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 cannot be too watchful. In this College and in all the
other well-organised 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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