58 REPORT — 1871. 



already won for them tlie deserved esteem of the community ; hut if we fail to 

 work in harmony with them, their want of sympathy and interest will be simply 

 fatal to our schemes. 



Next to this helplessness of head masters came the difficidty of obtaining pro- 

 perly trained and certificated science-teachers. With tlie admirable German 

 system, comprising special examination of Candidates for Masterships, not only in 

 knowledge, but in teaching power, together with a year of trial in some large 

 school before entering on their work, was compared the insufficient test offered hy 

 the English University Degree, a high test, no doubt, of intelligence and know- 

 ledge, but not of power to communicate knowledge or to infuse intelligence. 

 Third in rauli amongst the obstacles to be surmounted was placed the cost of 

 paying science masters ; and the School Commissioners, now redistributing the 

 endowments of the country, were urged to set apart funds for science-teaching in 

 every large school, and to insist on their being faithfully expended for the purpose. 

 The necessity of having good teachers was then dwelt on. The first condition of 

 success in scientific, as of other teaching, is obviously the teacher. He must be a 

 man thorough in his special knowledge, and, if his special knowledge is to be well 

 balanced in reference to other subjects, of the widest general cidture. He must 

 not spend all his time in teaching, but must have leisure to prepare lessons and 

 experiments. He must possess the delicate art of handling many pupils, the force 

 of manner which attracts them, the enthusiasm which puts and keeps them cit 

 rapport with him, the insight which reads their minds, the tact which can pre- 

 serve discipline without checking inquiry, and, possessing all this and more, he must 

 be well and highly paid. 



An exact estimate was offered of the cost of apparatus ; and the value of work- 

 shops, museums, and other accessories of the kind was dwelt upon. 



After glancing at the action of the universities, the author touched on a grave 

 item in the catalogue of difficulties. Granting that scientific teaching is essential 

 to a perfect education, the anxious question meets us — How is it to be inserted in 

 the cuiTiculum of an established school ? We are told that, to meet the demands 

 of University competition, the highest pressure is already put upon the time and 

 brains of boys ; and that if four hours a week are to be accepted as the minimum 

 demand of science, classical work must suffer. And, in order to solve this pro- 

 blem, some well-known schools have instituted a system of bifurcation, to which 

 the author was opposed. If linguistic training is bad without the rationalizing 

 aid of scientific study, no less is exclusive science bad when divorced from the 

 refining society of literatm-e and philology ; and an admission that certain institu- 

 tions stunt particular faculties is oddly followed by a device which causes each to 

 work unchecked. The difficulty must be met fairly, and on premises which 

 scholars as well as scivans can understand. It must be met by asking whether in 

 pm-ely classical schools no time is wasted ; why it is that in the lower forms 

 a boy takes years to master what a clever tutor teaches in a few months at home ; 

 why the weapon of analysis, which opens every other chamber of human know- 

 ledge, shotdd be discarded in the case of scholarship alone ; whether nnattractive- 

 ness is an inherent vice in Greek and Latin only, or whether, if judicious method 

 wakens pleasure and keeps alive attention, that of itself is not economy of time ; 

 whether, lastly, the day has not arrived when Greek and Latin verse-making may 

 not be allowed to disappear. After having written some thousand Greek and 

 Latin verses in his own school-days, the author pronounced them waste of time, 

 and protested against them altogether. Their elimination from om* school system 

 will be clear gain iu itself, and will set free at once a much larger amount of time 

 than is demanded for the prosecution of natin-al science. 



After enumerating at some length the details essential to the giving a fair 

 place to science in education, the paper ended as follows :— " The summary of 

 what I have to say is this, that our schools, in their readiness to establisli science, 

 must be aided from without. All questions of funds, of apparatus, of teachers, of 

 selected text-books, of coordinated subjects, of University influence, and of united 

 action come to the same point at last. We must have central leadership, at once 

 commanding and intelligent, if the introduction of science into our schools is to 

 be simultaneous and effective. The question has passed out of the realm of general 



