592 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 
Ssecrion L.—EDUCATION. 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.—PRoreEssor J. Perry, LL.D., F.R.S. 
The President delivered the following Address at Sydney on Friday, 
August 21 :— 
I wisH to make some general remarks upon the Science of Education. As in the 
chapter which was entitled ‘ The Snakes of Iceland,’ and which merely consisted 
of the sentence, ‘There are no snakes in Iceland,’ I might finish this Address 
at once by saying ‘There is no science of education.’ There is the art or prac- 
tice of teaching or pedagogy, just as there used to be the art of engineering. It 
was only slowly that the subject of Section G, the Science of Engineering, was 
created; but the subject of Section L, this Section, has still to be created. In 
the creation of a science we first and for long periods have the observation of 
detached phenomena and disputes about them, because the phenomena seem 
complex, having no obvious connection with one another; then experiments 
simplify things, and gradually the science is created by inductive reasoning and 
research. In education, observation and disputes have occupied much time, and 
we cannot say that the phenomena have become much simplified by such experi- 
ments as have been made. Every man in the street considers that his opinions 
on education are as good as those of anybody else. I suppose that almost 
nobody would refuse to make an after-dinner speech on any kind of education, 
whereas he would not dream of speaking about geometry, or chemistry, or 
physics, or physiology unless he had studied these subjects. Any ordinary 
citizen thinks himself fit to be a member of the governing body of a school or 
college, and the disasters due to this belief are worse than what would occur if 
we gave to such men the command of ships. The ordinary man, especially the 
Parliamentary man, who thinks that the members of a committee on some 
scientific business ought all to be non-scientific men, will jeer at this statement, 
but it is, nevertheless, fatally true. 
It is possible that, even if we had the science, the pedagogues would pay no 
attention to its principles, just as there are industrial chemists in London whose 
businesses are dwindling because they pay no attention to the science of chemistry. 
Pedagogy is in a worse condition than industrial chemistry, because chemical 
products can be easily tested as good or bad, whereas the pedagogic product is 
exceedingly difficult to test. The customer is the worst of judges. Those soul- 
destroying cheap schools described by Mr. Wells used to be very numerous; 
they are still, many of them, in existence. Every observant person knows of 
these places, to which small shopkeepers still send their sons, because they are 
genteel and cheap, and because Latin is taught, and perhaps French. Did any 
such parent ever object to the result of the schooling? Even when a boy has 
become a man, neither he nor his father knows whether his defects or merits are 
due to bad or good schooling. Please read Mr. Wells’ book about Mr. Polly. 
Again, the reforms in, pedagogy which, with Dr. Armstrong, I have been 
clamouring for during the last thirty years, would cause the best-known peda- 
gogues to scrap all their machinery and so to lose nearly the whole of their 
invested capital, Even when they are not influenced by the idea of losing money, 
these men cannot be made to believe in the necessity for reform any more than 
the Central African worshippers of hideous idols can be converted, for with just 
