than this. It is a part of public opinion or taste which may well
survive changes in the educational system. Blunders about science like
those illustrated above are soon excused. Few think much the worse of
the perpetrators, whereas a corresponding obliviousness to language,
history, literature, and indeed to learning other than their own which
we of the scientific fraternity have agreed to condone in our members
is incompatible with public life of a high order. Both classes have
their disabilities. That of the scientific side is well expressed in
an incident which befell the late Professor Hales. Examining in the
Little-Go _viva voce_, he asked a candidate, with reference to some
line in a Greek play, what passage in Shakespeare it recalled to him,
and received the answer "Please, sir, I am a mathematical man." Some,
no doubt, would rather ignore gravitation. When, for example, one
hears, as I did not long since, several scientific students own in
perfect sincerity that they could not recall anything about Ananias
and Sapphira and another, more enlightened, say that he was sure
Ananias was a name for a liar though he could not tell why, one is
driven to admit that ignorance of this special but not uncommon kind
does imply more than inability to remember an old legend. We may be
reluctant to confess the fact, but though most scientific men have
some recreation, often even artistic in nature, we have with rare
exceptions withdrawn from the world in which letters, history and the
arts have immediate value, and simple allusions to these topics find
us wanting. Of the two kinds of disability which is the more grave?
Truly gross ignorance of science darkens more of a man's mental
horizon, and in its possible bearing on the destinies of a race is far
more dangerous than even total blindness to the course of human
history and endeavour; and yet it is difficult to question the popular
verdict that to know nothing of gravitation though ridiculous is
venial, while to know nothing of Ananias is an offence which can never
be forgiven.
That is the real difficulty. The people of this country have
definitely preferred the unscientific type, holding the other
virtually in contempt. Their choice may be right or wrong, but that it
is reversible seems unlikely. Such revolutions in public opinion are
rare events. Democracy moreover inevitably worships and is swayed by
the spoken word. As inevitably, the range and purposes of science
daily more and more transcend the comprehension--even the educated
comprehension--of the vulgar, who will of course elevate the nimble
and versatile, speaking a familiar language, above dull and
inarticulate natural philosophers.
In these discussions there is a disposition to forget how very largely
natural science is already included in the educational curriculum both
at schools and universities. Schools subsidised by the Board of
Education are obliged to provide science-teaching. The public schools
have equipment, in some cases a superb equipment, for teaching at
least physics and chemistry. At the newer universities there are great
and vigorous schools of science. Of the old universities Cambridge
stands out as a chief centre of scientific activity. In several
branches of science Cambridge is without question pre-eminent. The
endowments both of the university and the colleges are freely used for
the advancement of the sciences. Not only in these material ways are
scientific studies in no sense neglected, but the position of the
sciences is recognised and even envied by those who follow other kinds
of learning. The scientific schools of Cambridge form perhaps the
dominant force among the resident body of the university, and except
by virtue of some great increase in the endowments, it would be
impossible to extend further the scientific side of Cambridge and
still maintain other forms of intellectual activity in such proportion
as to preserve that healthy co-ordination which is the life of a great
university.
At Oxford the case is no doubt very different. The measure in which
the sciences are esteemed appears only too plainly in the small
proportion of Fellowships filled by men of science. Progress has
nevertheless begun. At the remarkable Conference called in May, 1916,
to protest against the neglect of science it was noticeable that the
speakers were, in overwhelming majority, Oxford men[3].
Among the educational institutions of England there is no general
neglect to provide teaching of natural science and much of the
language used in reference to the problem of reform is not really in
accord with fact. Probably no boy able to afford a good secondary
school, certainly none able to proceed to a university, is debarred
from scientific teaching merely because it does not "form an integral
part" of the curriculum. This alone suffices to prove that the real
cause of the deplorable neglect of science is to be sought elsewhere.
The fundamental difficulty is that which has been already indicated,
that public taste and judgment deliberately prefers the type known as
literary, or as it might with more propriety be designated, "vocal."
In the schools there is no lack of science teaching, but the small
percentage of boys whose minds develop early and whose general
capacity for learning and aptitude for affairs mark them out as
leaders, rarely have much instinct for science, and avoid such
teaching, finding it irksome and unsatisfying. These it is, who going
afterwards to the universities, in preponderating numbers to Oxford,
make for themselves a congenial atmosphere, disturbed only by faint
ripples of that vast intellectual renascence in which the new shape of
civilisation is forming. With self-complacency unshaken, they assume
in due course charge of Church and State, the Press, and in general
the leadership of the country. As lawyers and journalists they do our
talking for us, let who will do the thinking. Observe that their
strength lies in the possession of a special gift, which under the
conditions of democratic government has a prodigious opportunity.
