SECTION L.— EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE. 



ADDRESS BY 



SIR THOMAS H. HOLLAND, K.C.S.I., K.C.I.E., D.Sc, LL.D., F.R.S., 



PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 



In the other Sections of the Associatiou the Chair is reached normally 

 after an apprenticeship and prolonged service in the ranks. This Section, 

 devoted to Educational Science, has shown on the contrary a spirit of 

 enterprise by recruiting as presidents some, at any rate, whose views on 

 education must necessarily be a matter of nervous speculation on the 

 part of the Sectional Committee. 



From this I assume that those who are responsible for the development 

 of this Section — all of them experienced in the art of education — are still 

 searching for what the petrologists call a mineralising agent — some ideas 

 which will facilitate the regular crystallisation of their observational data 

 into an organised and orthodox science. 



More than half of my distinguished jDredecessors have never professed 

 an acquaintance with the forms of natural and physical science that 

 occupy the attention of the other Sections ; but the scientific method — 

 the development of ' organised common sense ' — is not limited to the 

 data of what is popularly known as science : it equally follows the training 

 of the classical scholar. So our aim is not the study of scientific education 

 so much as the discovery of principles applicable to all forms of education. 

 Nevertheless, for each of us in turn our experiences in testing methods of 

 teaching must necessarily be limited to a single and relatively narrow 

 branch of culture. 



The teaching of science to students who have passed on to university 

 classes has been my only experience of practical education, and the only 

 generalisations that appear to me to be justified from a limited experience 

 in this field are necessarily, in the first instance, applicable only to a 

 sphere of short radius. I will confine myself to three such generalisations, 

 and leave you to judge whether any part of them offers contributions of 

 practical value to the art of training the younger generation to fulfil their 

 duties as healthy and happy citizens. 



In the first place I wish to submit for your consideration the results 

 of our experience at South Kensington in practising the so-called ' tandem 

 system,' and this is suggested because a colleague bred in other ways has 

 described it as fundamentally rotten. Secondly, I should like to explore 

 the possibility of introducing into scientific education some form of 

 humanism which might neutralise the criticisms justifiably offered by 

 classical students. Thirdly, I feel that the plea for the teaching of general 



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