Abstract
DR. QUAIN begins the present lecture with a pleasant and suggestive sketch of the career and genius of Hunter, but the greater part of it is taken up with the subject indicated in the title. The point to which most attention is naturally directed is the predominance of classics in the present system of education. Against this Dr. Quain protests with all the ardour that we expect in a man imbued with the best scientific ideas of his time. In the first place, he insists that the study of our own language and literature should hold a much more important place in the education of our youth than is actually assigned to it. He thinks it monstrous that men should be carefully taught to read Latin and Greek, and be left in almost total ignorance of the history of their own speech, with scarcely any real power of using it, and without the smallest insight into the true spirit of one of the richest and most extensive literatures in the world. Above all, however, Dr. Quain urges that Science should become the staple element of modern education. On the ground of mere expediency, he points out, rich and poor ought alike to be taught Science, for it gives the former a truer conception of the duties which attach to property, and the latter it enables to improve their position. But what is even more important, Science imparts to those who devote themselves to it the freest and largest culture; and it is grossly irreligious to talk reverently of a Creator, and yet to refuse to seize every opportunity to become better acquainted with the Creation. “If the instructors of the young in schools believe, if parents believe, that the things of this world are in truth the work of the Creator ought not that belief, without anything further, to settle the question for them? Ought not these ‘glorious works’ to be acknowledged as subjects for diligent study, not disregarded as they are now?” Another fault in our educational arrangements to which Dr. Quain refers is the excessive devotion to athletic sports which at present prevails. This, he thinks, arises from the repulsive nature of the chief subjects of study at our schools and universities, and would probably come right if the intellectual tastes and propensities of every order of mind were more carefully studied and gratified. The lecturer also protests against the dangerous extent to which we have carried the competitive system at the present day. With all the best writers on the subject—Mr. Matthew Arnold in particular—he believes that excessive competition is the reverse of favourable to true culture; that it renders anything like real study distasteful, and produces in the end narrow and superficial minds. He suggests that it might be well, as in Germany, to have for boys leaving school one general examination, which it would be necessary to pass for entrance to the universities to the professions, and to the public services. For this examination there would be no special preparation; it would only serve as a test of the general culture derived during a series of years from the training of skilled teachers. Afterwards the student ought to be allowed to consult his own tastes in the choice of subjects of study, The other matters of which Dr. Quain speaks, are the necessity for a higher order of masters in our national schools, and the absurdity of mixing up with strictly professional training in medical schools instruction in physics, chemistry, and botany. We hope that so thorough and exhaustive an exposure of the weak points in our educational system, coming as it does from so high an authority, will not be without its effect in quarters where there is the power, if only there was the will, to bring about a more I satisfactory state of things.
On Some Defects in General Education.
Being the Hunterian Oration of the Royal College of Surgeons for 1869. By Richard Quain. (London: Macmillan and Co. 1870.)
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On Some Defects in General Education . Nature 3, 103 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/003103a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/003103a0