Uncomfortable as the reflection may be, it is not to be denied that
the countries in which science has already attained the greatest
influence and recognition in public affairs are Germany and Japan,
where the opinions of the ignorant are not invited. But facts must be
recognised, and our government is likely to remain in the hands of
those who have the gift of speech. A general substitution of
scientific men for the "vocal" could scarcely be achieved, even if the
change were desirable. The utmost limit of success which the
conditions admit is some inoculation of scientific interest and ideas
upon the susceptible members of the classes already preferred. That a
large proportion of those persons are in the biological sense
resistant to all such influences must be expected. Granting however
that a section perhaps even the majority, of our [Greek: beltistoi]
may prove unamenable to the influences of science no one can doubt
that under the present system of education a proportion of not
unintelligent boys in practice have little option. From earliest youth
classics are offered to them as almost the sole vehicle of education.
They do sufficiently well in classics, as they probably would on any
other curriculum, to justify themselves and their advisers in thinking
that they have made a good beginning to which it is safer to stick.
The system has a huge momentum, and so, holding to the "great wheel"
that goes up the hill, they let it draw them after. In their protest
against the monotony of the courses provided for young boys the
reformers are right. The trouble is not that science is not taught in
the schools, but that in schools of the highest type, with certain
exceptions, the young boys are not offered it.
Realising the determinism which modern biological knowledge has
compelled us to accept, we suspect that the power of education to
modify the destinies of individuals is relatively small. Abrogating
larger hopes we recognise education in its two scientific aspects, as
a selective agency, but equally as a provision of opportunity. In view
therefore of the congenital diversity of the individual types, that
provision should be as diverse and manifold as possible, and the very
first essential in an adequate scheme of education is that to the
minds of the young something of everything should be offered, some
part of all the kinds of intellectual sustenance in which the minds of
men have grown and rejoiced. That should be the ideal. Nothing of
varied stimulus or attraction that can be offered should be withheld.
So only will the young mind discover its aptitudes and powers. This
ideal education should bring all into contact with _beauty_ as seen
first in literature, ancient and modern, with the great models of art
and the patterns of nobility of thought and of conduct; and no less
should it show to all the _truth_ of the natural world, the changeless
systems of the universe, as revealed in astronomy or in chemistry,
something too of the truth about life, what we animals really are,
what our place and what our powers, a truth ungarbled whether by
prudery or mysticism.
But presented with this ideal the schoolmaster will reply that
something of everything means nothing _thorough_. I know the objection
and what it commonly stands for. It is the cloak and pretext for that
accursed pedantry and cant which turns every sort of teaching to a
blight. Thoroughness is the excuse for giving boys grammar and
accidence in the name of Greek: diagrams, formulae and numerical
examples in the name of science. Stripped of disguise this love of
thoroughness is nothing but an indolent resolve to make things easy
for the teacher, and, worse still, for the examiner. Live teaching is
hard work. It demands continual freshness and a mind alert. The
dullest man can hear irregular verbs, and with the book he knows
whether they are said right or wrong, but to take a text and show
what the passage means to the world, to reconstruct the scene and the
conditions in which it was written, to show the origins and the fruits
of ideas or of discoveries, demand qualities of a very different
order. The plea for thoroughness may no doubt be offered in perfect
sincerity. There are plenty of men, especially among those who desire
the office of a pedagogue, whose field of vision is constricted to a
slit. If they were painters their work would be in the slang of the
day, "tight." One small group of facts they see hard and sharp,
without atmosphere or value. Their own knowledge having no capacity
for extension, no width or relationship to the world at large, they
cannot imagine that breadth in itself may be a merit. Adepts in a
petty erudition without vital antecedents or consequences, they would
willingly see the world shrivel to the dimensions of their own
landscape.
Anticipating here the applause of the reforming party, to avoid
misapprehension let it be expressly observed that pedantry of this
sort is in no sense the special prerogative of teachers of classics.
We meet it everywhere. Among teachers of science the type abounds, and
from the papers set in any Natural Sciences Tripos, not to speak of
scholarship examinations of every kind, it would be possible to
extract question after question that ought never to have been set,
referring to things that need never have been taught, and knowledge
that no one but a pedant would dream of carrying in his head for a
week.
