564 



NA TURE 



[October 3, 1901 



absolute necessity of such knowledge in literature, in science, and 

 in commerce is already producing a most salutary reform. 



The variety of types of secondary instruction demanded by 

 the various needs and prospects of scholars requires a corre- 

 sponding variety in the provision of schools. This cannot be 

 settled by a rule-of-three method, as is done in the case of 

 primary instruction. We cannot say that such and such an 

 area being of such a size and of such a population requires so 

 many secondary schools of such a capacity. Account must 

 be taken in every place of the respective demands for 

 respective types and grades of secondary education ; and existing 

 provision must be considered. 



It must not, however, be forgotten that a national system of 

 education has its drawbacks as well as its advantages. The 

 most fatal danger is the tendency of public instruction to sup- 

 press or absorb all other agencies, however long established, 

 however excellent their work, and to substitute one uniform 

 mechanical system, destructive alike to present life and future 

 progress. In our country, where there are public schools of the 

 highest repute carried on for the most part under ancient endow- 

 ments, private schools of individuals and associations, and Uni- 

 versities entirely independent of the Government, there is 

 reasonable hope that with proper care this peril may be escaped. 

 But its existence should never be forgotten. Universal efficiency 

 in all establishments that profess to educate any section of the 

 people may properly be required ; but the variety, the individu- 

 ality, and the independence of schools of every sort, primary 

 and secondary, higher and lower, should be jealously guarded. 

 .Such attributes once lost can never be restored. 



There still remains for our consideration the second division 

 of Higher Education, viz., the applied or technological side. It 

 is in this branch of Education that Great Britain is most behind 

 the rest of the world ; and the nation in its efforts to 

 make up the lost ground fails to recognise the fact that real 

 technical instruction (of whatever type) cannot possibly be 

 assimilated by a student unless a proper foundation has been 

 laid previously by a thorough grounding of elementary and 

 secondary instruction. Our efforts at reform are abrupt and dis- 

 connected. A panic from time to time sets in as to our back- 

 wardness in some paiticular branch of commerce or industry. 

 There is a sudden rush to supply the need. Classes and schools 

 spring up like mushrooms, which profess to give instruction in 

 the lacking branch of applied science to scholars who have no 

 elementary knowledge of the particular science, and whose 

 general capacities have never been sufficiently developed. 

 Students are invited to climb the higher rungs of the ladder of 

 learning who have never trod the lower. But science cannot 

 be taught to those who cannot read, nor commerce to those 

 who cannot write. A few elementary lessons in shorthand and 

 b^ok-keeping will not fit the British people to compete with the 

 commercial enterprise of Germany. Such sudden and random 

 attempts to reform our system of technical education are time 

 and money wasted. There are grades and types in technolo- 

 gical instruction, and progress can only be slow. It is useless 

 to accept in the higher branches a student who does not come with 

 a solid foundation on which to build. In such institutions as the 

 Polytechnics at Zurich and Charlottenburg we find the students 

 exclusively drawn from those who have already completed the 

 highest branches of general education ; in this country there is 

 hardly a single institution where this could be said of more than 

 a mere fraction of its students. The middle grades of techno- 

 logical instruction suffer from a similar defect. Boys are entered 

 at technical institutions whose only previous instruction has 

 been at elementary schools and evening classes ; whose intel- 

 lectual faculties have not been developed to the requisite point ; 

 and who have to be retaught the elements to fit them for the 

 higher instruction. In fact there is no scientific conception of 

 what this kind of instruction is to accomplish, and of its proper 

 and necessary basis of general education. 



