January 28, 1909J 



NA TURE 



5«3 



h.iiKlicraft for pupils who propose afterwards to follow 

 industrial or commercial careers or to manage households 

 inielligcntly. The fees should be low, and there should be 

 scholarships giving free tuition, travelling, and maintenance 

 allowances, graduated according to the ages of the scholars. 

 1 hese schools might also provide for the continuation 

 classes referred to m clause 2. 



(4) Local education authorities should be urged to estab- 

 lish or aid in establishing an adequate supply of secondary 

 schools of a high educational type. These schools should 

 have highly qualified staffs adequately paid, and should be 

 administered by a board of governors or managers. No 

 cliort should be spared to make these schools thoroughly 

 efficient, and to this end the curriculum followed should 

 admit of some amount of variation. Where the majority 

 of pupils remain to eighteen years of age a higher standard 

 on the purely academic side could be aimed at than in 

 the case of schools where the bulk of the pupils leave at 

 sixteen years of age or thereabouts. To secure that the 

 best minds in the primary school shall pass into the 

 secondary school, there should be a sufficient number of 

 free places and maintenance scholarships to render secondary 

 education accessible to boys and girls capable of benefiting 

 by it who propose to remain at school until the completion 

 oi at least a four-years' course from the date of entry. 



'5) A primary school certificate should be introduced 

 which would serve as a passport to the craft school and 

 the secondary school. School certificates should also be 

 granted to pupils who work satisfactorily through the 

 courses at the craft school or at the secondary school. 

 The certificates should be based not upon examinations, 

 but chiefly upon reports by the teachers as to the ability 

 of the pupils to profit by higher courses of instruction. 



(6) The matriculation examination of any British 

 university, and the secondary school leaving certificate, 

 certain requirements being satisfied, should qualify for 

 entrance to any British university or technical college, and 

 to the various professional courses, without further 

 examination and in lieu of the present preliminary 

 examinations. 



(7) School records and the reports of teachers should at 

 every stage supersede largely the present system of estimat- 

 ing ability by examinations. The award of scholarships 

 should be based largely upon the reports of the teachers 

 of the schools which the pupils are attending at the time 

 of their promotion. School-leaving certificates should be 

 awarded only to pupils in schools certified as efficient for 

 that purpose by a responsible inspecting authority, and a list 

 of these schools should be published. Schools in which this 

 privilege was abused should be removed from the list. Bv 

 placing upon the teachers the responsibility for nominating 

 pupils for certificates or scholarships, the credit of the 

 school would soon secure that only the most capable or 

 promising pupils would have their passage facilitated to 

 places of higher learning. In all examinations the teacher 

 should be associated with the external e.xaminer. 



(S) In every public or private primary or secondary 

 school, the instruction in all branches of the curriculum 

 should be so given as to accustom the pupil to careful 

 observation and experiment, whatever may be the specific 

 nature of the subject that is being studied; and to this 

 end not only should there be a proper amount of labortory 

 and workshop practice, but the scientific spirit of the 

 laboratory and workshop should so far as possible be 

 employed in the ordinary class-room. In this wav the 

 school would provide the best kind of preliminary traininfj 

 for industrial life, and would also ensure that those who 

 subsequently receive a university education shall bring to 

 the work which will devolve upon them in various fields 

 of activity, including the administration of public depart- 

 ments, an adequate training in scientific method. 



(q) An arrangement should be arrived at whereby a satis- 

 factory report as to educational efliciencv, made by a re- 

 sponsible inspecting authority would in ordinary cases 

 render similar inspection during the same school year 

 unnecessary. 