The splendid purpose which science serves is the inculcation of
principle and balance, not facts. There is something horrible and
terrifying in the doctrine so often preached, reiterated of course by
speaker after speaker at the "Neglect of Science" meeting, that
science is to be preferred because of its utility. If the choice were
really between dead classics and dead science, or if science is to be
vivified by an infusion of commercial, utilitarian spirit, then a
thousand times rather let us keep to the classics as the staple of
education. They at least have no "use." At least they hold the keys to
the glorious places, to the fulness of literature and to the
thoughtful speech of all kindred nations, nor are they demeaned with
sordid, shop-keeper utility. This was plainly in the mind of the Poet
Laureate, who speaking at the meeting I have referred to, said well
that "a merely utilitarian science can never win the spiritual respect
of mankind." The main objection that the humanists make to the
introduction of natural science as a necessary subject of education,
is, he declared, that science is not spiritual, that it does not work
in the sphere of ideas. He went on very properly to show how perverse
is such a representation of science, but, alas, in further
recommendation of science as a safe subject of instruction he added
that the antagonism of science to religion is ended, and that the
contest had been a passing phase. Reading this we may wonder whether
we are in fairness entitled to Dr Bridges's approval. "Tastes sweet
the water with such specks of earth?" Since he spoke of the
"unscientific attitude" of Professor Huxley as a thing of the past,
candour obliges us to insist emphatically that the struggle continues
and must perpetually be renewed. Huxley was opposing the teaching of
science to that of revelation. In these days the ground has shifted,
and supernatural teachings make preferably their defence by an appeal
to intuition and other obscure phenomena which can be trusted to defy
investigation. Against all such apocryphal glosses of evidential truth
science protests with equal vehemence, and were Huxley here he would
treat Bergson and his allies with the same scorn and contumely that he
meted out to the Bishop of Oxford on the notorious occasion to which
Dr Bridges made reference. As well might we decorate our writings with
Plantin title-pages, showing the author embraced by angels and
inspiring muses, as recommend ourselves in these disguises.
Agnosticism is the very life and mainspring of science. Not merely as
to the supernatural but as to the natural world must science believe
nothing save under compulsion. Little of value has a man got from
science who has not learned to be slow of faith. Those early lessons
in the study of the natural world will be the best which most frankly
declare our ignorance, exciting the mind to attack the unknown by
showing how soon the frontier of knowledge is reached. "We don't know"
should be ever in the mouth of the teacher, followed sometimes by "we
may find out yet." Not merely to the investigator but to the pupil the
interest of science is strongest in the growing edges of knowledge.
The student should be transported thither with the briefest possible
delay. Details of those parts of science which by present means of
investigation are worked out and reduced to general expressions are
dull and lifeless. Many and many a boy has been repelled, gathering
from what he hears in class that science is a catalogue of names and
facts interminable.
In childhood he may have felt curiosity about nature and the common
impulse to watch and collect, but when he begins scientific lessons he
discovers too often that they relate not even to the kind of fact
which nature is for him, or to the subjects of his early curiosity and
wonder, but to things that have no obvious interest at all,
measurements of mechanical forces, reaction-formulae, and similar
materials.
All these, it is true, man has gradually accumulated with infinite
labour; upon them, and of such materials has the great fabric of
science been reared: but to insist that the approaches to science
shall be open only to those who will surmount these gratuitous
obstacles is mere perversity. Men's minds do not work in that way. How
many would discover the grandeur of a Gothic building if they were
prevented from seeing one until they could work out stresses and
strains, date mouldings, and even perhaps cut templates? Most of us,
to be sure, enjoy the cathedrals more when we acquire some such
knowledge, and those who are to be architects must acquire it, but we
can scarcely be astonished if beginners turn away in disgust from
science presented on those terms.
It is from considerations of this kind that I am led to believe that
for most boys the easiest and most attractive introduction to science
is from the biological side. Admittedly chemistry is the more
fundamental study, and some rudimentary chemical notions must be
imparted very early, but if the framework subject-matter be animals
and plants, very sensible progress in realising what science means and
aims at doing will have been made before the things of daily life are
left behind. These first formal lessons in science should continue and
extend the boy's own attempts to find out how the world is made.
I shall be charged with running counter both to common sense and to
authority in expressing parenthetically the further conviction that,
in biology at least, laboratory work is now largely overdone. Whether
this is so at schools I cannot tell, but at the universities whole
mornings and afternoons spent in making elaborate preparations,
drawings and series of sections, are frequently wasted. These courses
were devised with the highest motives. Students were to "find out
everything for themselves." Generally they are doing nothing of the
kind. It may have been so once, but with text-books perfected and
teaching stereotyped, the more industrious are slavishly verifying
what has been verified repeatedly, or at best acquiring manipulative
skill. The rest are doing nothing whatever. They would be better
employed taking a walk, devilling for some investigator, browsing in
museums or libraries, or even arguing with each other. Certainly a few
lessons in the use of indexes and books of reference would be far more
valuable. Students of every grade must of course do some laboratory
work, and all should see as much material as possible. My protest is
solely against those long, torpid hours compulsorily given to labour
which will lead to nothing of novelty, and serves only to teach what
can be got readily in other ways. There are a few whose souls crave
such employment. By all means let them follow it.
