964 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVII. No. 442. 



either branch of work. The opportunities 

 which are opened to the average citizen, 

 or to genius, even, in thi.s country, apart 

 from those of the vocation, may be usually 

 seized by any one having the requisite in- 

 telligence, ambition and vigor, if possessed 

 of a good common-school education. If 

 such a person needs more, his common- 

 school training will have set him at the 

 beginning of the path, at least, and will 

 have fitted him to move forward, not as 

 easily and rapidly as if under expert in- 

 struction, but, as experience has shown in 

 many cases, so as to attain the object of 

 the ambition of the moment. Fortunately, 

 also, whatever the ultimate aim, the begin- 

 nings of education must be those which 

 supply the tools with which to construct 

 a career. The education of the primary, 

 and, in large part, of the secondary, school 

 is a preparation for the whole sequence of 

 life, whatever that sequence may become. 

 The arts of reading, writing and compu- 

 tation underlie all arts and all vocations 

 and professions. The languages are the 

 entrance ways to all the literatures. All 

 persons, whatever their aims, must begin 

 by learning the curriculum of the primary 

 school and must usually go on through that 

 of the secondary school. This is, neces- 

 sarily, all of the nature of education, as dis- 

 tinguished from technical training. Tech- 

 nical science can not be taught effectively, 

 even where essential to the plans and the 

 future of the individual, until a consider- 

 able amount of general knowledge has been 

 acquired and the beginnings, at least, of a 

 liberal education supplied. The beginnings 

 being thus acquired, the ambitious man or 

 woman will find ways of supplementing it ; 

 the unambitious will forget what has been 

 already gained. 



The place for the beginnings in the 

 teaching of technical science, applied sci- 

 ence, science in its applications to business, 



is evidently at the point where the scholar 

 commences his formal preparation for a 

 business life. Yet it is generally the fact 

 that something should be done in this direc- 

 tion in advance of the actual beginning of 

 the business-school work. There is a cer- 

 tain amount of scientific instruction and 

 something of technical, or applied, science 

 needed by all, whether the future is to be 

 a life of scholarly leisure or one of strenu- 

 ous endeavor in whatever department of 

 industry. Such sciences are, for example, 

 physics and chemistry. These should be 

 taught in the general course, irrespective 

 of the plans of the scholar for the future 

 of his life. Certain sciences, also — botany, 

 for example— have interest for all and are 

 essential parts of the education of the man 

 whose vocation is to be that of the scholar, 

 as well as of the technical training of the 

 naturalist. These classes of subjects are, 

 or should be, taught as electives when the 

 curriculum becomes easy of enlargement 

 in that manner, after the pressure for 

 necessary primary instruction has been re- 

 lieved. Thus, through all the earlier 

 stages of the education of the citizen, the 

 curriculum is mainly a fixed one, given 

 form by necessity. Time must be devoted 

 to those studies which the child first and 

 most needs as preliminary to all the later 

 education and life. As these are acquired, 

 opportunity gradually reveals itself for the 

 introduction of special and elective courses 

 to be distributed to the pupils in compli- 

 ance with the demands of their prospec- 

 tive business lives. 



At the beginning of this latter period, 

 the place of technical education and of the 

 teaching of technical science comes into 

 view. As the pupil becomes older and his 

 plans for life more definite, the extent and 

 character of the technical science to be 

 taught him become more obvious and more 

 completely known. But the desirable 



