Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/261

Rh To deprive letters of the too great place they have hitherto held in men's estimation, and to substitute other studies for these, is the object of a sort of crusade with a body of people important in itself, hut still more important because of the gifted leaders who march at its head." The revolt here spoken of has certainly been accomplished and the changes inaugurated by it are fully in operation to-day. Thoughtful people, however, are now beginning to ask themselves whether these changes have really been followed by the beneficial results which Professor Huxley anticipated. And, if the introduction of scientific training into school education is not fulfilling the brilliant promise of its early years, what reason can be assigned for its failure to do so The Italics in the passage just quoted from Literature and Dogma are our own, and they have been inserted in order to call attention to words which are full of significance; for they suggest, though perhaps unconsciously to their author, an explanation of this very problem which confronts us to-day. The principles leading to the introduction of the physical sciences into school education proceeded, as was natural, from the "gifted leaders" of whom Matthew Arnold speaks. Our present difficulty has arisen from the fact that the execution of those principles has been carried out by the followers in the crusade, who are, almost invariably, as far from a right understanding of the cause which they support as was the unreasoning multitude led forth by Peter the Hermit. In their nineteenth-century ardor to see justice done to natural knowledge they have approached Dame Science cap in hand, crying: "This way, madam; every hill shall be made low, and every valley shall be exalted for your feet," until our present position is akin to that which Mr. Augustine Birrell tells we hold in regard to philosophy, and which he illustrates by an anecdote very applicable to our present purpose. There was once, he says, a native Westerner who paid a first visit to the Eastern States, and described his impressions of Boston to his friends upon his return. "It is a city," quoth this product of Western civilization, "in which Respectability stalks unchecked." According to Mr. Birrell, this is just what philosophical theories are doing among us to-day, but the idea is capable of extension. We can now be convicted on another indictment: that of having, so far at least as girls are concerned, permitted Science to stalk unchecked through our so-called secondary schools.

If we turn our attention to the details of scientific instruction in these schools to-day, we shall find it is almost characteristic of one which keeps abreast of the times that the natural sciences shall occupy a large place in its curriculum. The branches generally taught are physics, chemistry, physical geography, astronomy, botany, zoology, and physiology. I am not now concerned with the injury done to