The Place of Science in Education

Abstract

THE Bishop of London should know something about education. He has been the Principal of a Training College, an Inspector of Schools, and Head Master of Rugby School, and he has written in a broad spirit on educational matters. No wonder, then, he modestly confessed at the London Diocesan Conference last week, that “he happened to know a good deal about education.” There is one branch of knowledge, however, which he thinks should be cut off from the educational tree nurtured in elementary schools, and that is the branch of science. “He had very often felt,” he said, referring to the Education Bill, “that it had been a very great evil that we insisted upon instructing little children in elementary schools in a great many scientific subjects, and he should not have been at all sorry if all these scientific subjects were got rid of entirely, and it had been left to the managers, and to the teachers under the managers, to introduce other subjects which would be more suitable.” And, later on, he remarked: “Teaching of an advanced character might very well be permitted in some schools, but in regard to all these scientific schools, and the apparatus connected with them, the sooner they were got rid of the better.”