 

 ing the natural resources of the country ; the capitalist, who 

 invests in their development and manufacture ; the lawyer, who 

 has to conduct the numberless suits into which scientific ques- 

 tions enter ; the journalist, who claims to enlighten and direct 

 the masses ; every one who uses manufactured products liable to 

 adulteration; every one who values his health, or has to consult 

 a medical man or other scientific expert ; every father, and, what 

 is still more important, every mother of a family ; every youth 

 that is making choice of an occupation for life ; or, in other 

 words, every member of a civilised community, ought to be 

 acquainted with the elementary facts and principles upon which 

 all the applications of science are based. 



This knowledge, which should thus form an essential feature 

 of general education, is also that which will form the very best 

 foundation for technological purposes. In the first place, it 

 will bring into technological schools a vast amount of excellent 

 material that is now wasted elsewhere ; for numbers of youths, 

 with minds well adapted to such pursuits, would take to the 

 practical applications of science, if they knew anything at all 

 of science itself. Nor need there be any fear that the field will 

 thereby be overcrowded ; for so long as quacks and pretenders 

 abound there is room for good men, and the difficulty at pre- 

 sent is to obtain students who have a natural aptiiude, or 

 rather, we should say, an aptitude developed by early education 

 for scientific work. 



Secondly, and this is the really important aspect of the case, 

 educators will have to deal with material prepared for their pur- 

 poses, instead of, as now, receiving it not merely unprepared, but 

 actually warped out of proper condition. For it is not too much 

 to say that a youth who has had a purely academic education, on 

 entering a technological institute has to devote a large portion of 

 his time to mastering elementary ideas and principles, that he 

 should have learned as a child ; whilst the erroneous methods 

 of instilling knowledge to which he has been subjected, will be 

 a hindrance to him for years, if not for life. It is but a few days 

 since that a freshman in such an institute gravely asked the writer 

 "if a fish was not an animal," thus displaying, at the age of 

 seventeen, a doubt of the meaning of a term that he should hare 

 accurately understood at the age of seven. Of a term, did we 

 •write? We mean of a fact ; of one of the broadest generalisa- 

 tions of science. Now, what has not such a youth to learn of first 

 principles? How utterly unprepared in the simplest rudiments 

 of knowledge is he for a technological course ! But when we 

 come to the system of thought induced by the vicious methods of 

 preparatory study, the case is still worse Here we have the 

 labour of driving practical instruction into the brain of a young 

 man who, after having passed perhaps brilliantly through college, 

 is now laboriously pushing his way through a technological 

 course ; he is now nominally near its close, yet three years of 

 steady application have not divested him of the habit of learning 

 by rote on the authority of others. He has no reliance on his 

 own experiences, seeks no explanations by questioning his own 

 reasoning powers, but prefers always to take another's opinion, 

 instead of elaborating a judgment of his own. He is still in fact 



* By Mr. E. C. H. Day, reprinted from the Nrw York Technologist. 



utterly devoid of the first essentials of self-help in education, so 

 completely have his natural abilities been misdirected in that first 

 course, in which the amount of evil accomplished may be judged 

 by the very brilliancy of his success in it. Such a student will 

 never make a reliable scientific expert. We should not like to 

 trust him even as a druggist's clerk ; he should never have entered 

 a technological institute, because he has never had any founda- 

 tion laid for a technological education. 



But in what is such a foundation to consist ? and when is it to 

 be commenced ? What alterations are to be made in our recog- 

 nised systems of instruction ? Already there are more subjects 

 to be taught than the child has time to learn. We reply, let 

 this education commence in the very infant school ; let the methods 

 of instruction be rational, because natural ones ; let the subjects 

 be taught in their natural order ; and we may very easily teach, 

 or rather " educate," vastly more than we do now. At present 

 beyond mere reading, writing, some mathematics, and something 

 of languages, this child learns absolutely little, and that little 

 superficially. It wastes its time largely in learning the the ire- 

 tical use of these tools without being made to apply them in 

 building up an education. This is not the way in which the 

 carpenter instructs his new apprentice ; if he did, neither would 

 ever reap much benefit from his instruction. 



Let the elements of the natural and physical sciences form a 

 part of general education ; let physical geogiaphy go before 

 political ; let the child learn that a history of the world precedes 

 that of man ; and at every point let him be familiarised with 

 the intimate dependence between the truths of science and the 

 fact of his own existence. Let these things be taught by a 

 rational method of object teaching, not used to convey desultory 

 information, but as a system of trainnig, whereby the reasoning 

 faculties may be rightly educated, at the same time that the 

 memory is taxed with a stock of useful, because elementary and 

 connected ideas. Let reading and writing sink to their proper 

 rank, as means of education and not as objects of it ; and let 

 them, whilst being taught, be used to aid in the acquirement of 

 real knowledge. 



This may seem to demand a radical change in our system of 

 preparatory education public and private ; but if the technologist 

 wishes to make the most of young minds, he must bend them to 

 his pui-pose from their earliest years ; nor will the community at 

 large, when it understands that its interests in the matter are 

 identical with its own, be averse to the change proposed, which 

 is in accordance with its needs and the progressive spirit of the 

 age. If the advocates of a liberal and enlightened system of 

 popular education in England can succeed in tidmg over the 

 shortsighted opposition of sectarianism, as above sketched out, 

 inaugurated there by the aid of its scientific men ; the result 

 will be, that the technological schools of Great Britain will be 

 supplied with materials trained from their very infancy in science. 

 Are there no scientific men in the country who will take up the 

 subject here in the same wide-awake spirit ? 



MECHANISM OF FLEXION AND EXTENSION 

 IN BIRDS' WINGS* 



DR. COUES' proposition is, that flexion of the forearm upon 

 the humerus produces flexion (adduction) of the hand upon 

 the forearm, by osseous mechanism alone, and conversely : ex- 

 tension of the forearm causes extension (abduction) of the hand. 

 The point of the article consists in a demonstration of the fact 

 that, in spreading and folding the wing, the radius sbdes length- 

 wise along the ulna to a certain extent. Recapitulating certain 

 points in the anatomy of the elbow and wrist, the author shows 

 that this sliJing is produced by the relative size, shape, and 

 position of the humeral surfaces with which the radius and ulna 

 respectively articulate ; these being such, that in flexion of the 

 forearm the radial surface is nearest the wrist -joint, and in exten- 

 sion the ulnar one ; and consequently the two bones of the fore- 

 arm occupy different relative positions in flexion and extension. 

 In flexion, the radius is pushed forward, and projects somewhat 

 beyond the end of the ulna, impinging upon the radlD-carpal 

 bone (scapholunar), and pushing the pinion around the centre of 

 motion of the wrist-joint so that it is more or less flexed. In 

 extension, the reverse motion takes place, from the pulling hack 

 of the radius. The proposition is carefully demonstrated, illus- 



* Abstract of a Paper read at the Indianapolii Meeting of the British 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, August 1871. By Dr. tlliott 

 Coues. From the American Naturalist. 



