SCIENCE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS, 155 
II, SCIENCE IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL. 
By F. W. Sanperson, Headmaster, Oundle School. 
The course here outlined indicates the kind of work which may be done in 
schools by boys below the age at which specialising begins. This age depends 
upon the type of school and the leaving age, and varies with the tastes and 
capacities of individual boys. In a Public School where the leaving age is 
nineteen the specialising age is about seventeen years. The course presented 
applies to boys below the age of seventeen—t.e., to boys of the Preparatory 
School age, and to the lower and middle forms of the Public School. The 
methods proposed are based on the belief that the early stages of science 
teaching may be taken through applied science. Science, like history, may 
with advantage be read backwards. Pure science and pure mathematics may 
be taught in parallel with applied science, as the grammar of the science, 
but it will be found for the most part that the amount of pure science 
that the average boy can understand will be included in the applied work. 
A claim is therefore made for the inclusion of applied science within the 
general science curriculum of a school. There is some reason for this now, 
when so many of the applications of science come within the daily life of 
the people. It is a well-known saying that a motor-bicycle has taught a 
boy more of true dynamics than he has ever learnt from the Laws of Motion. 
However this may be, it is obviously a wise educational principle to base 
teaching on all that is now common knowledge. 
It must be confessed that much of the pure science which comes within 
an elementary course is better left to a later age. Experiments on Boyle’s 
law, and the other law of gases; the discussion of the laws of motion; complex 
questions on specific heats, should be reserved for the specialising age. This 
is following in the wake of the reforms in the teaching of geometry. Applied 
science actually simplifies the problems. The steam-engine is a good example, 
as is shown in many parts of Perry’s ‘Steam Engine.’ Here is material for 
an elementary course on heat, and a source for easy direct calculations of 
practical importance. Moreover, the method is informative, and gives a 
working knowledge of the engine which will stand in good stead. 
A further claim is made. This form of science teaching is stimulating and 
arresting, and gives the boy plenty to do and much to think about. It arouses 
interest, develops intelligence, and promotes catholicity of taste. Teachers will 
find that the application of science, and all that may be called the romance 
of science, are alive with possibilities for the education of the young in every- 
thing connoted under the words Culture, the Humanities, and Art. Much 
depends upon the faith of the teacher, but no one can study the life and 
works of a great discoverer without finding himself within a realm of art. 
There is abundance of evidence for this in the works of those masters of science 
who to their creative faculties have added the literary art. But the science 
art remains even without its literary expression, and men and women may 
learn to appreciate the art as they appreciate music and painting, though they 
have no skill as musicians or painters. 
Science in a General School Course. 
There are many considerations why the science in a general course, 
especially for those boys who will not specialise in science, should not be 
restricted to the elementary syllabuses. Many of the.syllabuses and elementary 
text-books dwell upon principles which now form the grammar of science, 
whilst the larger developments of modern days are not touched upon. ‘ Science 
for all’ does not mean this kind of science—grammar without the books. 
Except in the hands of a good teacher such work may have little of inspira- 
tion, and in a general course inspiration is everything. A claim is therefore 
made for a kind of science teaching which at first sight may be thought 
peoonng and technical. In sympathetic hands specialising need not be 
eared, 
