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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 1006 



turned. We will then wonder how we ever 

 could have been such silly boys as to have 

 been blinded by syllabi that utterly fail 

 to mention the one and only thing that 

 gives science its final and distinctive claim 

 to a leading place in any system of truly 

 democratic education. 



The syllabus of industrial physics will 

 be brief and full of meaning. It will read 

 somewhat like this: Topics I-XC, Para- 

 graphs A-Z. The Scientific Spirit. This 

 includes: (1) a militant faith in things, in 

 the harmony of things, and in what men 

 can do with things; (2) an eagerness to 

 seek facts and to treat facts as facts; (3) 

 an imagination that is able to see old facts 

 in new perspectives. 



This syllabus contains no topics like 

 those in which the current syllabi abound, 

 because there are plenty of books in which 

 all these topics are fully treated. If a man 

 has the scientific spirit, he will look them 

 up in books whenever he needs any of them 

 so that they come to have meaning for him 

 in the joyous work of living. This is no 

 more than he now has to do if he wants 

 really to use those now covered in physics 

 courses in any important undertaking. 



This syllabus contains no required list 

 of experiments ; because, to a man with the 

 scientific spirit, all life is one magnificent 

 series of experiments. 



This syllabus, finally, contains no petty 

 directions to the teacher; because the re- 

 sult demanded is emotional in nature and 

 depends on the tact, the intuition and the 

 scientific spirit of the teacher. Fortunately 

 no one has yet attempted to formulate set 

 rules for the development and administra- 

 tion of the scientific spirit, so there is hope 

 for success here by a real live teacher. 



Like all truly great things, this syllabus 

 is beautiful because of its simplicity. It is, 

 moreover, the same for all the sciences. 

 Committees will not have to waste much 



valuable talent haggling over its details, 

 but can spend the time thus liberated in 

 learning to apply it. Hence, when it has 

 once been adopted, progress in industrial 

 science will be rapid. 



There are a number of reasons why it is 

 certain that this simple syllabus is the one 

 that industrial science is going to adopt. 

 In the first place, this is the syllabus that 

 the colleges now want to have adopted. It 

 is the syllabus that the universities use in 

 their advanced work, and the one that the 

 colleges would like to adopt for their own 

 use if only the secondary schools would be 

 good enough to forget the old syllabi that 

 the colleges made. Although the colleges 

 really want to have this new syllabus 

 adopted, none have yet had the bravery to 

 say so openly; because the new syllabus 

 demands a result which can not be exam- 

 ined in two hours by the college entrance 

 examination board. Even the colleges that 

 lie outside the influence of this board, and 

 that admit wholly on certificate, stiU like 

 to hold on to the possibility of giving en- 

 trance examinations if they ever should 

 want to do so. Standards of something-or- 

 other seem somehow to be maintained by 

 this process. 



In the second place, the elementary 

 schools are demanding the adoption of this 

 syllabus of industrial physics. In fact, the 

 elementary schools are seriously trying, 

 with their nature study and their general 

 science, to put it into effect themselves. 

 They know that most children come to the 

 first grade with marked symptoms of 

 scientific spirit cropping out all over them, 

 and they know that these same children 

 leave the eighth grade with their scientific 

 spirit a sad caricature of its original self. . 

 But the elementary school can not both 

 make its own teachers and teach the chil- 

 dren. The teachers must come from above ; 

 and hence progress will be slow until the 



