124 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXI. No. 787 



The only safe generalization possible is that 

 whatever course a given institution pursues, 

 it changes that course at least as often as 

 the human organism proverbially renews 

 its tissues. The movement has probably 

 tended in the direction of reduction, but 

 every one who has followed the history of 

 pedagogical discussion will admit that 

 every alteration of opinion as to what sub- 

 jects should be taught has been paralleled 

 by a modification of opinion as to the por- 

 tions of any subject to be selected and 

 emphasized. 



All this change is to some extent a symp- 

 tom of healthy activity, change being espe- 

 cially needed in any group of studies so 

 new that they have to blaze their own trail, 

 since they have no body of traditions upon 

 which to fall back as is the case with study 

 of language and literature. But this prin- 

 ciple hardly covers the whole field of 

 change. A considerable part of it has been 

 due not to intelligent experimentation and 

 exploration, but to blind action and reac- 

 tion, or to the urgency of some strenuous 

 soul who has propagated some emphatic 

 doctrine. 



Imagine a history of the teaching of the 

 languages which should read like this: 

 "The later seventies and early eighties of 

 the nineteenth century witnessed a remark- 

 able growth in the attention given in high 

 schools to the languages. Hundreds of 

 schools adopted an extensive and elaborate 

 scheme by means of which almost the entire 

 linguistic ground was covered. Each of 

 the three terms of the year was devoted to 

 a language. In the first year, Latin and 

 Greek and Sanskrit were covered; in the 

 next, French, German and Italian; while 

 the last year was given to review and to 

 Hebrew and Spanish as optional studies." 



This piece of historic parallelism raises 

 the question as to the real source of the 

 educational value of, say, Latin. How 



much is due to its being a "humanity," 

 its giving insight into the best the world 

 has thought and said, and how much to its 

 being pursued continuously for at least 

 four years 1 How much to the graded and 

 orderly arrangement that this long period 

 both permitted and compelled ? How much 

 to the cumulative effort of constant re- 

 course to what had earlier been learned, 

 not by way of mere monotonous repetition, 

 but as a necessary instrument of later 

 achievement? Are we not entitled to con- 

 clude that the method demanded by the 

 study is the source of its efficacy rather 

 than anything inhering in its content? 



Thus we come around again to the pri- 

 mary contention of the paper : that science 

 teaching has suffered because science has 

 been so frequently presented just as so 

 much ready-made knowledge, so much sub- 

 ject-matter of fact and law, rather than as 

 the effective method of inquiry into any 

 subject-matter. 



Science might well take a leaf from the 

 book of the actual, as distinct from the sup- 

 posititious, pursuit of the classics in the 

 schools. The claim for their worth has pro- 

 fessedly rested upon their cultural value; 

 but imaginative insight into hiunan affairs 

 has perhaps been the last thing, save per 

 accidens, that the average student has got 

 from his pursuit of the classics. His time 

 has gone of necessity to the mastering of a 

 language, not to appreciation of humanity. 

 To some extent just because of this en- 

 forced simplification (not to say meager- 

 ness) the student acquires, if he acquires 

 anything, a certain habitual method. Con- 

 fused, however, by the tradition that the 

 subject-matter is the efficacious factor, the 

 defender of the sciences has thought that 

 he could make good his case only on analo- 

 gous grounds, and hence has been misled 

 into resting his claim upon the superior 

 significance of his special subject-matter; 



