Evolution in Education [pp. 233-248]

E VOL UTION IN ED UCA TION,
of nature, and who scoff at design and unity, and those who
insist on adapting all classification to imaginary theories of
descent, are undoubtedly sapping the foundations of science
education, and'rendering it, so far as their influence goes, neither
useful nor acceptable to the minds of men. This result seems
strange, but it inevitably follows from pushing a principle beyond its just applications, and from leaving the humble study
of nature in favor of a forced and artificial system. This indeed constitutes at present one of the great weaknesses of science
education, and prevents, as much as anything else, its taking
its true place as a means of culture. Lastly, there is, as already
hinted, the extreme difficulty of securing the services of good
teachers of science. Necessarily a very small minority of men
possess the gifts of teaching, and when those who have these
gifts are largely composed of smatterers, specialists, and rash
speculators, your good science-teacher, capable like nature
herself of descending to minutiae and rising to grand general
views, and of making both intelligible and interesting to the
student, is but one in ten thousand, and most rarely to be secured. The work has thus in most cases to be done by inferior workmen, and the only remedy seems to be the multiplication of partial teachers in large and well-endowed institutions.
In the future, no doubt, as public intelligence expands and
means of training improve, better teachers may be provided in
larger number, but the drift for many years has been in the
direction of mere specialists, of narrow teaching and of the
divorce of science from those higher views of nature which connect it with the rational powers and purer sentiments of humanity.
Perhaps this is best seen in the relations of science to religion; and as no education worthy of the name can overlook the
religious instincts of man, it will be a fatal defect in our scienceteaching if it runs counter to spiritual truths and interests.
Science seems in our time to be losing that alliance with religion
which it maintained in time past, and this not merely with
those low and superstitious religions which inculcate beliefs
contrary to science, but with Christianity itself, which has nothing to fear from the progress of knowledge. In like manner
science has been losing its attractions for religious minds, mainly
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