Education in Science

Abstract

SOME discussion has recently arisen as to the methods of teaching mathematics. Euclid has been condemned on the score of its advancement and its antiquity. An infusion of more modern geometry has been recommended, with corresponding arithmetic and algebra. In science, at the same time, there has been a tendency to recognise the historic method. Prof. Perry considers it unnecessary for pupils to traverse the course of their ancestors. But let us ask why this course has been recommended. On account of the successive growth of faculties in a historical sequence. Is this a fact or not? It is an undoubtable fact, and it is not sufficiently realised by any teachers. Prof. Perry has two saving principles, first to teach by practice, and second to satisfy the pupils' instincts. These being the same reasons which are used by advocates of historical methods secure a certain amount of agreement. We ought to arrive at the same result whether we study the natural methods of pupils, or the methods of primitive peoples. But Mr. Herbert Spencer has well pointed out somewhere that we ought not to go to the Greeks for examples of primitive peoples. They were highly and very specially developed. Hence arises a very great danger in the historic method.