SCIENCE TEACHING IN ADULT EDUCATION 331 
its way into the curricula of established teaching. 'The result was the 
establishment of many new institutions with an almost exclusively scientific 
outlook. To such an extent, indeed, has ‘ science’ been accepted as an 
element in national life that some have actually asked whether the British 
Association has not now fulfilled the function for which it was called into 
being. 
But such a view is facile : for while it is true that the establishment of the 
younger Universities, University Colleges, ‘Technical Colleges, and so on, 
offer facilities almost undreamed of in the half-century following the 
foundation of the British Association, these facilities (along with which 
must be reckoned also a great deal of ‘ science ’ teaching in schools of many 
different types) by reason, perhaps, of one of their main virtues—the 
insistence upon the rigour of exact laboratory methods—have failed to reach 
effectively a large section of the population ; and notwithstanding these 
great facilities, the number is probably still large who, by reason of geo- 
graphical circumstances, of mental aptitude, of temperament, and of 
upbringing, regard science and its works with casualness, suspicion, and 
hostility—even with contempt. 
. This body of people has long offered a field for investigation, and a problem 
for which, perhaps, solution would not be easy; a field and a possible 
problem, however, that come very definitely within the special purview of 
the British Association. What can be done for those whose early training 
left them uninterested in science, or critical of it, or whose daily work has 
prevented them from actively maintaining their interest. by means of 
institutions with laboratory facilities ? 
Meanwhile, that older provision of ‘ mutual improvement,’ through local 
societies and institutes has, for the most part, given place to modern urban 
Universities and Technical Colleges. _What remains has been drained of 
its energies by the concentration of scientific workers into centres of 
endowed research; by improved access to London, ‘and the growth of 
provincial public libraries; and unfortunately, also by the inclusion of 
formal scientific studies, and even of what has come to be called ‘ nature 
study ’ among ‘ school subjects’ ; voluntary work, and original observation 
and experiment, have been domesticated and systematised ; and with other 
social changes has come, in some field clubs, some restriction of the social 
range of customary membership ; with the result that much accommodation 
and even equipment is no longer put to full use, or even to its original 
purpose of the ‘ mutual improvement’ of artisans. 
There were positive reasons, too, for more rapid growth of organised 
“adult education’ in literary, historical, and economic subjects than in 
scientific With these the present inquiry is only concerned in so far as 
they show that the number of adult classes in science is relatively rather 
than absolutely small. Not many votes are needed to, decide whether 
a centre shall devote itself to science or to an ‘ arts’ subject ; and the choice 
of subjects is in practice much wider in ‘ arts’ than in ‘ science.’ 
There has evidently been, however, a general impression that scientific 
subjects have not recently held the place in adult education that might 
have been expected in view of the large (and ever-growing) influence of 
scientific achievements on the general course of events, and especially on 
social development. 
The Place of Science in Adult Education has, indeed, been the subject of 
several inquiries already. At Newcastle in 1916 the British Association 
received and discussed the report of a Committee (appointed in June of that 
year) on the Popularization of Science through Public Lectures; and its 
Secretary, Sir Richard Gregory, pressed home the main argument of this 
