Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899Various
History
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
Remember that, while education is the drawing out and cultivation of
all the powers of the mind, no system has yet been devised that will
by itself develop with equal success every one of these powers. The
system under which we have been trained may have done as much for us
as it can do. Each of us is thereafter left to supplement its
deficiencies by self-culture. And in the ordinary science instruction
of the time one of the most obvious of these inevitable deficiencies
is the undue limitation or neglect of the literary side of education.
But in the science instruction itself there are dangers regarding
which we can not be too watchful. In this college and in all the other
well-organized scientific institutions of the country the principles
of science are taught orally and experimentally. Every branch of
knowledge is expounded in its bearings on other branches. Its theory
is held up as the first great aim of instruction, and its practical
applications are made subsequent and subordinate. Divisions of science
are taught here which may have few practical applications, but which
are necessary for a comprehensive survey of the whole circle of
scientific truth. Now, you may possibly have heard, and in the midst
of a busy industrial community you are not unlikely to hear, remarks
made in criticism of this system or method of tuition. The importance
of scientific training will be frankly acknowledged and even insisted
upon, but you will sometimes hear this admission coupled with the
proviso that the science must be of a practical kind; must, in short,
be just such and no other as will fit young men to turn it to
practical use in the manufactures or industries to which they may be
summoned. The critics who make this limitation boast that they are
practical men, and that in their opinion theory is useless or worse
for the main purposes for which they would encourage and support a
great scientific school.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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