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a deficiency, especially in educational morale. Our colleges are 

 not going to the dogs, but they certainly 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, indefiniteness of knowledge, 

 avoidance of effort, and whimsical selection of studies — in such 

 a system the sciences, whose essence is care, exactness, persist- 

 ence and consistency, have not a wholly fair chance. One of the 

 principal reasons, therefore, why the sciences do not loom larger 

 in present-day education is the fault of that education and not of 

 the sciences. 



A third point of importance in the educational 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 edu- 

 cational use. The humanities have behind them so many gener- 

 ations 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 teaching is better than in the lower, while, as every- 

 body knows, we are still far from any consistent and continuous 

 system of instruction 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 had little, or too often an unfortunate, experience. This 

 condition is inevitable to the youthfulness, educationally, 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 manipu- 

 lation, its fixed hours and methods of work, and its absolute re- 



