Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/345

Rh in other subjects. Though so much has been said about the importance of science and the value of technical instruction, or of hand-training, as I should prefer to call it, it is unfortunately true that in our system of education, from the highest school downward, both of them are sadly neglected, and the study of language reigns supreme.

This is no new complaint. Ascham, in "The Schoolmaster," long ago lamented it; and Milton, in his letter to Mr.Samuel Hartlib, complained "that our children are forced to stick unreasonably in these grammatick flats and shallows"; and observes that, "though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid things in them as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only"; and Locke said that "schools fit us for the university rather than for the world." Commission after commission, committee after committee, have reiterated the same complaint. How, then, do we stand now?

I see it, indeed, constantly stated that, even if the improvement is not so rapid as could be desired, still we are making considerable progress in this direction. But what are the facts? Are we really making progress?

On the contrary, the present rules made by the Education Department are crushing out elementary science. There are two heads elementary science may be taken under, which are known as "class subjects" or "specific subjects." Under the Code, there are four so-called class subjects, only two of which may be taken. One of them must be English, which I am afraid in a great many cases practically means grammar. Consequently, if either history or geography were selected for the second, elementary science must be omitted. It has been pointed out, over and over again, that the tendency must be to shut out elementary science, because the great bulk of the schools are sure to take history or geography. The last report shows how grievously this has proved to be the case. The President and Vice-President of the Council, in the report just issued, say that elementary science "does not appear to be taken advantage of to any great extent at present." This is a very mild way of putting it. Mr.Colt Williams says, more correctly, that "specific subjects are virtually dead." Mr. Balmer observes that "specific subjects have been knocked on the head." In fact, out of the four and a half million children in our schools, less than twenty-five thousand were examined last year in any branch of science as a specific subject. Take, for instance, the laws of health and animal physiology. Only fourteen thousand children were presented in this subject. Yet how important to our happiness and utility! Neither Mr. Bright nor Mr. Gladstone, I believe, ever learned any English grammar, and, as regards the latter, it has been recently stated, by one who knows him intimately, that the splendid health he