FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78  
79   80   81   >>  
master, to get the boys to draw up an ideal time-table. The results, as a rule, are disappointingly conventional, it is true. Few boys have ever criticised their education, except in a purely destructive and cynical spirit, and when confronted with the constructive task, produce something not very far removed from the time-table they follow out every week. But as regards science, it will often be found that the form falls into two clearly marked divisions. One part cut it down to a minimum, and would, if they had the courage of their convictions, cut it out altogether; the other part give it half, or more than half, the time-table. This probably marks the fact that for many boys a very small amount of laboratory experience, just enough to give them a notion of method, is all that they will benefit by. For the rest the training has real value and interest; but these are a minority. But there is another aspect of science, receiving as yet far too little attention at school, which seems to us an essential part of a liberal education. Indeed, when our own sixth form time-table was remodelled, we put in a claim for a weekly lecture on General Principles of Science, alongside with modern history and political science and economics. The general principles of natural law, evolution and heredity, the nature and cure of disease, the atomic theory of matter, general principles of astronomy--these things seem to us second only in importance to the great principles of politics themselves. Here is an extraordinary record of patient achievement, some contact with which is in itself an inspiration not merely intellectual, but moral. For it seems to us hardly fanciful to suggest that such knowledge should react--so subtle are the reactions of the boy-mind, as we have already tried to show--most favourably on the political spirit. Dr. Gregory, in his enthusiastic work in praise of his subject, "Discovery: or the Spirit and Service of Science," writes: "In the discussion of political questions, prejudice and party determine the view taken, and facts are selected and exploited not so much with the object of arriving at the truth as to confound the other side.... A politician may place party above truth, and a diplomatist will conceal it on behalf of his country, but it is the duty of the man of science to attain truth at all costs. In direct opposition to the narrowness of thought which views all subjects through the distor
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78  
79   80   81   >>  



Top keywords:

science

 

political

 

principles

 
Science
 
general
 

spirit

 
education
 

atomic

 

things

 

astronomy


intellectual
 

matter

 

knowledge

 

theory

 

fanciful

 
inspiration
 

suggest

 

extraordinary

 

evolution

 
disease

heredity

 
nature
 

politics

 

record

 

patient

 

subtle

 

importance

 
contact
 

achievement

 

natural


Spirit

 

diplomatist

 

conceal

 

behalf

 

politician

 

arriving

 

object

 

confound

 

country

 

thought


subjects

 

distor

 

narrowness

 

opposition

 

attain

 

direct

 
exploited
 

favourably

 

Gregory

 

enthusiastic