late years that the Government has had anything to do with the
education of the people. For some centuries back all English education
was practically controlled by our two ancient universities--Oxford and
Cambridge. They decided what subjects were to be taught, and how they
were to be taught. The control they exercised over our English schools
was an indirect one, but it was none the less effectual. The schools
themselves were, like the universities, independent of Government, or,
indeed, of any control. The principal of these are known as "public
schools," though the term "public" has of late years also been applied
to the public elementary schools. These are nearly all developments of
ancient foundations. Winchester, founded in the fourteenth century,
and Westminster, in the sixteenth, grew up under the shadows of great
religious houses; Eton was established in the fifteenth century by the
monarch, close to his own palace at Windsor; Harrow, which dates from
the sixteenth century, is the most important example of the most
numerous class of all privately founded local schools--grammar
schools, as they were generally entitled--which have developed beyond
their original founders' intention, and have eventually come to
attract boys from all parts of the kingdom. The best boys from all of
them went to the universities, and the course of study which was most
successful at the university was naturally the course of study which
was preferred at the school. The _literæ humaniores_, which were the
sum total of university education, included only Greek and Latin
language and literature, mathematics, and logic. Science--I have now
in my mind the education of but a single generation back--was ignored.
The teaching of modern languages was perfunctory in the extreme; the
same may be said of history and geography, while even English language
and literature were almost entirely neglected. Now an education
modeled on these lines was not ill suited for professional men--men
who went from the university into law, the Church, or medicine. But it
was by no means suited, especially when cut short in its early stages,
for boys whose future destination was the counting-house or the shop.
We are not met to consider the training of scholars, but the sort of
education best adapted to the requirements of the ordinary man of
business, and given under the limitations inevitable in the conditions
of the case--that is to say, in a very limited period and during the
early years of life--intended also not only to train the mind but to
provide a means of earning a living. Commercial education must in fact
be a compromise between real education and business training. The more
it inclines to the former the better. With the growth of modern
industry and commerce the necessity for a training better suited for
the requirements of modern life became more and more evident, and the
place was supplied, or partially supplied, by private-adventure
schools, which undertook to provide the essentials of a commercial
education. Of late years also some important middle-class schools have
been founded by institutions like the Boys' Public Day Schools
Company, and the Girls' Public Day Schools Company, the teaching in
which is of a modern if not of a commercial character. The growth also
of science had its natural and obvious effects on educational methods.
Scientific teaching was introduced at the universities--it had been
practically ignored at Oxford, and recognized at Cambridge only as a
department of mathematics. The more important of our public schools
introduced what was known as a "modern side," that is to say, an
alternative course which a boy might take, and in which science,
modern languages, and mathematics took the place, to a greater or less
extent, of the classical languages. Other schools modified their whole
curriculum in a like direction; others again almost abandoned the
ancient knowledge in favor of the modern. Such, in briefest and
baldest summary, is the condition at which our system of secondary
education has now arrived. In the meantime, elementary education in
England had been organized and systematized. At the beginning of the
century elementary education was imparted to the children of the
peasants and agricultural laborers in village schools, most of which
were sadly inefficient. In the towns there were various charitable
institutions for educating the children of those who were unable to
provide education for themselves, and there were also what were known
as ragged and parochial schools, which were more or less of the same
character as the elementary schools of to-day. Early in the century
several important societies were established--they were mostly of a
religious character--for the improvement of elementary education. By
their assistance schools were founded throughout the country. These
were maintained by voluntary effort, and so gained their name of
voluntary schools, though they received aid from the Government, an
annual grant being allotted for the purpose. In 1839 a committee of
the Privy Council was created to regulate the administration of
Government grants for education, and this committee still remains the
governing body of our education department. The Elementary Education
Act of 1870, with later acts of 1876 and 1880, laid down the principle
that sufficient elementary education should be provided for all
children of school age, and established a system of school boards,
which boards were to be and were formed in all districts where such
sufficient provision for education did not exist. By a later act of
1891 education was made gratuitous as well as compulsory. We have,
therefore, now two great classes of elementary schools--school-board
schools, in which education is free, and voluntary schools, in which a
fee may be charged. Both alike receive Government aid under certain
conditions. As a rule the voluntary schools are connected with the
Church of England or with one or other of the nonconformist bodies.