But whatever is good for maturer students, biology for schoolboys
should be of a less academic cast.
The natural history of animals and plants has the obvious merit that
it prolongs the inborn curiosity of youth, that its subject-matter is
universally at hand, accessible in holidays and in the absence of
teachers or laboratories, and best of all that through biological
study the significance of science appears immediately, disclosing the
true story of man's relation to the world. From natural history the
transition to the other sciences, especially to chemistry and physics,
is easy and again natural. In the study of life many of the
fundamental conceptions of those sciences are met with on the
threshold, and boys whose aptitudes are rather of the physical order
will at once feel the impulse to follow nature from that aspect.
Biology is the more inclusive study. A man may be a good chemist and
miss the broad meaning of science altogether, being sometimes indeed
more devoid of such comprehension than many a philosopher fresh from
Classical Greats.
In appealing for a progress from the general to the particular I am
not blind to the dangers. Biology for the young readily degenerates
into a mawkish "nature-study," or all-for-the-best claptrap about
adaptation, but a sure remedy is the strong tonic of agnosticism,
teaching one of the best lessons science has to offer, the resolute
rejection of authority.
Some take comfort in the hope that all subjects may be taught as
branches of science, but the fact that must permanently postpone
arrival at this educational Utopia is that a great proportion of
teachers are not and can never be made scientific. Nothing proceeding
from such persons will by the working of any schedule, regulation, or
even Order of the Board be ever made to bear any colourable
resemblance to science. Moreover as has already been indicated, there
are plenty of pupils also who will flourish and probably reach their
highest development taught by unscientific men, pupils whose minds
would be sterilised or starved by that very nourishment which to our
thinking is the more generous. Were we a homogeneous population one
diet for all might be justifiable, but as things are, we should offer
the greatest possible variety.
From Rousseau onwards educationists, deriving their views, I suppose,
from some metaphysical or theological conception of human equality,
speak continually of the "mind of the child" as if the young of our
species conformed to a single type. If the general spread of
biological knowledge serves merely to expose that foolish assumption
there would be progress to record. Dr Blakeslee[4], a well-known
American biologist, lately gave a good illustration of this. In a
paper on education he showed photographs of two varieties of maize.
The ripe fruits of both are colourless if their sheaths be unbroken.
The one, if exposed to the light before ripening, by rupture of its
sheath, turns red. The second, otherwise indistinguishable, acquires
no red colour though uncovered to the full sun. If these maizes were
two boys, not improbably the one would be caned for failing to respond
to treatment so efficacious in the case of the other. When we hear
that such a man has developed too exclusively one side of his nature,
with what propriety do we assume that he had any other side to
develop? Or when we say that such-and-such a course of study tends to
make boys too exclusively literary, or scientific, or what not, do we
not really mean that it provides too exclusively for those whose
aptitudes are of these respective kinds? Living in the midst of a
mongrel population we note the divers powers of our fellows and we
thoughtlessly imagine that if something different had happened to us,
we can't say what, we should have been able to rival them. A little
honest examination of our powers shows how vain are such suppositions.
The right course is to make some provision for all sorts, since
unscientific teaching and unscientific persons will remain with us
always.
Teaching of this universal and undifferentiated sort, provided for all
in common, should be continued up to the age at which pupils begin to
show their tastes and aptitudes, in general about 16, after which
stage such latitude of choice should be given as the resources of the
school can provide.
Of what should the undifferentiated teaching consist? Coming from a
cultivated home a boy of 10 may be expected to have learned the
rudiments of Latin, and at least one modern language, preferably
French, _colloquially_, arithmetic, outlines of geography, tales from
Plutarch and from other histories. Going to a preparatory school he
will read easy Latin texts _with translations_ and notes; French
books, geography including the elements of astronomy, beginning also
algebra and geometry. At 12 dropping French except perhaps a reading
once a week, he will begin Greek, by means of easy passages again with
the translations beside him, continuing the rest as before.
Transferred at 14-1/2 to a public school he will go on with Latin,
starting Latin prose, Greek texts, again read fast with translations.
He will now have his first formal introduction to science in the guise
of biology, leading up to lessons and demonstrations in chemistry and
physics. At about 16-1/2 he may drop classics _or mathematics_
according as his tastes have declared themselves, adding modern
languages instead, continuing science in all cases, greater or less in
amount according to his proclivities.
Boys with special mathematical ability will of course need special
treatment. Moreover provision of German for all has avowedly not been
made. For all it is desirable and for many indispensable. But as the
number who read it for pleasure, never very large, seems likely to
diminish, German may perhaps be reserved as a tool, the use of which
must be acquired when necessary.