REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE TEACHING IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

THE Committee appointed at the Saratoga Meeting of the American Association, on Science Teaching in the Public Schools, respectfully submit the preliminary Report.

The repeated appointment, by this body, in successive years, of committees to look into the scientific education of the public schools, must be taken as showing that such an inquiry is regarded as both legitimate and important. Yet the duties of such a committee have not been defined by the Association, nor have any of our predecessors opened the way to a consideration of the subject. It was probably expected that we would furnish a digest of information from many quarters, as to what sciences are taught in the public schools, with what facilities, and to what extent; accompanied by such recommendations regarding the increase of scientific studies as the results might suggest. But our course has not proved to be so clear. We have been arrested at the outset by a question of the quality of the science teaching in these schools which demands the first consideration. There are certain radical deficiencies in current science teaching, the nature and extent of which must be understood before any measures of practical improvement can be intelligently taken up. We shall here confine ourselves to this preliminary inquiry.

The investigation has interest from the immense extent, and rapidly increasing influence, of the American public schools. There are now nearly a hundred and fifty thousand of these schools, supported at an annual expense of probably seventy or eighty million dollars. Maintained by state authority, they are firmly established in the respect and confidence of the community. Under the influence of normal schools, teachers' institutes, systematic superintendence, school boards, regulative legislation, and an extensive literature devoted specially to education, they have become organized into a system which is gradually growing settled and unified in its methods. With unbounded means and unlimited authority, these schools have undertaken to form the mental habits of the great mass of the youth of this country. They prescribe the subjects of study, the modes of study, and the extent and dura

tion of studies for all the pupils that come under their charge. The sphere of their operations is, moreover, steadily extending. They are everywhere encroaching upon the province of higher education, everywhere trenching upon private schools and diminishing the interest in home education.

It may be assumed that the time has fully come when this system must be measured by the standards of science, and approved or condemned by the degree of its conformity to what these standards require. Science has become in modern times the great agency of human amelioration, the triumphs of which are seen on every hand and felt in all experience. Grave subjects are brought successively under its renovating and reconstructive influence; and latest and most important among them is the subject of education. Our inquiry now is how far the public school system has availed itself of the valuable aid that science offers in the proper cultivation of the minds of the young.

The interest and necessity of such an investigation will hardly be denied; but there may be a query as to its relevancy to the appropriate work of this society. The making of science popular was not among the objects for which our association was formed. Not that its founders were unmindful of the importance of widely diffusing the results of research; but they recognized that the interests of science are so vast, as to be only efficiently promoted by division of labor. Under the operation of this principle it was made the distinctive purpose of the association to contribute to the extension of original science by the discovery of new scientific truth, leaving its dissemination to the schools, the press, and the various agencies of public enlightenment. Nor does your committee understand that it is now proposed to depart from this policy; for the inquiry before us is really most pertinent to our special objects. It certainly cannot be a matter of indifference to this body, from its own point of view, how science is dealt with in the great system of schools which has undertaken the task of moulding the youthful mind of the country. We aim to advance science by the promotion of original investigation, which depends upon men prepared for the work; do the schools of the nation, by their modes of scientific study, favor or hinder this object? Do they foster the early mental tendencies that lead to original thought; or do they thwart and repress them? We have an undoubted concern in this matter, and it is, moreover, strictly iden

tical with that of the community at large; for there can be no better test than this of the real character of a school system. When we ask whether a mode of teaching and a manner of study are calculated to awaken the spirit of inquiry, to cultivate the habit of investigation, and rouse independent thought, our question goes to the root of all true education.

All sciences are the products of a method of thinking, and it is that method which concerns us when we propose to regard it as a means of mental cultivation. Science is an outgrowth of common knowledge, and the scientific method is but a development of the ordinary processes of thought that are employed by everybody. The common knowledge of people is imperfect because their observations are vague and loose, their reasoning hasty and careless, their minds warped by prejudice and deadened by credulity, and because they find it easier to invent fanciful explanations of things than to discover the real ones. For thousands of years the knowledge of nature was rude and stationary because the habits of thought were so defective. But with a growing desire to understand how the world around is constituted, men improved their processes of thinking. They began, and were compelled to begin, by questioning accepted facts, and doubting current theories. The first step was one of self-assertion, implying that degree of mental independence which led men to think for themselves. They learned to make their own observations and to trust them against authority. It was found, as a first and indispensable condition of gaining clear ideas that the mind must be occupied directly with the subject to be investigated. In this way scientific inquiry at length grew into a method of forming judgments which was characterized by the most vigilant and disciplined precautions against error. Of the mental processes involved in research it is unnecessary here to speak; we are only concerned to know that the scientific method is simply a systematic exercise in truth-seeking, and is the only mode of using the human mind when it is desired to attain the most accurate and perfect form of knowledge. The whole body of modern scientific truth, disclosing the order of nature and guiding the development of civilization, must be taken as an attestation of the validity of the scientific method of thought by which these results have been established. We here get rid of all cramping limitations. The scientific method is applicable to all subjects whatever that involve con

stancy of relations, causes and effects, and conform to the operation of law. It is applicable wherever evidence is to be weighed, error got rid of, facts determined, and principles established. Our public schools, unhappily, make but little use of this method in the work of mental cultivation, and we shall find some explanation of this by referring to the way they grew up.

The American public school system originated in the theory that the state owes to every child the rudiments of a common education, or an elementary knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic as implements of after mental improvement. But it was early found difficult to separate this primary use of tools from the acquisition of knowledge. Mr. Everett said: "I will thank any person to show why it is expedient and beneficial in the community to make public provision for teaching the elements of learning, and not expedient or beneficial to make similar provision to aid the learner's progress toward the mastery of the most difficult branches of science and the choicest refinements of literature." Under the influence of such considerations the rudimentary studies rapidly developed into courses of study embracing a variety of subjects. This led to the systematizing of instruction and the grading of schools, so that in nearly all the towns of the United States the public schools have been divided into primaries for the younger pupils and grammar-schools for older pupils; while within twenty-five years a third grade has arisen known as the high schools for the most advanced students. In each division there are sub-grades, and wherever improvements in public school education are attempted, the principle of gradation is fundamental. So essential is it considered, that no aid is granted from the Peabody fund except to graded schools. As regards the plan of studies adopted there was no guiding principle. All sorts of subjects, and these for all sorts of reasons were taken up, and among them the sciences which are now regular parts of public school study. Classes are formed in physics, chemistry, mineralogy, geology, physiology, botany and zoology. There are text-books upon all these branches, graded to the varying capacities of learners. Teachers prepare in them, and in many cases apparatus is provided, and there are lectures with experiments, specimens, maps, and charts for illustrations.

The old ideal of a school is a place where knowledge is got from books by the help of teachers, and our public school system grew