The boards which control the board schools are elected bodies, and the
teaching is undenominational.
[Footnote 55: From a paper read by Sir H. T. Wood, at the
International Congress, on Technical Education, at Venice, May,
1899.]
=Genius and Habit.=--W. L. Bryan and N. Harter are the authors of an
interesting monograph in the Psychological Review for July, from which
the following paragraphs are taken: "There is scarcely any difference
between one man and another of greater practical importance than that
of effective speed. In war, business, scientific work, manual labor,
and what not, we have at the one extreme the man who defeats all
ordinary calculations by the vast quantity of work he gets done, and
at the other extreme the man who no less defeats ordinary calculations
by the little all his busyness achieves. The former is always arriving
with an unexpected victory, the latter with an unanswerable excuse for
failure. It has seemed to many psychologists strongly probable that
the swift man should be distinguishable from the slow by reaction time
tests. For (_a_), granting that the performances demanded in practical
affairs are far more complicated than those required in the laboratory
tests, it seems likely that one who is tuned for a rapid rate in the
latter will be tuned for a rapid rate in the former, when he has
mastered them. Moreover (_b_), a rapid rate in elementary processes is
favorable to their fusion into higher unitary processes, each
including several of the lower. Finally (_c_), a rapid rate in
elementary processes is favorable to prompt voluntary combinations in
presence of new emergencies. In face of these _a priori_
probabilities, eleven years' experience in this laboratory (the first
three being spent mainly on reaction times) has brought the conviction
that no reaction time test will surely show whether a given individual
has or has not effective speed in his work. Very slow rates,
especially in complicated reactions, are strongly indicative of a mind
slow and ineffective at all things. But experience proves that rapid
rates by no means show that the subject has effective speed in the
ordinary, let alone extraordinary, tasks of life. How is this to be
explained? The following answer is proposed: The rate at which one
makes practical headway depends partly upon the rate of the mental and
nervous processes involved; but far more upon how much is included in
each process. If A, B, and C add the same columns of figures, one
using readily the method of the lightning adder, another the ordinary
addition table, while the third makes each addition by counting on his
fingers, the three are presently out of sight of one another, whatever
the rates at which the processes involved are performed. The lightning
adder may proceed more leisurely than either of the others. He steps a
league while they are bustling over furlongs or inches. Now, the
ability to take league steps in receiving telegraphic messages, in
reading, in addition, in mathematical reasoning, and in many other
fields, plainly depends upon the acquisition of league-stepping
habits. No possible proficiency and rapidity in elementary processes
will serve. The learner must come to do with one stroke of attention
what now requires half a dozen, and presently, in one still more
inclusive stroke, what now requires thirty-six. He must systematize
the work to be done, and must acquire a system of automatic habits
corresponding to the system of tasks. When he has done this he is
master of the situation in his field. He can, if he chooses, deal
accurately with minute details. He can swiftly overlook great areas
with an accurate sense of what the details involved amount to--indeed,
with far greater justice to details than is possible for one who knows
nothing else. Finally, his whole array of habits is swiftly obedient
to serve in the solution of new problems. Automatism is not genius,
but it is the hands and feet of genius."
"=A vague Impression of Beauty.="--The following sentences occur in an
article on The Real purpose of Universities in a recent issue of the
London Spectator. They give so strange a picture of the ideals of the
two leading English universities as to seem worthy of reproduction:
"However, Dr. Hill made one statement for which we owe him a sincere
gratitude. 'The excellence of the classics,' said he, 'lay chiefly in
their complete uselessness.' ... In this simple statement is expressed
the true value of our old universities. They should be practically
useless. They should not teach you to be a good carpenter or a
skillful diplomatist. You can not march out of Oxford or Cambridge
into any career which will return you an immediate and efficient
income.... The other universities of Europe are prepared to cut you to
a certain measure, or to render you technically competent. But our
English universities have hitherto declined to discharge this humble
function, save in rare lapses, from a noble ideal. They at least
profess to accomplish a far greater task. There is a strange period
dividing the man from the boy, which clamors aloud for intelligent
discipline, and this discipline Oxford and Cambridge are anxious to
supply. The undergraduate is too young to specialize, and not too old
to receive instruction. When his period of training is finished he is
asked to assume the heavy burdens of life, to discharge tasks which
may be dull, and which are rarely concerned with what were once called
the humanities. As he passes through the university he may not have
the time nor the wit to become a sound scholar nor a profound
mathematician. But he may, if he understand his privilege aright,
linger for a while in the groves of 'practically useless' knowledge.
