October 3, 1901] 



NA TURE 



563 



Learning to be used for gaining marks is stored in the mind by 

 a mechanical effort of memory, and is forgotten as soon as the 

 Class-list is published. Intellectual faculties of much greater 

 importance than knowledge, however extensive — as useful to 

 the child whose schooling will cease at fourteen as to the child 

 for whom elementary instruction is but the first step in the 

 ladder of learning — are almost wholly neglected. 



The power of research — the art of acquiring information for 

 oneself — on which the most advanced science depends, may by 

 a proper system be cultivated in the youngest scholar of the 

 most elementary school. Curiosity and the desire to find out 

 the reason of things is a natural, and to the ignorant an incon- 

 venient, propensity of almost every child ; and there lies before 

 the instructor the whole realm of Nature knowledge in which 

 this propensity can be cultivated. If children in village schools 

 spent less of their early youth in learning mechanically to read, 

 write, and cipher, and more in searching hedgerows and 

 ditch-bottoms for flowers, insects, or other natural objects, their 

 intelligence would be developed by active research, and they 

 would better learn to read, write, and cipher in the end. The 

 faculty of finding out things for oneself is one of the most 

 valuable with which a child can be endowed. There is hardly 

 a calling or business in life in which it is not better to know 

 how to search out information than to possess it already stored. 

 Everything, moreover, which is discovered sticks in the memory 

 and becomes a more secure possession for life than facts lazily 

 imbibed from books and lectures. The faculty of turning to 

 practical uses knowledge possessed might be more cultivated in 

 Primary Schools. It can to a limited extent, but to a limited 

 extent only, be tested by examination. Essays, compositions, 

 problems in mathematics and science, call forth the power of 

 using acquired knowledge. Mere acquisition of knowledge does 

 not necessarily confer the power to make use of it. In actual 

 life a very scanty store of knowledge, coupled with the capacity 

 to apply it adroitly, is of more value than boundless information 

 which the possessor cannot turn to practical use. Some 

 measures should be taken to cultivate taste in Primary Schools. 

 Children are keen admirers. They can be early taught to look 

 for and appreciate what is beautiful in drawing and painting, in 

 poetry and music, in Nature, and in life and character. The 

 effect of such learning on manners has been observed from 

 remote antiquity. 



Physical exercises are a proper subject for Primary Schools, 

 especially in the artificial Hfe led by children in great cities : 

 both those which develop chests and limbs, atrophied by impure 

 air and the want of healthy games, and those which discipline 

 the hand and the eye — the latter to perceive and appreciate 

 more of what is seen, the former to obey more readily and 

 exactly the impulses of the will. Advantage should be taken of 

 the fact that the children come daily under the observation of a 

 quasi-public officer — the school teacher — to secure them protec- 

 tion, to which they are already entitled by law, against hunger, 

 nakedness, dirt, over-work, and other kinds of cruelty and 

 neglect. Children's ailments and diseases should by periodic 

 inspection be detected : the milder ones, such as sores and chil- 

 blains, treated on the spot, the more serious removed to the 

 care of parents or hospitals. Diseases of the eye and all mala- 

 dies that would impair the capacity of a child to earn its living 

 should in the interest of the community receive prompt atten- 

 tion and the most skilful treatment available. Special schools 

 for children who are crippled, blind, deaf, feeble-minded, or 

 otherwise afflicted should be provided at the public cost, from 

 motives, not of mere philanthropy, but of enlightened self- 

 interest. So far as they improve the capacity of such children 

 they lighten the burden on the community. 



I make no apology for having dwelt thus long upon the neces- 

 sity of a sound system of primary instruction : that is the only 

 foundation upon which a national system of advanced education 

 can be built. Without it our efforts and our money will be 

 thrown away. But while primary instruction should be 

 provided for, and even enforced upon, all, advanced instruction 

 is for the few. It is the interest of the commonwealth at large 

 that every boy and girl showing capacities above the average 

 should be caught and given the best opportunities for developing 

 those capacities. It is not its interest to scatter broadcast a 

 huge system of higher instruction for anyone who chooses to 

 take advantage of it, however unfit to receive it. Such a course 

 is a waste of public resources. The broadcast education is 

 necessarily of an inferior character, as the expenditure which 

 public opinion will at present sanction is only sufticient to pro- 



vide education of a really high calibre for those whose ultimate 

 attainments will repay the nation for its outlay on their instruc- 

 tion. It is essential that these few should not belong to one 

 class or caste, but should be selected from the mass of the 

 people, and be really the intellectual t'lite of the rising genera- 

 tion. It must, however, be confessed that the arrangements for 

 selecting these choice scholars to whom it is remunerative for 

 the community to give advanced instruction are most imperfect. 

