GENERAL SCIENCE IN SCHOOLS 313 
heads of schools and science teachers gave every assistance. The mass of 
information actually received was large as well as pertinent, and the report 
can do no more than present this in outline. 
At the end of the report will be found a summary as well as a statement 
of the conclusions at which the committee has arrived. 
II. HistortcaL REVIEW. 
The principle that School Science should include more than elementary 
physics and chemistry can be traced back many years. It was in fact present 
in the minds of those who first advocated the study of science in schools. 
Huxley in 1854, when referring to the educational value of Natural History 
sciences, said : ‘ Biology needs no apologist when she demands a place, and a 
prominent place, in any scheme of education worthy of thename. Leaveout 
the Physiological sciences from your curriculum, and you launch the student 
into the world, undisciplined in that science whose subject, matter would 
best develop his powers of observation ; ignorant of facts of the deepest 
importance for his own and others’ welfare ; blind to the richest sources of 
beauty in God’s creation ; and unprovided with that belief in a living law, 
and an order manifesting itself in and through endless change and variety, 
which might serve to check and moderate that phase of despair through 
which, if he take an earnest interest in social problems, he will assuredly 
sooner or later pass.’ 
The Royal Commission in 1860 recommended that all boys should receive 
instruction in some branch of natural science during at least part of their 
school life, that there should be two branches: one consisting of chemistry 
and physics, and the other of physiology and natural history, animal and 
plant. 
At the Nottingham Meeting of the British Association, 1866, a committee 
was appointed, which included Professors Huxley and Tyndall and Canon 
Wilson, ‘ To consider the best means of promoting Scientific Education in 
schools.’ Ample reference to their report, issued in 1867, was made in the 
Report on Science Teaching in Secondary Schools, published in 1917, 
but it may be noted here that the list of science studies recommended 
included : simple facts of astronomy, of geology, and of elementary physio- 
logy, experimental physics, elementary chemistry, and botany. 
Canon Wilson, in his Essays on a Liberal Education, published in 1867, 
describes the methods adopted when introducing science teaching in 
Rugby School ; he explains that it was lack of equipment and of teachers 
that limited the work actually adopted to Botany and Physics, these two 
being claimed as the standard subjects for the scientific teaching in schools. 
Chemistry was not then considered possible owing to difficulties in obtaining 
suitable apparatus and equipment. 
In 1884 Prof. H. L. Armstrong, when speaking at the International 
Conference on Education in London, said: ‘In my opinion no single 
branch of natural science should be selected to be taught as part of the 
ordinary school course, but the instruction should comprise the elements 
of what I have already spoken of as the science of daily life, and should 
include astronomy, botany, chemistry, geology, physics, physiology and 
zoology. . . . The order in which these subjects should be introduced is 
a matter of discussion ; personally I should prefer to begin with botany, 
and introduce as soon as possible the various branches of science in no 
Particular order but that best suited to the understanding of the various 
objects and phenomena to which for the time being the teaching had 
reference.’ 
