November 14, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



769 



for examination purposes; they are taught 

 in water-tight compartments— or, rather, 

 they are only crammed, and not taught at 

 all. Our school system resembles the or- 

 dinary type of old-established works where 

 gradual acci-etion has produced a higgledy- 

 piggledy set of shops which one looks at 

 with stupefaction, for it is impossible to 

 get business done in them well and 

 promptly, and yet it seems impossible to 

 start a reform anywhere. What is wanted 

 is an earthquake or a fire— a good fire — 

 to destroy the whole works and enable the 

 business to be reconstructed on a consistent 

 and simple plan. And for much the same 

 reason our whole public-school system 

 ought to be 'scrapped.' What we want to 

 see is that a boy of fifteen shall be fond of 

 reading, shall be able to compute, and shall 

 have some knowledge of natural science; 

 or, to put it in another way, that he shall 

 have had mental training in the study of 

 his own language, in the experimental 

 study of mathematics and in the methods 

 of the student of natural science. Such a 

 boy is fit to begin any ordinary profession, 

 and whether he is to enter the Church, or 

 take up medicine or surgery, or become a 

 soldier, every boy ought to have this kind 

 of training. When I have advocated this 

 kind of education in the past I have usiially 

 been told that I was thinking only of boys 

 who intended to be engineers; that it was 

 a specialized kind of instruction. But 

 this is very untrue. Let me quote from the 

 recommendations of the 1902 Military Edu- 

 cation Committee ('Report,' p. 5) : 



"The fifth subject which may be con- 

 sidered as an essential part of a sound 

 general education is experimental science; 

 that is to say, the science of physics and 

 lehemistry treated experimentally. As a 

 means of mental training and also viewed 

 as useful knowledge, this may be considered 

 a necessary part of the intellectual equip- 

 ment of every educated man, and especially 



so of the officer, whose profession in all 

 its branches is daily becoming more and 

 more dependent on science." When state- 

 ments of this kind have been made by some 

 of us in the past, nobody has paid much at- 

 tention; but I beg you to observe that the 

 headmaster of Eton and the headmaster of 

 St. Paul's School are two of the members 

 of the important committee who signed 

 this recommendation, and it is impossible 

 to ignore it. Last year, for the first time, 

 .the President of the Royal Society made 

 a statement of much the same kind, only 

 stronger, in his annual address. I am 

 glad to see that the real value of education 

 in physical science is now appreciated ; that 

 mere knowledge of scientific facts is known 

 to be tinimportant compared with the pro- 

 duction of certain habits of thought and 

 action which the methods of scientific study 

 usually produce. 



As to English, the committee say: 'They 

 have no hesitation in insisting that a knowl- 

 edge of English,* as tested by composition, 

 together with an acquaintance with the 

 main facts of the history and geography 



* This committee recommends for the Wool- 

 wich and Sandhurst candidates a reform that has 

 already been carried out by London University. 

 No dead language is to be compulsory, but un- 

 fortunately some language other than English is 

 still to be compulsory. Those boys, of whom 

 there are so many, who dislike and cannot learn 

 another language are still to be labeled ' unedu- 

 cated.' Must there, then, be national defeat and 

 captivity before our chosen race gives up its false 

 academic gods ? We think of education in the 

 most slovenly fashion. The very men who say that 

 utility is of no importance are the men who insist 

 on the usefulness of a knowledge of French or Ger- 

 man. They say that a man is illiterate if he 

 knows only English, although he may be familiar 

 with all English literature and with other litera- 

 tures through translations. The man who has 

 passed certain examinations in his youth and 

 never cares to read anything is said to be edu- 

 cated. The men of the city of the Violet Crown, 

 were they not educated? And did they know any 

 other than their own language ? 



