SCIENCE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 133 
imagine they have acquired a grasp of a subject of which they know 
only the introduction. 
Whilst the actual number of school hours is fairly uniform in 
boys’ schools, there is considerable difference in the number of periods 
into which these are divided ; and in girls’ schools the number of hours 
per week is, as a rule, much less than in boys’ schools. The Com- 
mittee hesitates, therefore, to specify how many hours per week 
should be devoted to science teaching; it is, however, of the opinion 
that for pupils who are not specialising—i.e., for those who are between 
the ages of twelve and about sixteen and a half—an average of at least 
one-sixth for boys and one-seventh for girls of the total number of 
teaching periods in each week should be used for science work inde- 
pendent of work in geography and mathematics. 
IV. Meruop 1n Science TEACHING. 
In recent years more attention has been given to method in science 
teaching than to substance. One result of this has been to promote 
the view that all subjects, in different ways and to different degrees, 
can be made to give a training in scientific method; and that, therefore, 
instruction in science has no specific educational advantage over that 
of any other subject in the curriculum taught by methods of deduction 
and induction. It will be shown later in this respect how science— 
by which is here meant all departments of natural knowledge which 
depend for their development upon observation and experiment— 
differs from other subjects of instruction, but a general statement as 
to the meaning and application of scientific method in science teaching 
seems to be necessary. 
Ambiguity of ‘ scientific method.’—It has often been remarked that 
the adjective ‘ scientific’ has a double significance. Sometimes it is 
used to distinguish one kind of knowledge, such as physics, from 
another kind, such as history. At other times the distinction it con- 
notes is not between objects of knowledge but between modes of inves- 
tigation—between the ‘conduct of the understanding’ which alone 
leads to certain truth and ways of thought that inevitably end in error. 
The second sense of the word is evidently much wider than the first; 
for, while the realm of ‘ scientific knowledge,’ though vast, is limited, 
the dominion of ‘ scientific method’ is universal, extending wherever 
there are facts to be determined or general truths to be ascertained. 
If, however, it is admitted (1) that the chief business of the science 
teacher is to train in scientific method, and (2) that scientific method is 
the characteristic not of science only but of every properly conducted 
intellectual inquiry, the science teacher is perilously near to the sur- 
render of his special claim to existence. For does scientific method 
imply the habits of observing facts with care, of classifying them 
clearly and exhaustively, of forming hypotheses without bias, of testing 
them with rigour? Then a good classical teacher may make the study 
of Latin grammar as ‘scientific’ as the study of chemistry, while, 
under a bad teacher, work in the laboratory may be as little ‘ scientific ’ 
as anything ever done in a Latin lesson. Again, does scientific method 