He may learn what literature meant in an age when it was concerned
only with the essentials of simplicity; he may read the lessons of
history when history was still separate from political intrigue. And
though he forgets his Greek grammar, though in middle life he can not
construe a page of Virgil, yet he carries away from this irrational
interlude a vague impression of beauty which no other course of
education will ever give him." Even for the schoolmen "a vague
impression of beauty," whatever that may mean, seems rather
unpractical as an educational _ultima Thule_.
=The Purple of Cassius.=--There are few substances in the field of
inorganic chemistry on which so much speculation and actual work has
been expended as the so-called purple of Cassius. A recent article by
Mr. C. L. Reese, in the Chemical News, contains some interesting
information regarding this curious compound. Up to the present time
there have, it seems, been two views held as to its chemical
nature--one that it is a mixture of stannic acid and metallic gold;
the other, that of Berzelius, that it is substantially a chemical
compound of purple gold oxide with the oxides of tin possibly mixed
with an excess of stannic acid. It has seemed very likely that the
substance is a chemical compound of acid character, and that the
solubility in ammonia is due to the formation of a salt, but it has
been found that by oxidation of stannous chloride and by allowing very
dilute solutions of stannic chloride to stand, the "hydrogel" of
stannic acid separated out, which, on the addition of a few drops of
ammonia, liquefied and so became soluble in water, just as the purple
of Cassius does. There can therefore be no salt formation here. Some
comparatively recent work by Richard Zsigmondy, however, seems to have
finally cleared up the chemical nature of this curious substance. Its
formation is explained by assuming that when stannous chloride is
added to a sufficiently dilute solution of gold chloride the latter is
immediately reduced to metallic gold while stannic chloride is formed.
Generally after a few seconds the liquid becomes red, but the purple
is not precipitated for several days, unless it is heated. The gold is
not precipitated as a black powder because the stannic chloride formed
is immediately hydrolized into hydrochloric acid and the hydrate of
stannic acid. The latter prevents the aggregation of the gold
particles, and the stannic acid remains in solution as a colloid,
which on standing gradually changes under the influence of the dilute
hydrochloric acid to an insoluble form, the "hydrogel" of stannic
acid. By heating, this change takes place immediately. The properties
of the purple of Cassius depend on the properties and character of the
stannic acid present, and the great variety in the properties of the
stannic acids, the ortho, the meta, and the colloidal mixtures of the
two explain the many contradictions in the literature with reference
to the properties of the purple of Cassius. Zsigmondy says, "I look
upon the knowledge that a mixture of colloid bodies can behave, under
some conditions, as a chemical compound, and that the properties of
one body in such mixtures can be hidden by those in another as the
most important conclusion to be drawn from this work."
=The Abuse of Unskilled Labor.=--The number of diseases directly or
indirectly due to continued long standing is especially numerous among
women. The London Lancet, which nearly twenty years ago attempted to
improve matters in this respect in the case of shopgirls, has again
taken up the subject, and recently published an editorial urging
customers of the shops to boycott those establishments where no
sitting accommodations are provided for the clerks. It says: "We, as
medical men, maintain that sitting accommodations are absolutely
necessary for shopgirls. The only argument having even the semblance
of legitimacy which we have heard put forward in defense of the
nonprovision of seats is that sitting is conducive to idleness, but in
this connection such a premise can not be permitted, for an employee
would be bound to come forward when an intending purchaser entered the
shop.... The very fact that in many shops she is not allowed to sit
down is conducive to idleness--idleness of the worst kind, the
idleness of pretending to do something while in reality nothing is
being done. Can nothing be done to stop this--as we once called it
without the least exaggeration or sensationalism--'cruelty to women'?
