Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/595

Rh, however well prepared. This method at once makes the subject a task; and, if in addition the preparation for an examination is the great end in view, it is wonderful how small is the residuum after the work is done. Such subjects can always be made intensely interesting if presented by lectures, with the requisite illustrations, and I do not believe that the cramming process required to pass an examination adds much to the knowledge previously gained. Many teachers, finding that the parrot-like learning of a text-book is unprofitable, attempt to make the exercise more valuable by means of problems—usually simple arithmetical problems—depending upon principles of physics or chemistry. And there can be no doubt that such problems do serve to enforce the principles they illustrate; but I am afraid they also more frequently, by disgusting the student, stand in the way of the acquisition of the desired knowledge.

It must not be forgotten, in studying the results of science, that the facts are never fully learned unless the learner is made to understand the evidence on which the facts rest. The child who reads in his physical geography that the world revolves on its axis, learns what to him is a mere form of words, until he connects this astronomical fact with his own observation that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west; and so the scholar who reads that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen has acquired no real knowledge until he has seen the evidence on which this fundamental conclusion rests. Let, then, the sciences be taught as they have been in schools, as important parts of useful knowledge, but let them so be taught as to engage the interest of the scholar, and to direct his attention to the phenomena of Nature.

All this, however, is not scientific culture, in the sense in which I have constantly used the term, and does not afford any special training for the intellectual faculties. For myself, I do not desire any study of natural history, chemistry, or physics from this point of view as a preparation for college; simply because, with the large apparatus of the university, all these subjects can be presented more effectively, and be made more interesting, than is possible in the schools. What I desire to see accomplished by our schools is a training in physical science, comparable in extent and efficiency with that which they now accomplish in the ancient languages. And this brings me to another topic, namely, scientific culture as a system of mental training.

Before attempting to state in what scientific culture consists, we shall do well, even at the expense of some repetition, to show that what often passes for scientific culture is far different from the system of education which we have so constantly advocated. The acquisition of scientific knowledge, however extensive, does not in itself constitute scientific culture, nor is the power of reproducing such knowledge, at a competitive examination, any test of real scientific power. Nevertheless, the examination papers which have been