L.— EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE. 207 



extended and Nature herself is being made subservient to her insurgent 

 son. We hve in a different world to-day from that of medieval times, 

 when tlie triviurn of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, with the quadrivium 

 of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy, comprised the subjects 

 of a complete education in the sciences as well as in letters — different 

 indeed from what it was only a century ago. The influence of science 

 is now all-pervading, and is manifest in all aspects of human activity, 

 intellectual and material. Acquaintance with scientific ideas and 

 methods and applications is forced upon everyone by existing circum- 

 stances of civilised life with its facilities for rapid transport by air, land, 

 or sea, ready communication by telephone or telegraph, and other means 

 by which space and time have been brought under control and man 

 has assumed the mastership of his physical and social destiny. Science 

 permeates the atmosphere in which we live, and those who cannot 

 hi-eathe it are not in biological adjustment with their environment — are 

 not adapted to survive in the modern struggle for existence. 



Scliool instruction in science is not, therefore, intended to prepare 

 for vocations, but to equip pupils for life as it is and as it soon may be. 

 It is as essential for intelligent general reading as it is for everyday 

 practical needs ; no education can be complete or liberal without some 

 knowledge of its aims, methods, and results, and no pupil in primary 

 or secondary schools should be deprived of the stimulating lessons it 

 affords. In such schools, however, the science to be taught should be 

 science for all, and not for embryonic engineers, chemists, or even 

 biologists ; it should be science as part of a general education — un- 

 specialised, therefore, and without reference to prospective occupation 

 or profession, or direct connection with possible university courses to 

 follow. Less than 3 per cent, of the pupils from our State-aided 

 secondary schools proceed to universities, yet most of the science 

 courses in these schools are based upon syllabuses of the type of univer- 

 sity entrance examinations — syllabuses of sections of physics or chemis- 

 try, botany, zoology, and so forth — suitable enough as preliminary 

 studies of a professional type to be extended later, but in no sense 

 representing in scope or substance what should be placed before young 

 and receptive minds as the scientific portion of their general education. 

 Such teaching excuses the attitude of many modern Gallios among 

 schoolboys caring ' for none of those things.' The needs of the many 

 are sacrificed to the interests of the few, with the result that much of 

 the instruction is inept and futile whether judged by standards of en- 

 lightenment or of stimulus. Exceptional pupils may profit by it, but 

 to others, and particularly to teachers of literary subjects in the school 

 curriculum, it often appears trivial or sordidly practical, and is usually 

 spiritless — a means by which man may gain the whole world, but will 

 lose his soul in the process. 



This impression is not altogether unjust, and the teaching of recent 

 years has tended to accentuate it. The extent of school science is deter- 

 mined by what can be covered by personal observation and experiment — 

 a principle sound enough in itself for training in scientific method, but 

 altogether unsuitable to define the boundaries of science in general educa- 

 tion. Yet it is so used. Eveiy science examination qualifying for the 

 1922 Q 