 No ** capacity-catching machine" has been invented which does 

 not perform its function most imperfectly : it lets go some it 

 ought to keep, and it keeps some it ought to let go. Com- 

 petitive examination, besides spoiling more or less the 

 education of all the competitors, fails to pick out those 

 capable of the greatest development. It is the smartest, 

 who are also sometimes the shallowest, who succeed. " Who- 

 ever thinks in an examination," an eminent Cambridge tutor 

 used to say, "is lost." Nor is position in class obtained by 

 early progress in learning an infallible guide. The dunce of the 

 school sometimes becomes the profound thinker of later life. 

 Some of the most brilliant geniuses in art and science have only 

 developed in manhood. They would never in their boyhood 

 have gained a county scholarship in a competitive examination. 

 In Primary Schools, while minor varieties are admissible, 

 those, for instance, between town and country, the public 

 instruction provided is mainly of one type ; but any useful 

 scheme of higher education must embrace a great variety of 

 methods and courses of instruction. There are roughly at the 

 outset two main divisions of higher education — the one directed 

 to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, of which the 

 practical result cannot yet be foreseen, whereby the "scholar" 

 and the votary of pure science is evolved ; the other directed to 

 the acquisition and application of special knowledge by which 

 the craftsman, the designer, and the teacher are produced. The 

 former of these is called Secondary, the latter Technical, 

 Education. Both have numerous subdivisions which trend in 

 special directions. 



The varieties of secondary education in the former of these 

 main divisions would have to be determined generally by 

 considerations of age. There must be different courses of 

 study for those whose education is to terminate at sixteen, 

 at eighteen, and at twenty-two or twenty-three. Within each 

 of these divisions, also, there would be at least two types of 

 instruction, mainly according as the student devoted himself 

 chiefly to literature and language, or to mathematics and science. 

 But a general characteristic of all Secondary Schools is that their 

 express aim is much more individual than that of the Primary 

 School : it is to develop the potential capacity of each individual 

 scholar to the highest point, rather than to give, as does the 

 Elementary School, much the same modicum to all. For these 

 reasons it it essential to have small classes, a highly educated 

 staff', and methods of instruction very different from those of the 

 Primary School. In the formation of character the old Secondary 

 Schools of Great Britain have held their own with any in the 

 world. In the rapid development of new Secondary Schools 

 in our cities it is most desirable that this great tradition of 

 British Public School life should be introduced and maintained. 

 It is not unscientific to conclude that the special gift of 

 colonising and administering dependencies, so characteristic of 

 the people of the United Kingdom, is the result of that 

 system of self-government to which every boy in our higher 

 Public Schools is early initiated. But while we boast of the 

 excellence of our higher schools on the character-forming side 

 of their work, we must frankly admit that there is room for 

 improvement on their intellectual side. Classics and mathe- 

 matics have engrossed too large a share of attention ; science, 

 as part of a general liberal education, has been but recently 

 admitted, and is still imperfectly estimated. Too little time is 

 devoted to it as a school subject : its investigations and its 

 results are misunderstood and undervalued. Tr.adition in most 

 schools, nearly always literary, alters slowly, and the revolu- 

 tionary methods of science find all the prejudices of antiquity 

 arrayed against them. Even in scientific studies, lack of time 

 and the obligation to prepare scholars to pass examinations 

 cause too much attention to be paid to theory, and too little to 

 practice, though it is by the latter that the power of original 

 research and of original application of acquired knowledge is 

 best brought out. The acquisition of modern languages was in 

 bygone generations almost entirely neglected. In many schools 

 the time given to this subject is still inadequate, the method 

 of teaching antiquated, the results unsatisfactory. But the 



NO. 1666, VOL. 64] 



