Oct, 6, 1881] 



NA rURE 



545 



dreamed of insisting that his pupils should apply what he had 

 taught by working out examples for themselves ? Or what of a 

 teacher of art who ignored the necessity of making his students 

 draw or paint ? Every one sees the necessity of practical, and the 

 uselessness of exclusively theoretical teaching in these instances, 

 yet the fact is generally ignored that the case is precisely the 

 same with scientific subjects, and that a man who lectures to 

 beginners day after day and year after year on, for instance, the 

 intricacies of animal structure and the problems connected there- 

 with, without making his students see, by actual 1 issection, what 

 an animal is, is in great measure spending his strength for 

 naught. 



Until this important fact is recognised and proper provision 

 made for it, natural science never will and never can be a power 

 in education. As Mr. Matthew Arnold puts it, "To say that 

 the fruit of classics, in the boys who study them, is at present 

 greater than the fruit of the natural sciences ; to say that the 

 realists have not got their matters of instruction so well adapted 

 to instruction as the humanists have got theirs, comes really to 

 no more than this : that the realists are but newly-admilted 

 labourers in the field of practical instruction, and that while the 

 leading humanists . . . have been also schoolmasters, and have 

 brought their mind and energy to bear upon the school teaching 

 of their own studies, the leaders in the natural sciences . . . 

 have not. When scientific physics have as recognised a place in 

 public instruction as Latin and Greek they will be as well 

 taught." ' 



When these remarks were written (in 1868) they were appli- 

 cable to science-teaching not only in schools, but also, in great 

 measure, in universities and colleges. But since that time great 

 changes have taken place, and in biology, of which science alone 

 I am competent to speak, the improvement is due, first of all, to 

 my honoured master, Prof. Huxley, and next to his co-worker, D ■. 

 Michael Foster, both of them brilliant examples of the fact that 

 an eminent man of science may be at the same time a laborious 

 practical teacher. The classes begun by Prof. Huxley, with the 

 co-operation of Dr. Foster, at South Kensington, and since con- 

 tinued at the .School of Mines by Prof. Huxley and Mr. Thisel- 

 ton Dyer, at Cambridge by Dr. Foster and his pupils, at Oxford 

 and University College, London, by Prof. Ray Lankester, have 

 now fairly put the teaching of biology upon a sound footing, and 

 may be said already to have proved the value of that science as a 

 true menial discipline, an educational instrument of very high 

 order. 



At any rate this is proved as far as University education is 

 concerned. The battle has still to be fought in the secondary 

 schools, and, as every one must see, the circumstances there are 

 so different that victory in the one case is no criterion of victory 

 ill the other. It is evident, in fact, that the strict training in 

 ob.-ervation and experiment, without which, I cannot insist too 

 often, science teaching is valueless as a mental discipline, is very 

 difficult of application in school-", and that the consequences of 

 setting a large class of young boys to make oxygen, or take a 

 specific gravity, or cut up a rabbit each for himself, might jirove 

 rather subversive of order than conducive to im, rovement. 

 But it has been amply proved that there is no difficulty in 

 the case of senior boj s taken in comparatively small classes ; 

 and even in large cla^ses the practical teaching of elementary 

 botany is quite feafible, as is shown by the experience of our 

 own High .School. Bolany, indeed, lends itself more than any 

 branch of science to school-teaching, fr>_m the simple fact that 

 by its means I he pupil can be brought face to face with Nature 

 with comparatively little trouble, with no apparatus beyond a 

 pocket knife, and perhaps a simple magnifying-glass, and with 

 no mess unremovable by a duster and broom. 



For these reasons I am inclined to think that botany should 

 be made the staple science sutiject for the junior classes in 

 schools. If taught thoroughly, it necessilates the introduction 

 of a good deal of elementary chemistry and physics, since the 

 principles of vegetable physiology, which should on no account 

 be omitted, cannot be explained without reference to the compD- 

 -ition of air, earth, and water, the diffusion of gases, capillarity, 

 chemical decomposition, and so on. Theoretically, no doubt, 

 the foundation of a scieitific training should be laid with mathe- 

 matics, physics, and chemistry. As to the first of these there is 

 no difficulty ; but unless the two latter can be taught practically, 

 it seems to me that the best thing is to be content with some- 

 thing le.-s than the ideally perfect, and, with mathematics as the 

 necessary introduction to abstract science, to take as our basis 



' " Higher Scliools andUniversities inGermany." 



for the concrete study of Nature the facts and phenomena of 

 plant-life." 



