Education; Priestley, Joseph, 1733-1804; Science -- Study and teaching
Now, the points to which I directed particular attention on that
occasion were these: in the first place, that instruction in physical
science supplies information of a character of especial value, both in
a practical and a speculative point of view--information which cannot
be obtained otherwise; and, in the second place, that, as educational
discipline, it supplies, in a better form than any other study can
supply, exercise in a special form of logic, and a peculiar method of
testing the validity of our processes of inquiry. I said further, that,
even at that time, a great and increasing attention was being paid to
physical science in our schools and colleges, and that, most assuredly,
such attention must go on growing and increasing, until education in
these matters occupied a very much larger share of the time which is
given to teaching and training, than had been the case heretofore. And
I threw all the strength of argumentation of which I was possessed into
the support of these propositions. But I venture to remind you, also,
of some other words I used at that time, and which I ask permission to
read to you. They were these:--"There are other forms of culture
besides physical science, and I should be profoundly sorry to see the
fact forgotten, or even to observe a tendency to starve or cripple
literary or aesthetic culture for the sake of science. Such a narrow
view of the nature of education has nothing to do with my firm
conclusion that a complete and thorough scientific culture ought to be
introduced into all schools."
I say I desire, in commenting upon these various points, and judging
them as fairly as I can by the light of increased experience, to
particularly emphasise this last, because I am told, although I
assuredly do not know it of my own knowledge--though I think if the
fact were so I ought to know it, being tolerably well acquainted with
that which goes on in the scientific world, and which has gone on there
for the last thirty years--that there is a kind of sect, or horde, of
scientific Goths and Vandals, who think it would be proper and
desirable to sweep away all other forms of culture and instruction,
except those in physical science, and to make them the universal and
exclusive, or, at any rate, the dominant training of the human mind of
the future generation. This is not my view--I do not believe that it is
anybody's view,--but it is attributed to those who, like myself,
advocate scientific education. I therefore dwell strongly upon the
point, and I beg you to believe that the words I have just now read
were by no means intended by me as a sop to the Cerberus of culture. I
have not been in the habit of offering sops to any kind of Cerberus;
but it was an expression of profound conviction on my own part--a
conviction forced upon me not only by my mental constitution, but by
the lessons of what is now becoming a somewhat long experience of
varied conditions of life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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