Vet this is just the division of higher education in which 

 public authority finds a field for its operations practically 

 unoccupied. There are no ancient institutions which there is 

 risk of supplanting. The variety of the subject itself is 

 such that there is little danger of sinking into a uniform 

 and mechanical system. What is required is first a scientific, 

 well-thought-out plan and then its prompt and effective 

 execution. A proper provision of the various . grades and 

 types of technological instruction should be organised in every 

 place. The aim of each institution should be clear; and the 

 intellectual equipment essential for admission to each 



should be laid down and enforced. The principles of 

 true economy, from the national point of view, must not 

 be lost sight of Provision can only be made (since it must 

 be of the highest type to be of the slightest use) for 

 those really qualified to profit by it to the point of benefiting 

 the community. Evening classes with no standard for admission 

 and no test of efficiency may be valuable from a social point of 

 view as providing innocent occupation and amusement, but they 

 are doing little to raise the technical capacity of the nation. So 

 far from "developing a popular demand for higher instruction" 

 they may be preventing its proper growth by perpetuating the 

 popular misconception of what real technical instruction is, and 

 of the sacrifices we must make if our people are to compete on 

 equal terms with other nations in the commerce of the world. 

 The progress made under such a system would at first be slow ; 

 the number of students would be few until improvements in our 

 systems of primary and secondary instruction afforded more 

 abundant material on which to work ; but our foundation would 

 be on a rock, and every addition we were able to make would 

 be permanent, and contribute to the final completion of the 

 edifice. 



It is the special function of the British Association to inculcate 

 " a scientific view of things " in every department of life. There 

 is nothing in which scientific conception is at the present 

 moment more urgently required than in National Education ; 

 and there is this peculiar difficulty in the problem, that any 

 attempt to construct a national system inevitably arouses 

 burning controversies, economical, religious, and political. 

 It is only a society like this, with an established philo- 

 sophical character, that can afford to reduce popular cries about 

 education (which ignore what education really is, and perpetuate 

 the absurdity that it consists in attending classes, passing ex- 

 aminations, and obtaining certificates) to their true proportions. 

 If this Association could succeed in establishing in the minds of 

 the people a scientific conception of a National Education 

 System, such as has already been evolved by most of the nations 

 of Europe, the States of America, and our own Colonies, it 

 would have rendered a service of inestimable value to the British 

 nation. 



GEOLOGY AT THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 

 A N arduous week's work was carried out in the Section 

 -''^ of Geology at Glasgow. There was a full list of papers — 

 in fact, too full for adequate discussion of all — ranging widely 

 over the whole group of sciences combined under the name of 

 geology. While stratigraphical papers were, as usual, in the 

 ascendancy, petrology and palxontology were both strongly 

 represented, mineralogy (with crystallography), of late years 

 somewhat neglected in this Section, counted several contributions, 

 and matters of physical and economic geology received attention 

 in others. Many of the papers were admirably adapted for 

 initiating discussion, and in some instances fulfilled this purpose, 

 though, as generally happens with a heavy list, the discussions 

 were somewhat unequally distributed. It might, perhaps, be 

 said of many of the papers that they were instructive summaries 

 of what was already known rather than new additions to our 

 knowledge. The general arrangement was that the papers 

 dealing with Scottish geology were taken as far as possible on 

 Thursday and Friday, Saturday was given up to excursions, 

 palceontological subjects occupied most of the Monday sitting, 

 mineralogical papers were given precedence on Tuesday, and 

 the concluding session on Wednesday served for the postponed 

 or unclassified contributions. In the following outline of the 

 proceedings of the Section we shall not have space to mention 

 all the papers which were read, and must content ourselves with 

 brief mention of those which seemed to us to be of chief interest. 

 After the president's address on Thursday, already printed 

 in our columns, a paper on recent discoveries in Arran geology, 

 by Mr. W. Gunn, of H.M. Geological Survey, read by Mr. 

 Peach, gave a general summary of recent important advances in 

 our knowledge of the island. Among its older rocks a series of 

 dark schists and chert, unfossiliferous but probably of Arenig 

 age, have been discovered ; the Old Red Sandstone has been 

 found to comprise two subdivisions, of which the upper is un- 

 conformable on the lower ; the Carboniferous, including beds 

 probably of Coal Measure age, are overlapped unconformably 

 by the New Red rocks, the latter consisting of sandstones, 

 conglomerates and marls which seem to be of Triassic age. 



NO. 1666, VOL. 64] 



