March 4, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



323 



leges are not going to the dogs, but they 

 cei'tainly permit some very queer mongrels 

 to roam at large on the campus. 



Now the application of these remarks to 

 our present problem is doubtless sufficiently 

 plain. In an educational system which too 

 much permits inaccuracy of work, indefi- 

 niteness of knowledge, avoidance of effort, 

 and whimsical selection of studies— in such 

 a system the sciences, whose essence is care, 

 exactness, persistence and consistency, have 

 not a wholly fair chance. One of the prin- 

 cipal reasons, therefore, why the sciences 

 do not loom larger in present-day educa- 

 tion is the faiilt of that education and not 

 of the sciences. 



A third point of importance in the edu- 

 cational status of the sciences is involved 

 in the fact that they have not as yet had 

 time to become organized and standardized 

 for their most effective educational use. 

 The humanities have behind them so many 

 generations of experience that they are now 

 measurably standardized throughout, and 

 offer a continuous and suitably-graded 

 training from kindergarten to college. But 

 the sciences as laboratory-taught subjects 

 are not much more than a single generation 

 old, and many of their problems are still 

 unsettled. In the higher grades our teach- 

 ing is better than in the lower, while, as 

 everybody knows, we are still far from any 

 consistent and continuous system of in- 

 struction in nature knowledge in the lower 

 schools. Just here lies a great weakness of 

 scientific education at the present day, for 

 students too often are sent into high school 

 and college not only without the positive 

 advantage of good early training, but even 

 with a prejudice against a kind of activity 

 of which they have had little, or too often 

 an unfortunate, experience. This condition 

 is inevitable to the youthfulness, education- 

 ally, of the sciences, and will be remedied 

 in time. 



The last point I would mention in the 

 educational relations of the sciences to the 

 older subjects is this, that the sciences are 

 under some minor disabilities from which 

 the others are free. These center in the 

 laboratory, and are connected in part with 

 the fact that the laboratory type of study, 

 with its mechanical manipulation, its fixed 

 hours and methods of work, and its abso- 

 lute requirement of independent observa- 

 tion, is distasteful to the great majority of 

 persons, who, whether by natural inclina- 

 tion or acquired habits, prefer to absorb 

 their knowledge in physical ease, by meth- 

 ods which can be lightened by the wits, and 

 from printed books upon which they can 

 lean for authority. Again, laboratories 

 are expensive, much more expensive than 

 the equipment of the other subjects. This 

 acts as a check to the sciences all along the 

 line, while in poorer communities it is often 

 determinative against their introduction at 

 all. 



Now it may seem, at this point, that I 

 have needlessly infringed on your patience 

 and my own allotment of time in thus 

 enumerating such obvious matters, but in 

 truth I have had a good object, which is 

 this: I wish to emphasize that all of these 

 disabilities under which science-teaching 

 now labors, these elements of our problem 

 which are not our own fault and for the 

 most part are beyond our control, and the 

 list of which I have made as long as I could, 

 —all of these taken together go only a very 

 small way towards explaining the deficiency 

 of the sciences in education. This defi- 

 ciency, I believe, is for the most part our 

 own fault and removable, and it all centers 

 in this, that we are not teaching our sub- 

 jects properly. And now I have reached 

 the real theme of my present address. 



Whenever we are faced by any large 

 problem, we tend to seek its solution in 

 some single great factor. Yet, as the phe- 



