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SCIENCE TEACHING IN ENGLAND. 
battle of the old principles and the new. We have grown up 
imbued with the new gospel of education; it is ours 
to carry that gospel one step further on, and hand it to 
our successors still more fully impregnated with the spirit of 
the new life. 
The second great difficulty in the way of the thorough 
teaching of science in schools is Ignorance. I do not by this 
mean ignorance in the crudest sense of the word. I mean 
ignorance of the objects and realities of scientific knowledge, 
ignorance of what its acquisition may lead to. In many minds 
such ignorance is closely allied to dread. The teaching of 
Greek and Latin lend stability to the national constitution ; 
the teaching of physical and biological science is revolutionary 
and may unsettle the foundations of our state and our 
religion. I cannot hut acknowledge that there is some small 
apology for this feeling. Exponents of science have not been 
at all times sufficiently careful to distinguish between the 
proven and the problematical; and some brilliant hypothesis 
which scientists themselves take for what it is, and no more 
than it is, mav serve to shock and frighten off a whole armv 
of semi-converts, while it heightens the distrust of the totally 
unconverted. Now we have no more right to expect that the 
man of science should clip the wings of his Pegasus, and 
linger solely on this solid earth, than we have to ask that a 
Milton should restrict his daring irreverence, and deal solelv 
with the clay of our common humanity. But in our teaching 
we are, I think, justified in asking more. To carry into 
practical effect the famous dictum of Wordsworth, the king of 
the school of poets of Cosmos— 
“ To the solid ground 
Of Nature trusts the mind that builds for aye — 
we are justified in asking that in our teaching we shall 
distinguish between the known and the unknown; we are not 
justified in teaching to children as known that which is only 
hypothecated: we are not justified in teaching a doctrine 
before the nature of the evidence on which that doctrine 
is based can be understood, appreciated, and weighed. You 
will see. then, in effect we are here carrying out the principle of 
one of the greatest of educational reformers, Pestalozzi. that 
children should not so much be taught as shown how to find 
out things for themselves. A child will not find out a doctrine, 
but a child can find out portions of the evidence on which a 
doctrine is based. 
Having now somewhat cleared the way, we are in a 
position to go further into this subject of science teaching in 
schools. If there is anything upon which as a nation we 
