Abstract
IN every school in this country there is found a small percentage of boys or girls who have a decided bent towards experiment of a thoughtful character coupled with a thirst for knowledge of natural phenomena. The science master who knows his business will speedily recognise such a boy and apply the appropriate treatment, which usually consists in the suggestion of extra problems to be worked out in the laboratory, and of extra reading, selected to fit the need of the moment and create further needs for future satisfaction. Guided, but not overhelped, these boys will soon be fit for enlistment as recruits to the army of scientific investigators. When framing the syllabus of the general science course of the school, there is no need to provide for the training of specialists. There is need, and very great need, to provide a course of science work for the average boy and girl which will (1) be in touch with everyday experience, (2) deal with matters of wide interest and importance, (3) give some appreciation of what scientific experiment means and of what scientific synthesis is capable. At the end of the course, if the pupil wishes to know more and has acquired some power of satisfying that wish by his own efforts, if his attitude towards the opinions and labours of specialists is one of rational respect, the work may be pronounced a success.
Elements of General Science.
By Dr. O. W. Caldwell W. L. Eikenberry. Pp. xiv + 308. (London: Ginn and Co., n.d.) Price 4s. 6d.
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D., G. Elements of General Science . Nature 95, 391 (1915). https://doi.org/10.1038/095391a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/095391a0