Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/637

 which a few centuries ago kings could not purchase, is scarcely in any degree owed to the appointed means of instructing our youth. The vital knowledge—that by which we have grown as a nation to what we are, and which now underlies our whole existence is a knowledge that has got itself taught in nooks and corners; while the ordained agencies for teaching have been mumbling little else but dead formulas."

Some improvement there has been since Herbert Spencer wrote, but chiefly in technical teaching: and there is yet no national appreciation of what constitutes true education: fashion and vested interests still largely dominate educational policy.

Another advocate of the teaching of scientific method to whom I would refer you is Charles Kingsley, the celebrated divine, but also a born naturalist possessed of the keenest powers of observation, a novelist of the first rank, and a poet. Read his life, and you will find it full of inspiration and comfort. Study his scientific lectures and essays (Volume XIX of his Collected Works, Macmillan & Company) and you will not only learn why "science" is of use, but will have before you a valuable model of method and style. A friend a member of the London County Council to whom I happened to send some of my papers, noting my frequent references to Kingsley, remarked, "How very fond you are of his writings!" Indeed I am, for they seem to me to display a truer grasp of the importance of scientific method and of its essential character than do any other works with which I am acquainted. I recommend them because they are pleasant as well as profitable reading, and because our text-books generally are worthless for the purpose I have in view. Any ordinary person of intelligence can read Herbert Spencer's and Kingsley's essays and can appreciate them, especially Kingsley's insistent application of the scientific principle of always proceeding from the known to the unknown; but few can read a text-book of science moreover, the probable effect of most of these would be to dissuade rather than persuade.

Kingsley's great point, and Herbert Spencer's also, is that what people want to learn is not so much what is, still less what has been, but how to do. And the object you must set before yourselves will be to turn out boys and girls who, in proportion to their natural gifts for, as every one knows, you can not make a silken purse from a sow's ear have become inquiring, observant, reasoning beings, ever thoughtful and exact and painstaking, and therefore trustworthy workers. To turn out such is the whole object of our scheme, which chiefly aims at the development of intelligence and the formation of character. In your schools information must be gained, not imparted. After describing how the intelligent mother trains her young child.