430 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— L. 



and its effect upon invention and mechanisation, have created a new environ- 

 ment which can be shaped to satisfy man's intellectual as well as his material 

 needs. The most important problem to-day is that of finding a means to 

 lessen the gap between scientific advance and ethical and social development. 



Prof. L. Hogben (10.30). 



The scientific knowledge gained during the past century has produced a 

 surfeit of commodities which the existing economy of distribution has failed 

 to make available for human welfare. In part this situation is the nemesis 

 of a personnel of government educated in a humanism which has no roots in 

 scientific knowledge. The pivotal issues of modern education are the produc- 

 tion of political leaders who realise the new potential of human welfare and 

 the training of citizens who will choose leaders with the necessary knowledge 

 to deal constructively with the impact of science on social institutions. 

 The teaching of science in the schools and universities has been largely 

 moulded by the demand for specialist knowledge by industry, medicine 

 and new social services. Compulsory courses in science designed to meet 

 this demand can make little contribution to a new humanism with its roots 

 in a scientific attitude to external nature and human destiny. The attempt 

 to design courses of general science suitable for those who will not become 

 specialists has largely failed through lack of a clearly defined and sufficiently 

 comprehensive social objective. To fulfil the social objective stated above 

 it is not sufficient to show how science is used in the everyday life of con- 

 temporary civilisation. It is equally important to exhibit the growth of 

 civilisation in its relation to advancing scientific knowledge and to unfold 

 possibilities for the further use of scientific knowledge which we have not 

 fully applied to social well-being. To accomplish this the training of the 

 science teacher must be broadened to include a thorough knowledge of the 

 history of science, taught in close relation to the social needs and circum- 

 stances in which scientific progress has been made and the uses to which 

 it has been put. This will not be achieved by introducing courses in the 

 history of sciences treated as a succession of discoveries by specially gifted 

 individuals whose relation to their social environment is ignored. It will 

 necessarily entail a reorientation of the contents of the curriculum. For 

 instance, the dependence of calendrical practice and navigation on the pro- 

 gress of astronomy from the dawn of civilisation to the age of Newton 

 receives little recognition either in current teaching of history or of natural 

 science in the Universities, where astronomy is rarely taught except as an 

 appendix to higher mathematics. As immediate measures to facilitate the 

 design of science teaching adapted to the requirements of intelligent citizen- 

 ship, the steps which might be made include a much greater degree of 

 encouragement of cosmography in the. new departments of geography in 

 the Universities, provision for specialist teaching in the social relations of 

 science and technology in departments of history and compulsory degree 

 courses in the history of science and its uses for students of natural science. 



Mr. S. R. Humby (11.0). 



What are the ideas which the teaching of science in schools should leave 

 in the minds of the citizens of the future, and how can these ideas best be 

 presented ? 



Emphasis should be laid on the increasing powers which men have gained 

 over substances and over energy. These have been obtained from pioneer 



