L.— EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE. 209 



bell, while the ever-changing earth around them, and the place of man 

 in it, remain as pages of an unopened book. They ask for bread, and 

 are given a stone. General science covering a wide field is practically 

 unknown as a school subject, and even general physics rarely finds a 

 place in the curriculum because questions set in examinations are, to 

 quote from the Cambridge Locals Regulations, ' principally such as 

 will test the candidate's knowledge of the subject as gained from a 

 course of experimental instruction. ' This condition reduces the range 

 of instruction in such a subject as physics to what can be covered in 

 the laboratory, and makes a general course impossible; for time and 

 equipment will not permit every pupil to learn everything through 

 practical experiment. Eeading or teaching for interest, or to learn how 

 physical science is daily extending the power of man, receives little 

 attention because no credit for knowledge thus gained is given in 

 examinations. 



One or two examining bodies have introduced general science sylla- 

 buses covering the^rudiments of physics and chemistry as well as of plant 

 and animal life, but even in these cases most of the subjects must be 

 studied experimentally, and no place is found for any other means of 

 acquiring knowledge. The result is that few schools find it worth while 

 from the point of view of examination successes to attempt to cover such 

 schemes of work. Moreover, no clear principle can be discerned by 

 which the syllabuses are constructed. General science should be more 

 than an amorphous collection of topics from physics and chemistry, 

 with a little natural history thrown in as a sop to biologists. It should 

 provide for good reading as well as for educational observation and 

 experiment; should be humanistic as well as scientific. The subject 

 which above all others has this double aspect is geography; so truly, 

 indeed, is this the case that in the First School Examinations it may 

 be offered in either the. English or the Science group. Practically all 

 the subjects of a broad course of general science are of geographical 

 significance, inasmuch as they are concerned with the earth as man's 

 dwelling-place, and the scene of his activities- Eightly conceived, 

 geography can be made the earliest means of education as both Comenius 

 and Locke regarded it, and it can be used as the unifying principle of 

 all the generalised scientific instruction in schools. It is now much 

 more than travel stories of the type of Sir John Mandeville's medieval 

 miscellany, or mere lists of capes and rivers, countries and cities. It 

 provides interesting subjects for laboratory exercises and field work, and 

 the results of observation and experiment are seen to be of use in under- 

 standing what is going on in the earth as the result of both natural and 

 human agencies. A school course which would cover all the science 

 required for the study of geography conceived as a branch of knowledge 

 concerned with the natural environment of man and the inter-relations 

 between him and those circumstances would not only be educational 

 in the broadest sense, but would also be the best groundwork for 

 effective teaching of geography, history, and other humanistic studies. 

 It would make science a natural part of a vertebrate educational course 

 instead of specialised and exclusive as it tends to be at present. 



There is very present need for the reminder that science is not all 



Q 2 



