L.— EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE 227 



upon book-learning, the neglect of handwork, and our wastefulness of the 

 more ordinary kinds of intellectual material he regarded as the besetting 

 weaknesses of his time. 



Much of the progress that Sadler foretold has gone apace, but though 

 he deplored our ' worship of examinations ' as destructive of teaching 

 and learning alike, he could not foresee the extent to which machine-made 

 examination would stultify the good that should have resulted from the 

 fusion of the old class education grades. 



Concltisions . — Within the limits of this address, and of your patience, 

 I cannot refer to many aspects of science teaching of considerable im- 

 portance : for example, the place of scientific thinking in adult education, 

 and the marked decline of the amateur interest in science, are problems 

 not within the scope of this paper. 



During the generation which represents the life of this Section the 

 magnitude of science teaching has increased enormously. As a measure 

 we might take the number of school balances in use. Forty years ago 

 the number could not have exceeded a few hundreds ; to-day it must 

 run well into six figures. 



In early days our school rays of scientific light were admittedly divergent 

 but gave a fairly general illumination of the facts of experience ; to-day 

 they seem to pass through a lens of short focus and perfect optical 

 properties which converges them to form a well-defined image in the 

 examination room, but allows little stray light to illuminate the path of 

 life at more distant ranges. Our beam of school science must be directed 

 in a wider angle so as to envelop the dark areas of ignorance, to enlighten 

 which is its proper function. 



There is justification for the impression that, during the period under 

 review, the ' sense ' of the advance of school science has become negative 

 rather than positive, that its quality and purpose has retrograded rather 

 than advanced. Common sense alone will give proper direction to our 

 efforts. We must agree as to what school science can do to make better 

 thinkers and more earnest workers and see that it does it, irrespective of 

 the artificial constraints that scholastic and educational machinery at 

 present impose. 



This survey of the advancement of science in schools has left me with 

 certain outstanding impressions : 



1. The curricula of many schools — especially secondary schools — are 

 based upon the demands of external examinations, and take little 

 thought of the human material handled or the shape into which it 

 should be moulded to fit accurately into its place in the machine of 

 life. It results in mass-production from the same mould without 

 reference to the markets it is intended to supply. 



2. We must be prepared to justify every rectangle in our school time- 

 table to the satisfaction of a competent authority. We must define 

 clearly what we mean by * culture ' and must adopt the most direct 

 and most economical route to it. We must test our products 

 more broadly and more sanely, and keep our curricula fluid and 

 experimental. 



