L.— EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE 243 



confirm the existence of the Hebrews. Is it not time that we recognised 

 the extreme insignificance of the events recorded in Kings and Chronicles, 

 and ceased to throw the historical imagination of our young people 

 out of perspective by an over-emphasised magnification of the history 

 of Judea ? 



Look at our time-table and what we have to teach. If we give history 

 four-tenths of all the time we have for imparting knowledge that still gives 

 us at most something a little short of 400 hours altogether. Even if we 

 think it desirable to perplex another generation with the myths of the 

 Creation, the Flood, the Chosen People and so forth we haven't got the 

 time for it — any more than we have the time for the really quite unedifying 

 records of all the Kings and Queens of England and their claims on this 

 and that. No reason why much of that stuff should not be picked up in 

 private reading — by those who like that sort of thing. But so far as the 

 school time-table goes we are faced with a plain alternative. One thing 

 or the other. Great history or hole-and-corner history ? The story of 

 mankind or the narrow, self-righteous, blinkered stories of the British and 

 the Jews ? 



There is a lot more we have to put into the heads of our young people 

 over and above History. It is the main subject of instruction but even 

 so, ir is not even half of the informative work that ought to be got through 

 in this school stage. We have to consider the collateral subject of geo- 

 graphy and a general survey of the world. We may have a little map- 

 making here, but I take it what is needed most are reasonably precise ideas 

 of the various types of country and the distinctive floras and faunas of 

 the main regions of the world. We do not want our budding citizens 

 to chant lists of capes and rivers, but we do want them to have a real 

 picture in their minds of the Amazon forests, the pampas, the various 

 phases in the course of the Nile, the landscape of Labrador and so on, 

 and also we want something like a realisation of the sort of human life 

 that is led in these regions. We have enormous resources now in cheap 

 photography, in films and so forth, that even our fathers never dreamt of 

 — to make all this vivid and real. New methods are needed to handle 

 these new instruments but they need not be overwhelmingly costly. And 

 also our new citizen should know enough of topography to realise why 

 London and Rio and New York and Rome and Suez happen to be where 

 they are and what sort of places they are. 



Geography and history run into each other in this respect and, on the 

 other hand. Geography reaches over to Biology. Here again our schools 

 lag some fifty years behind contemporary knowledge. The past half- 

 century has written a fascinating history of the succession of living things 

 in time and made plain all sorts of processes in the prosperity, decline, 

 extinction and replacement of species. We can sketch the wonderful and 

 inspiring story of life now from its beginning. Moreover, we have a con- 

 tinually more definite account of the sequence of sub-man in the world 

 and the gradual emergence of our kind. This is elementary, essential, 

 interesting and stimulating stuff, and it is impossible to consider anyone 

 a satisfactory citizen who is still ignorant of that great story. 



And finally, we have the science of inanimate matter. In a world of 

 machinery, optical instruments, electricity, radio and so forth we want to 



