August 1, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



145 



the most accurate and most convenient way 

 to express and record the principles of the 

 phenomena that we have studied. It is also 

 the best way in which these principles can be 

 expressed to be of service in future investiga- 

 tions and to scientific men generally. But in 

 our enthusiasm over our specialty we are 

 prone to forget some of the foregoing prin- 

 ciples. We are likely to forget that men 

 come in different sizes and grow to difierent 

 heights; we may forget that the requirements 

 and capabiliiies of the scientist and the plain 

 every-day man are vastly different in char- 

 acter, though perhaps not so different in 

 degree. As a matter of fact, our public school 

 system is founded on the supposition that all 

 men are born equal in opportunity as well as 

 in an intellectual sense, which is far from 

 being a reality. The result is that most of 

 our educational processes tend to grow away 

 from industry and the soil and the prepara- 

 tion of those that are to labor in the more 

 humble callings and to take cognizance only 

 of those who are, presumably, to occupy the 

 higher positions. No thinking man can doubt 

 the supreme importance of training leaders; 

 it is hardly a debatable question. But in so 

 doing we should not forget that in these days 

 intelligent leadership is useless or at least 

 greatly handicapped without intelligent fol- 

 lowers; and our educational methods should 

 take cognizance of all kinds of men, keeping 

 in mind that the vast majority of these will 

 always be found in the ranks of the followers. 

 So there has lately grown up a sentiment 

 that our science teaching is drifting away 

 from the close contact it should have with 

 life and democratic education. We are con- 

 fronted with the strange charge that our sci- 

 ence courses, formerly looked upon by the 

 classical scholar as the very essence of things 

 practical, are no longer practical. We are 

 told that they are neither life itself nor prepa- 

 ration for life. We are told that just as the 

 older educational methods erred in supposing 

 that the repeating of words and the observ- 

 ance of forms produced educated men, so we 

 are likely to mistake the shadow for the sub- 

 stance in expecting to send out men trained 



in the scientific method and fiiUed with the 

 scientific spirit simply because they have 

 worked over and perhaps memorized certain 

 standard forms of mathematically expressed 

 scientific laws. In other words, we are 

 charged with transferring the error of the 

 older methods to new fields, and the cry has 

 gone forth that science teaching must be again 

 vitalized, that it must be made more practical 

 and brought back close to the industries 

 whence modern science sprung. Most of us 

 will admit freely that there is some truth in 

 these assertions, particularly as regards the 

 failure of our highly developed science courses 

 to take cognizance of the needs of the great 

 mass of men and women who go no further in 

 academic work than the end of the high school 

 course. The majority of them do not engage 

 in callings where expert scientific knowledge 

 is an essential. Yet all should have some sci- 

 entific training, first to acquire, if possible, the 

 scientific method of attack, because this is the 

 weapon with which we have made ourselves 

 masters of physical things, and second that 

 they may be reasonably intelligent regarding 

 the natural phenomena that surround them on 

 every hand with ever increasing complexity. 

 There is no doubt that high school science can 

 be made more effective for the great mass of 

 the people by making it somewhat less formal, 

 and bringing it closer to the lives of the plain 

 people. 



But before we proceed far with our reforma- 

 tion it may be well to define first just what we 

 mean by practical scientific education. Do we 

 mean (1) the giving simply of descriptive in- 

 formation and explanations of every-day phe- 

 nomena; or do we mean (2) the using of these 

 every-day phenomena to interest the student in 

 rediscovering the laws that underlie them; or 

 again do we mean (3) the application of these 

 rediscovered principles, formally expressed, to 

 practical every-day problems in sufficient de- 

 gree to secure to the student ability to handle 

 the formal mathematical statement of these 

 principles in an easy and confident manner. 



A very cursory examination of college and 

 high school curricula will show that all three 

 of these progressive steps are in common use. 



