Mabch 4, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



327 



in us, -whether it seem to eome from the 

 spheres, from the lyres of the muses, or 

 from the voices of angels, and it gives 

 forth when the last supremest chord in the 

 soul of man is touched, it matters not by 

 what hand. 



We come now to the third of the causes 

 which make our teaching of science defect- 

 ive, and it is this — we put our trust too 

 much in systems and not enough in per- 

 sons. And of this there are many evi- 

 dences. For one thing we rely too much 

 on a supposed virtue in buildings and 

 equipment, though in this we but share the 

 spirit of our machinery-mad day and gen- 

 eration. It is much easier for us Ameri- 

 cans to obtain great laboratories and fine 

 equipment than to make good use of them 

 afterwards, and nowhere among us do I 

 see any signs of a Spartan pride in attain- 

 ing great results Avith a meager equipment. 

 Moreover, we make a deficiency of equip- 

 ment an excuse for doing nothing. As one 

 of the most brilliant of American botanists 

 once said, some persons think they can do 

 nothing in the laboratory unless provided 

 with an array of staining fluids which 

 would make the rainbow blush for its 

 poverty. A second evidence of our confi- 

 dence in systems is found in the easy 

 insouciance with which university pro- 

 fessors proceed to write text-books for 

 high schools. The only qualification the 

 most of them have therefor is a knowledge 

 of their subject, and they seem to regard 

 any personal acquaintance with the pecul- 

 iarities of young people, and with the 

 special conditions of high school work, as 

 comparatively negligible. In consequence 

 these books are necessarily addressed to 

 some kind of idealized student, usually a 

 bright-eyed individual thirsting for knowl- 

 edge. This kind does exist, but in minor- 

 ity, whereas the real student with which 

 the high school must deal is one of a great 



mass willing to learn if it must. Confir- 

 mation of the correctness of my view that 

 knowledge of students is as important as 

 knowledge of subject for the writing of a 

 high school book is found in the fact that 

 the author of the botanical text-books 

 most widely used in the high schools of 

 this country has had only a high school 

 experience. Another phase of our belief 

 in the sufficiency of systems is found in the 

 utterly unpractical character of many of 

 the exercises or experiments proposed for 

 the student in some of our books. These 

 recommendations have obviously been 

 worked out in the comfort of the study 

 chair, and have never been actually tested 

 in use by their suggestors; yet they are 

 presented in a way to make the student 

 feel that he is either negligent or stupid if 

 he fails to work them. These theoretically 

 constructed schemes for elementary teach- 

 ing, and these recommendations of untried 

 and impracticable tasks for students, some- 

 times run riot in company with sweeping 

 denunciations of our present laboratory 

 courses, and suggestions for their replace- 

 ment by hypothetical field courses, utterly 

 regardless of the fact that the former, 

 whatever their faults, have been evolved 

 in actual administrative adaptation to the 

 real conditions of elementary work, while 

 the proposed substitutes are wholly un- 

 tried, and in the light of actual conditions, 

 wholly impracticable. 



On the other hand, there is one particular 

 in which we have not system enough, and 

 that is in the standardization of nature 

 study and elementary science courses. I 

 have already mentioned the aavantage 

 the humanities have in the approxi- 

 mate standardization of their instruction 

 throughout the educational system, and 

 towards this end for the sciences we ought 

 to bend every effort. For one thing we 

 should give all possible aid and comfort 