There is one consideration of the first importance, which every 

 science teacher must keep in mind if he wishes his subject to 

 have its proper value as an educational instrument, and that is 

 the absolute necessity for demanding as much and as hard work 

 from his pupils as the classical or the mathematical master. 

 Unless this is done scientific subjects must always hold an 

 inferior position, and the teaching of them can never be fol- 

 lowed by adequate results. It behoves every one of us to 

 remember that — 



'* Von der Stirne heiss, 



Rinnen muss der Scliweiss, 



Soil das Werk den Meister loben,'" 



and that, if we are satisfied with a minimum of work from our 

 pupils, we must also be content with a minimum of respect for 

 our teaching. As long as in our Matriculation and Junior 

 Scholarship examinations a pnpil can pass creditably in a scien- 

 tific subject by getting up a text-book, while to obtain distinction 

 in cla-sics or mathematics requires prolonged and thoughtful 

 work, so long will science-teaching in schools fail to have any 

 real educational value. 



I should like to make it perfectly clear that I am not making 

 the slightest attempt to uphold the absurd notion that science 

 should replace the strict study of language and literature, or of 

 mathematics. All that I plead for is that it should be put on 

 equal terms with them, and should no longer be handicapped by 

 a totally inefficient method of teaching, and then condemned as 

 wanting in the essentials of a strictly educational subject. 

 Those who advocate a return to purely classical instruction 

 because of the acknowledged failure of book -science are com- 

 parable to politicians who can see no remedy for the excesses 

 of a revolution save a return to despotism. The whole 

 case as between scientific and literary instruction is so admirably 

 put by Mr. Matthew Arnold that I cannot resist the pleasure of 

 quoting the passage : — "The aim and office of instruction, say 

 many people, is to make a man a good citizen, or a good 

 Christian, or a gentleman ; or it is to enable him to do his duty in 

 that state of fife to which he is called. It is none of these, and 

 the modern spirit more and more discovers it to be none of these. 

 These are at best secondary and indirect aims of instruction ; its 

 primary and direct aim is to enable a man to kvmo himself ami 

 the world. Such knowledge is the only sure basis for action, and 

 this basis it is the true aita and office of instruction to supply. 

 To know himself a man must know the capabilities and perform- 

 ances of the human spirit ; and the value of the humanities, of 

 Alterlhumnvissenschaft, the science of antiquity, is that it affords 

 for this purpose an unsurpassed source of light .and stimulus. . . . 

 But it is also a vital and formative knowle ige to know the world, 

 the laws which govern Nature, and man as a part of Nature. 

 This the realists have perceived, and the truth of this perception, 

 too, is inexpugnable. Every man is born with aptitudes, which 

 give him access to vital and formative knowledge by one of these 

 roads ; either by the road of studying man and his works, or by 

 the road of stud)ing Nature and her works. The business of 

 instruction is to seize and develop these aptitudes." And again : 

 " The grand thing in teaching is to have faith that some apti- 

 tudes of this kind every one has. This one's special aptitudes 

 are for knowing men— the study of the humanities ; that one's 

 special aptitudes are for knowing the world— the study of 

 Nature. The circle of knowledge comprehends both, and we 

 should all have some notion, at any rate, of the whole circle of 

 knowledge. The rejection of the humanities by the realists, the 

 rejection of the study of Nature by the humanists, are alike 

 ignorant." 



Until within the last few years the position of science, and 

 especially of biology, in universities and colleges, was quite as 

 unsatisfactory as in schools. In the days when zoology was 

 taught merely by lectures, and a man to insure success in exami- 

 nations had only to "cram" his notes or a text-book and 

 perhaps be able to tell a mammal's skull from a bird's, 

 or a bivalve shell from a coral, it was not unnatural for 

 the votaries of the older forms of culture to look upon "science " 

 as a sort of academic Al atia— a useful-enough refuge for the 

 stupid, the lazy, and the eccentric, but something quite 



I For tills reason I cannot but regret tliat in die regulations for Junior 

 Scholarships approved by the Senate at their recent meeting, biology is only 

 counted as of equal examination value with a single branch of physics ; so 

 that while a candidate can take up physics alone of science subjects, he is 

 obliged, if he select biology, to take in addition either chemutry or a branch 

 of physics or mechanics. 