([o) Local authorities, governing bodies, and parents 

 should realise that the salaries at present paid are in most 

 cases quite inadequate to secure a supply of highlv-qualified 

 and capable teachers. The opportunities for advancement 

 offered by other careers attract from the teaching profes- 

 sion many men, who by attainment and aptitude would ' 

 NO. 204^5, VOL. 79] 



promote the educational welfare of the nation. The condi- 

 tions of service, salaries, and outlook of assistant teachers, 

 whether engaged in the work of primary, secondary, or 

 technical education, are in general most unsatisfactory, and 

 unless they are improved they must fail to attract or retain 

 the services of many men and women best qualified for the 

 profession of leaching. A high standard in education can 

 only be attained by generous provision for those who do the 

 work, both in their active and declining years. Until this 

 is recognised, it is futile to anticipate progress in procedure 

 or success in any organic educational system, or to obtain 

 from the present efforts and expenditure on education a 

 sufficient return. 



The Cost of teaching Practical Science in Schools. 

 An opinion expressed by the headmaster of Eton at a 

 general meeting of the British Science Guild in 1907, to 

 the effect that an extension of the teaching of science in 

 public schools is checked by the heavy expenses attaching 

 to practical work, has been under the consideration of a 

 subcommittee of the Guild, and its members beg to make 

 a brief statement of their convictions with regard to such 

 practical teaching of science and the question of its exten- 

 sion. 



The procedure adopted in teaching science should always 

 differ considerably from that employed in teaching literary 

 and linguistic subjects, and ordinarily does so differ. The 

 main reason for this distinction lies in the fact that all 

 exact physical knowledge must admit of objective realis- 

 ation, that is, its demonstration in material objects under 

 natural conditions must be possible ; while the acquisition 

 of any part of this knowledge already recorded, not to 

 mention possible additions to the stock, necessarily involves 

 extensive experience of a concrete character. The equip- 

 ment for this purpose, still considered in some quarters as 

 more or less separable from the course of instruction, 

 involves expense, but that expense may be regarded, not 

 so much as a defect at once tangible and flagrant in a 

 branch of education still under suspicion, but rather as 

 the life-blood of an activity inherent in modern civilisation. 

 Whether a given society ignores it or turns it to its own 

 use, the movement continues — in Lebensfluthen, in Thaten- 

 sturm. 



Expense is a relative term. All those who have been 

 engaged in teaching science for the last twenty years are 

 aware of a revolution during that period in the character 

 of the apparatus employed for instruction in schools. A 

 remarkable change has taken place in the direction both of 

 cheapness and of simplicity. These results have been 

 gained by organised efforts on the part of science masters 

 by meeting in conference or by publication. It is widelv 

 recognised among these masters that simplicitv and plain- 

 ness in apparatus is a positive gain, and that the educa- 

 tional value of the instruction even increases with the bare- 

 ness of the material by which it is supplied. As experience 

 in this work has widened, it has become more and more 

 apparent that scientific method rather than technical know- 

 ledge should be the aim of school teaching, and that in 

 the earlier stages at all events preference should always 

 be given to the study of the course of events which are 

 normal and familiar rather than of such as are exceptional 

 or specialised. There has been, in other words, an increas- 

 ing tendency to assimilate the scope of elementary scientific 

 study to the ordinary experience of civil and industrial life 

 and the material of experiment to the range of every-dav 

 requirements. It is now generally admitted that the over- 

 elaboration of apparatus inhibits enterprise and invention 

 in the young pupil just as a costly mechanical toy stunts 

 the imagination of the child, while it tends also to separate 

 the exercises of the laboratory too abruptly from the events 

 of the daily round. It is maintained that workshop prac- 

 tice may with advantage supplement the work of the 

 laboratory and give it a broader practical basis : that the 

 surviving though weakened boundary-wall between them 

 miarht be broken down, with gain to both in the matter 

 of increased economy as well as of added wealth of interest. 

 Such an outlet for the practical exercise of inductive 

 reasoning is an urgent need in a scheme of education which 

 is still very larErely a matter of deductive exposition. A 

 large stock of the experience only to be gained from an 

 intimate acquaintance with the qualities and limitations 



