Abstract
IN connection with the Conference of Educational Associations which is being held at University. College, Gower Street, W.C.I, the annual general meeting of the Education Guild of Great Britain and Ireland took place on December 30. The president of the guild, Sir Wilmot Herringham, delivered the presidential address, taking university education as his topic. He commented on the lack of interest in university education shown by the majority of people, and emphasised the value of the inclusion of natural sciences in a general education as a training in inductive reasoning. There is also material gain by the training of a number of skilled practitioners in chemistry, physics, engineering, medicine, etc., but the most important function of the university is discovery. Taking examples from medical science only, gas gangrene, surgical shock, and the effects of poison gas were mentioned as specific problems arising during the war in which investigations were undertaken with success in university laboratories. Another interesting fact mentioned was that between 1838 and 1851 out of every million people born in Great Britain 500,000 died before the age of forty-five years; in 1881 that, age had risen to forty-eight; and by 1891 it was fifty-two years—an increase in average life due, at any rate in part, to research and discovery accomplished by men of science working in the laboratories of our universities.
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University and Educational Intelligence. Nature 109, 28 (1922). https://doi.org/10.1038/109028b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/109028b0