March 13, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



407 



address* ou 'The Education of Engiueers' 

 —and furthermore the files from 1899 on 

 of the English journals, Nature, School 

 World, Journal of Education and Mathe- 

 matical Gazette. 



One important purpose of the English 

 agitation is to relieve the English second- 

 ary school teachers from the burden of a 

 too precise examination system, imposed 

 by the great examining bodies; in partic- 

 ular, to relieve them from the need of 

 retaining Euclid as the sole axithority in 

 geometry, at any rate with respect to the 

 sequence of propositions. Similar efforts 

 made in England about thirty years ago 

 were unsuccessful. Apparently the forces 

 operating since that time have just now 

 broken forth into successful activity; for 

 the report of the British Association com- 

 mittee was distinctly favorable, in a con- 

 servative sense, to the idea of reform, and 

 already noteworthy initial changes have 

 been made in the regulations for the sec- 

 ondary examinations by the examination 

 syndicates of the universities of Oxford, 

 Cambridge and London. 



The reader will find the literature of this 

 English movement very interesting and 

 suggestive. For instance, in a letter to 

 Nature (vol. 65, p. 484, March 27, 1902) 

 Perry mildly apologizes for having to do 

 with the movement whose immediate re- 

 sults are likely to be merely slight reforms, 

 instead of thoroughgoing reforms called 

 for in his pronouncements and justified by 

 his marked success during over twenty 

 years as a teacher of practical mathematics. 

 He asserts that the orthodox logical se- 

 quence in mathematics is not the only pos- 

 sible one; that, on the contrary, a more 

 logical sequence than the orthodox one 

 (because one more possible of comprehen- 



* In opening the discussion of the sections on 

 Engineering and on Education at the Belfast, 

 1002, meeting of the British Association; pub- 

 lished in Science, Xovember 14, 1902. 



siou by students) is based upon the no- 

 tions underlying the infinitesimal calculus 

 taken as axioms; for instance, that a 

 map may be drawn to scale; the notions 

 underlying the many uses of squared 

 paper; that decimals may be dealt with 

 as ordinary numbers. He asserts as essen- 

 tial that the boy should be familiar (by 

 M'ay of experiment, illustration, measure- 

 ment and by every possible means) with 

 the ideas to which he applies his logic ; and 

 moreover that he should be thoroughly 

 interested in the subject studied; and he 

 closes with this peroration: 



" ' Great God! I'd rather be " ; 



A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn.' 



I would rather be utterly ignorant of all 

 the wonderful literature and science of the 

 last twenty-four centuries, even of the 

 wonderful achievements of the last fifty 

 years, than not to have the sense that our. 

 whole system of so-called education is as 

 degrading to literature and philosophy as 

 it is to English boys and men." 



As a pure mathematician, I hold as the 

 most important suggestion of the English 

 movement the suggestion of Perry's, just 

 cited, that by emphasizing steadily the 

 practical sides of mathematics, that is, 

 arithmetic computations, mechanical draw- 

 ing and graphical methods generally, in 

 continuous relation with problems of phys- 

 ics and chemistry and engineering, it would 

 be possible to give very young students a 

 great body of the essential notions of trig- 

 onometry, analytic geometry, and the cal- 

 culus. This is accomplished, on the one 

 hand, by the increase of attention and com- 

 prehension obtained by connecting the ab- 

 stract mathematics with subjects which are 

 naturally of interest to the boy, so that, 

 for instance, all the results obtained by 

 theoretic process are capable of check by 

 laboratory process, and, on the other hand, 

 by a diminution of emphasis on the sys- 