To the true woman--the woman with feelings for her sisters, the woman
of love and sympathy, the true woman in every sense of the word--we
appeal for help in this matter. If such women would abstain from
purchasing at shops where they see that the employees are compelled to
work from morning till night without permission to rest from their
labors even when opportunity occurs, we should soon see the end of a
practice which ruins the health and shortens the lives of many of our
shopgirls." That there is a certain amount of danger for women from
long-continued standing, to the point of exhaustion, there is no
doubt, and much can be done toward improving the present conditions in
this respect and in other hygienic ways in the shops. The large influx
of women during recent years into the counting-room and the salesroom
gives such questions an increasing importance, especially in the less
skilled positions where labor combinations for mutual protection are
not possible. There has already been considerable agitation of the
question in this country, and there still remains much to be done.
But, as Lord Salisbury pointed out in causing the rejection of a bill
for remedying present shop conditions in England, it is a question not
suitable for legislation, and can only be settled through the indirect
action of public opinion on the shopkeeper himself.
=The Occurrence of Gold Ores.=--The following paragraphs are from an
article by H. M. Chance in the Engineering Magazine for July, entitled
The Increasing Production of Gold: "Another reason for anticipating
further increase in the production of gold is found in our better
knowledge of gold ores, and of the conditions under which gold occurs
in Nature. Until the discovery of the Cripple Creek district the
occurrence of gold as tellurid in deposits of large extent and value
was practically unknown. Gold was, of course, known to occur,
sparingly in some ores, partially as a tellurid associated with other
minerals; but such a mineralized belt as that at Cripple Creek was
entirely unknown, and such deposits were not looked for by the
prospector. Similarly, we now know of another class of gold ores in
which the gold occurs apparently in some form chemically combined in a
siliceous matrix, often approaching a true jasper or hornstone, and
showing by analysis possibly ninety-five per cent of silica. Such ores
show no trace of 'free' or metallic gold, and the presence of gold can
be determined only by assay or analysis. A few such discoveries have
recently been made, accidentally, by inexperienced persons, who had
rock assayed from curiosity. Similarly again, in the last few years
gold has been found in most unpromising-looking porphyry dikes--the
very rocks prospectors the world over have regarded as necessarily
barren because they almost invariably fail to show any 'free' or
metallic gold by the miner's quick 'horn' or 'pan' test. But mining
engineers and prospectors are learning that in a mineralized region
gold may occur in any rock, and hundreds of prospectors are assaying
all sorts of most unpromising-looking rock, satisfied that by assay
alone can they determine whether a certain rock is gold-bearing or
not. This persistent and more or less systematic work now going on in
every mining district must result in the discovery of many valuable
deposits in unexpected localities, and ultimately promises to add
largely to the annual output of gold."
MINOR PARAGRAPHS.
The investigations of F. E. L. Beal of the Food of Cuckoos and S. D.
Judd of the Food of Shrikes in their relation to agriculture are
published in a single bulletin by the Department of Agriculture. Mr.
Beal finds that the food of cuckoos consists almost wholly of insects,
of which he has found sixty-five species in their stomachs, and
concludes that from an economical point of view they rank among our
most useful birds; and, in view of the caterpillars they eat, it seems
hardly possible to overestimate the value of their work. Mr. Judd
finds, from a very extensive examination, that the food of butcher
birds and loggerhead shrikes consists of invertebrates (mainly
grasshoppers), birds, and mice. During the colder half of the year the
butcher bird eats birds and mice to the extent of sixty per cent, and
ekes out the rest of its food with insects. In the loggerhead's food,
birds and mice amount to only twenty-four per cent. Its beneficial
qualities "outweigh four to one its injurious ones. Instead of being
persecuted, it should receive protection."
The Engineering Magazine is authority for the following: "The wrecking
of the steamship Paris on the coast of Cornwall and the difficulties
encountered in attempting to save her while a number of her
compartments forward are filled with water, lead Mr. Richards, in the
American Machinist, to suggest the applicability of compressed air.
