Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/520

496 of education into the full service of science means much more than its liberal acceptance by the higher schools. Science is a vast and a permanent interest in human society, and in considering the means of its advancement we are bound to take account of those deeper agencies which require time for the accomplishment of their results. More important for the general promotion of science than any change of policy on the part of the colleges, will be its recognition and adoption as a part of the established work of primary and common schools. The most urgent question now, and fullest of import for the future, is the relation which science is to take to elementary education. Thus far, the course of science has been a continuous battle, and it has only got what it has conquered. Its claims have been pressed by its advocates, and they have been resisted by the partisans of other studies, and we observe that the instincts of the combatants are bringing them rapidly to the vital issues of the strife. As we have often said, the most critical and important question between the old education and the new is, which shall have authority to form the first impressions in childhood. The practical inquiry is, How early shall children be allowed to begin the study of science in schools? We can imagine a future time, and we trust it is not far distant, when such an inquiry will be regarded as absurd. Science being an understanding of natural things, and a child being born into the order of Nature, with a capacity for intelligence which is awakened and unfolded only by its intercourse with natural things, what can be more preposterous than to raise the question when a child shall begin to have its attention thoughtfully directed to the objects around it? In this dawning action of the mind upon sensible things are found the rudiments of all science. Obviously, the true requirement is, that these germinal acquisitions concerning the kinds, and properties, and changes, and relations of things around, shall become matters of early attention, encouragement, and cultivation, on the part of parents and teachers; and, if this were intelligently and skillfully given, the query could never arise, When shall the study of science begin? But we are far enough from that condition now. In accordance with the prevailing ideas of education, the child is got into the schoolroom as early as possible, and, being started in a course of acquisition in which science is left out, the question at length arises, If it is to be introduced at all, when shall it commence? The advocates of the old education would never ask for it. They would occupy childhood, and youth, and manhood, with language, grammar, and book-acquisitions, so that the pupil and the student would get no more knowledge of the laws and phenomena of Nature than they had before this knowledge was discovered. And, when pressed by the advocates of the new education to make room for scientific studies, they defer it as long as they can, and allow it as little time as possible.

A very interesting controversy has gone on for some time past, in the columns of Nature, as to how early science is to be entered upon in the preparatory schools. All the writers profess to represent the liberal side, yet some of them who admit the importance of science assign it a low value as a means of education, and think that children should not touch a scientific subject in school until they are well grounded in Latin and geometry. This is substantially a surrender of the whole ground; yet it is the position taken in the great mass of schools in which the sciences are regarded as only fit for finishing studies. The physicists and chemists are more in earnest, and believe in the educational usefulness and importance of their subjects, but they seem more concerned about the consideration given to their chosen sciences than about the