Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/267

Rh such of the natural sciences as were not to be studied later on, the object of non-scientific educators would be fully attained. Such lectures ought to be quite unaccompanied by book work. The native curiosity of childhood in regard to natural phenomena can be fully depended on to secure attention at the time, and remembrance afterward. It must be added, however, that an interesting lecturer is essential.

If only two branches of natural science are to be introduced in detail into school education the question of selection becomes of importance. The biological sciences are undoubtedly those which bring the mind into the widest and deepest relations with Nature; and this would seem to constitute a sufficient reason for preferring them. I am aware, however, that in giving precedence to these sciences I put myself in opposition to the idea, now much in favor with the colleges, that physics and chemistry are more suitable for school instruction; but I do so because we are now concerned with the education of girls, not of boys. Everything that has been said so far applies indifferently to the training of either sex, but we have now reached the point where the little brook arises which by and by forms the mighty stream that separates and must always separate the life-work of women from that of men. The practical uses of an acquaintance with physics and chemistry are so great in many of the trades and professions by which men earn a livelihood that even an elementary knowledge of these subjects will often give its possessor an advantage in the race. There is also reason in the statement of the colleges that physics and chemistry form the best basis for future scientific work within their precincts. But these trades and professions are not, as a general thing, adopted by women; and so far as collegiate work is concerned it must be remembered that the number of girls who go to college is but small, and of these the proportion who devote themselves to scientific work is still smaller. It is not our present business to discuss the question whether a college education for women is ever likely to become general. The case as it stands now is that, for the large majority of girls, the science they learn in their school years represents for them all the science they ever acquire. Hence it should be of the kind that is most likely to minister to their necessities. If the biological sciences then are most suitable for their instruction, one of the branches chosen should be either botany or zoology; the other always and invariably physiology, because, I repeat, we are now discussing the education, not of boys, but of girls. The recognition of any difference between the education of the two sexes is, I know, not a popular idea. But there is surely some inconsistency in the fact that the friends of women's education who have done so much to establish a high ideal of life for women should receive with such disfavor any hint that, whatever