'There is a means of expelling the water from the filled compartments
so obvious, and so certainly effective, that it seems unaccountable
that some engineer has not suggested it before this. Close the hatches
of the flooded compartments and drive the water out by forcing air in.
It would not make the slightest difference how big the holes might be
in the bottom, as the water would be expelled and kept out on the same
principle as in the old-fashioned diving bell.' This suggestion
carries with it a much larger and more important one--namely, the use
of air pumps instead of water pumps to save a leaking ship while
afloat. As Mr. Richards well remarks, the work of trying to pump out a
leaky ship is not only enormously wasted while it is going on, but it
is never finished. If, however, the water leaking into a compartment
of a ship be expelled by pumping air into the space, the work is done
so soon as the compartment is filled with air down to the level of the
leak. After that point is reached the ship is safe, no matter how
large the hole, and no further pumping is necessary."
Chlorate of potash has always been regarded by manufacturers and
chemists as a nonexplosive, and hence there has been little care taken
in handling and storing it. A recent explosion, however, at a large
chemical works at St. Helens, in England, seems to disprove this view.
A storehouse containing about one hundred and fifty tons of chlorate
in the form of both powder and crystals took fire, and almost
immediately after the falling in of the roof an explosion of terrible
violence occurred, the shock being felt over a distance of twenty
miles. The chlorate works were entirely demolished. A large gas holder
of the city gas works, containing two hundred and fifty thousand cubic
feet of gas, was burst and the gas ignited. Eight hundred tons of
vitriol was poured into the streets of the town by the wrecking of ten
vitriol chambers in a neighboring alkali works. Houses were unroofed,
and in the main streets of the town, a quarter of a mile away, nearly
every plate-glass window was demolished. A theory accounting for the
explosion, advanced by Mr. J. B. C. Kershaw, in the Engineering and
Mining Journal, is that it was due to the sudden and practically
simultaneous liberation of all the oxygen from such a mass of
chlorate, combined with the restraining influence of the kegs (the
chlorate was packed in kegs of one hundredweight each), and possibly
also helped by the presence of much charred wood and the dense volume
of smoke. Whatever is the true theory, however, it is evident that our
belief in the nonexplosiveness of potassium chlorate must be modified.
NOTES.
A piece of experimental glass pavement was laid in Lyons, in the Rue
de la République, last fall, and it is reported to have worn very well
thus far. The silicate of which the pavement is composed is called by
the manufacturers ceramo-crystal or devitrified glass. It may be
finished in various colors and with a rough or smooth surface. The
blocks are made by heating broken glass to a temperature of 1,250° C.
and then compressing it by hydraulic power. The resulting compound is
said to have all the qualities of glass except its transparency.
The New York Agricultural Experiment Station reports of its analyses
of sugar beets in 1898 that the average percentage of sugar in the
samples analyzed is 14.2, with a coefficient of purity of 85. In
general the yield of beets was between nine tons and twenty tons per
acre.
An altitude of 12,440 feet, or 366 feet greater than any attained
before, was reached in the kite-flying experiments at Blue Hill
Observatory, Massachusetts, on February 21st. The flight was begun at
twenty minutes to four in the afternoon, with a temperature of 40° and
a wind velocity of seventeen miles an hour at the surface. At the
highest point reached by the kite the temperature was 12° and the wind
velocity fifty miles an hour. Four improved Hargreave kites with
curved surfaces, like soaring birds' wings, were used tandem, and the
flying line was a steel wire.
The first to be unveiled of a series of tablets to be fixed by the
Municipal Council of Bath, England, to mark historical houses is on
the house where William Herschel lived in 1780, and was officially
unveiled by Sir Robert Ball, April 22d. In a little workshop at the
end of the back garden of this house Herschel made his Newtonian
reflector, and here he discovered Uranus.
Attention is called by Dr. Martin Ficker to the fact, brought out in
his experiments, that cultures of microbes are affected by the glass
of the tubes in which they are made. By virtue of differences in
composition, different sorts of glass give varying degrees of
alkalinity to water in contact with them, and the activity of the
bacteria they contain is correspondingly affected.