October 20, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



437 



if teachers of science themselves do not possess 

 it. During the past 'thirty years or so there 

 has been far too much boundary-marking of 

 science teaching in school on account of the 

 specialized qualifications of ithe teachers. What 

 is wanted is less attention to the conventional 

 division of science into separate compartments 

 designed by examining bodies, and more to the 

 ■w'hole field of nature and the scientific activities 

 by which man has itransformed the world; and 

 no teacher of school science should be unwilling 

 or unqualified to impart such instruction to his 

 pupils. 



Where such t«achers do exist, however, they 

 are compelled by the esigeneies of esamina- 

 tions to conform to syllabuses of which the 

 boundary lines are no more natural than those 

 which mark political divisions of countries on 

 a map of the world. All that can be said in 

 favor of the delimination of territory is that it 

 is convenient; the examiner knows what the 

 scope of his questions may be, and teachers 

 the limits of the field they are expected to sur- 

 vey with their pupils. While, therefore, it may 

 be believed that a general course of science is 

 best suited to the needs of pupils up to the 

 age of about sixteen years, examining authori- 

 ties recognize no course of this character, and 

 very few schools include it in the curriculum. 

 Expressed in other words, the proximate or 

 ultimate end of the instruction is not education 

 but examination, not the revealing of wide 

 prospects because of the stimulus and interest 

 to be derived from them, but the study of an 

 arbitrary group of topics prescribed because 

 knowledge of them can be readily tested. It 

 may be urged that this is the only practicable 

 plan to adopt if a science course is to have a 

 defined shape, and not, like much that passes 

 for nature study, merely odds and ends about 

 nature, without articulation or purpose. Ac- 

 ceptance of this view, however, carries with it 

 the acknowledgment that expediency rather 

 than principle has to determine the scope and 

 character of school science, which is equivalent 

 to sajdng that science has no secure place in 

 educational theory. I prefer to believe that a 

 school course of general science can be con- 

 structed which is largely informative and at 

 the same time truly educational, but it must 

 provide what is best adapted to enlarge the 



outlook and develop the capacity of the minds 

 which receive it, and not be determined by the 

 facilities it offers for examinational tests. 



A third reason for the relative absence of 

 general scientific education in schools is the 

 demands which the teaching might make upon 

 apparatus and equipment. Simple quantita- 

 tive work in physics, chemistry or botany can 

 be done in the laboratory with little apparatus, 

 and a single experiment may occupy a pupil 

 for several teaching periods. To attempt to 

 provide the means by which all pupils can ob- 

 serve for themselves a wide range of unrelated 

 facts and phenomena belonging to the biolog- 

 ical as well as to the physical sciences is obvi- 

 ously impracticable, and would be educationally 

 ineffective. Experiments cai-ried out in the 

 laboratory should chiefiy serve to train and 

 test capacity of attacking problems and arriv- 

 ing at precise results just as definitely as do 

 exercises in mathematical teaching. But knowl- 

 edge by itself, whether of quantitative or quali- 

 tative character, is not sufficient, and it be- 

 comes power only when it is expressed or used. 

 Every observation or experiment carries with 

 it, therefore, the duty of recording it clearly 

 and fully in Words or computations, or both, 

 and if this is faithfully done laboratory work 

 of any kind may be made an aid to English 

 composition as well as an incentive to inde- 

 pendent inquiry and intelligent thought. 



It is very difficult, however, to devise a lab- 

 oratory course of general scaenee which shall 

 be both coherent and educative; shall be, in 

 other words, both extensive in scope and inten- 

 sive in method. I doubt, indeed, Avhether any 

 practical course can perform this double func- 

 tion successfully. Probably the best working 

 plan is to keep the descriptive lessons and the 

 experimental problems sepaz-ate, using demon- 

 strations in the class-room as illustrations, and 

 leaving the laboratory work to itself as a means 

 of training in scientific method or of giving a 

 practical acquaintance with a selected series 

 of facts and principles. The main thing to 

 avoid is the limitation of the science teaching 

 to what can be done practically; for no general 

 survey is possible under such conditions. Even 

 if two thirds of the time available for scien- 

 tific instruction be devoted to laboratory expe- 

 riment and questions provoked by it, the 



