Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/585

Rh brought to the conclusion that, within certain limits, the substance of the food is of comparatively less importance than the conditions and manner of feeding and the degree of pollution through germs of fermentation.

Requisites of a Real Education.—In an address before the Teachers' Association of the McGill Normal School, Montreal, Prof. Wesley Mills, explaining his educational creed, assumed that the need of knowledge, or realization, is infinitely greater than the needs of expression, as witness the whole creation below man. An individual may be educated, though unable to read a sentence, write a line, or add up a column of figures. As a matter of fact, many men have become eminent among their fellows who could not do any of these things. Why has this been so? The reason is plain. These men understood the forces of nature, though they could not in all cases have stated their knowledge in our conventional forms of expression. The art and science of expression should be taught in schools, but should be subordinated to the acquisition of the knowledge of things. The moral and social nature of man should receive greater attention. The teaching of religious doctrines and the observance of religious forms are not practical in the public schools, but ethics by precept and example should be prominent from the day a child enters the school. A reverence for all kinds of truth should ever be impressed. Only one system of education—the Kindergarten—has ever met the nature of the child even fairly. The laboratory of the college is only the modified Kindergarten. Why is not the public-school teaching more like one of these? Because we have mistaken forms for knowledge and words for things, to a lamentable extent. "As our schools are now constituted, I must deliberately declare it as my conviction that they tend rather to quench than to excite a love for nature and a real knowledge of things, and to disgust young minds thirsting for a contact with realities. . . . I have known children that did not go to school till seven years of age, who had prior to that period learned to be good observers of what was going on around them, lose all love for natural objects after being at school a couple of years; and I do also know to my sorrow that many of the young men that enter our colleges neither know how nor care to observe. They prefer not to look Nature directly in the face, but try to see her through the medium of books, lectures, etc., and for this our school system is largely responsible." One of the remedies proposed for this evil is the simplification of the too ambitious school programmes. Abstract subjects, like history and grammar, should be left for future years. They take up the time that might be devoted to, developing the intelligence through cultivation of observation and stirring the mind with the results of the exercise of the senses. Childhood is not the period of life for developing abstract notions, but for acquiring concrete ones. While in the abstract it is true that a knowledge of French, Latin, Greek, etc., may help to make one a better English scholar, the idea that an amount of these languages that would be of any value can be taught to the average pupil, without the neglect of other important work, is a delusion. The school should aim to enable the child to speak and write its mother-tongue readily, clearly, and elegantly. This will not be accomplished by teaching English grammar or foreign languages, but by contact with good models and practice. "Time is now frittered away on so many subjects that nothing is well done, and with the most disastrous effects on the habits of the learner. Our schools are dreadfully bookish."

Scientific Missions in the Olden Time.—The institution of missions abroad with scientific aims began in France, according to Dr. Henry, practically in the reign of Francis I. Among the earlier ventures of this class was that of the apothecary to Henri IV, who went all over the globe in search of the peculiar products of each country, especially medicinal and food plants. Earlier than he was the explorer who went to Brazil to study dyeing-woods. Among the most famous of the expeditions were those of Condamine, Dombey, Bougainville, and La Perouse. There are still in the archives of the Ministry of the Marine copies of the instructions given to travelers and navigators in past centuries—"positively models of their kind, which could not be followed too