210 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



measurement, nor is all measurement, science. Observation also is not 

 merely looking at things, but examining them with a seeing mind and 

 clear purpose. School science to-day, however, is almost entirely con- 

 cerned with measurement, and pupils will cheerfully record that they 

 observed what they could never possibly have seen (as, for example, 

 the production of an invisible gas), while they continually carry out 

 experiments which to them have no other purpose than that of occupy- 

 ing their time, or to provide them with details demanded by examination 

 questions. In the great majority of secondary schools science signifies 

 chiefly quantitative work in physics and chemistry — laboratory 

 exercises and lessons bearing upon them — and rarely is any attempt 

 made to show the pupils what a wonderful world we live in, or what 

 science has done, and is doing, for them in their everyday life. Much 

 of the work described as physics really belongs to mensuration, and has 

 no claim upon the time devoted to science, though it helps to fix in- 

 struction in arithmetic or other branches of school mathematics. There 

 is, indeed, no virtue in measuring and weighing in the absence of 

 intelligent appreciation of the objects for which such operations are 

 performed, or of interest in them. 



In the usual course of physics, from fundamental measurements 

 and mechanics to heat, possibly wiili light aud sound, and magnetism 

 and electricity, to follow, though relatively few pupils get beyond the 

 heat stage, natural or psychological needs are sacrificed to logical 

 sequence. It cannot be reasonably suggested that the order in which 

 these subjects are prescribed has any relation to mental growth, or that 

 the topics selected from them are such as appeal to early interests. 

 Few pupils of their own volition wish to determine specific gravities, 

 investigate the laws of motion, calculate specific and latent heats, and 

 so on, at the stage of instruction in science at which these matters are 

 usually studied, and from the point of view of educational value most 

 of them would be more profitably employed in becoming acquainted with 

 as wide a range as possible of common phenomena and everyday things 

 — all considered as qualities to stimulate attention instead of quantities 

 to be measured with an accuracy for which the need cannot be seen 

 and by methods which easily become wearisome. The ' Investigators ' 

 appointed by the Board of Education in 1918 to report upon the papers 

 set in examinations for the First School Certificate were right when 

 they expressed their opinion ' that the early teaching of physics has 

 suffered from toO' great insistence on more or less exact quantitative, 

 work, to the neglect of qualitative or very roughly quantitative ex- 

 periments illustrating fundamental notions.' By the prevailing obses- 

 sion in regard to quantitative work the pupil is made the slave of the 

 machine, and appliances become encumbrances to the development of 

 the human spirit. 



The prime claim of science to a place in the school curriculum is ; 

 based upon the intellectual value of the subject matter and its application i 

 to life. This conception of education through science as the best 

 preparation for complete living was Herbert Spencer's contribution to 

 educational theory ; and to its influence the introduction of science into 

 the school is largely due. Spencer's doctrine was in accord with the 



