PROMOTING "NATURE STUDY" IN SCHOOLS. 35
I am afraid that scientific men are often in a groove. Possibly they become
more noted in the groove than they would out of it, and also possibly they may
get more, that is to say comparatively- more, money, but their minds are
narrowed and their interests are lessened. In this connection may I call to your
notice the Presidential Discourse which our honorary member, Professor
Sylvanus Thompson, gave to the South Eastern Union at Woolwich last year.4
I think that this is the best address for a general audience that I have ever heard,
and it should serve as a model to other learned Presidents of that Union, whether
they are speaking to its members or, as several of its Presidents have also done,
to the British Association. Professor Sylvanus Thompson took as his text,
"That a little learning is not a dangerous thing" necessarily, and that there is no
reason at all why the cobbler should stick to his last. He illustrated this
point in the end by an account of a man who was actually a cobbler, who lived in
Woolwich, where Professor Thompson was speaking, and who invented the
electromagnet, of which thousands are in use every day in connection with
telephones, telegraphs, and electric bells.
It I wanted further evidence in support of my contention that one should not
remain in a groove, I might mention some of the names printed on the card that
summoned this meeting. Our President, when I first knew him, was a chemist,
he turned his attention to agricultural matters, and now he is adviser to the
Board of Education in rural education. Mr. Nicholas was trained as a lawyer,
he is now the Secretary to the Education Committee of a big county. Mr.
Rudler is quite as well known by his lucid popular lectures as by the many
years of work as Curator of Jermyn Street Museum, for which he was decorated by
the King. The Nature-Study attitude of facing the environment whole should
tend to cultivate interests of a varied character, though it may be necessary
to specialise in certain directions.
After this introduction, I come to the use of exhibits in the promotion
of Nature-Study, and we may distinguish between such as are displayed in the
Educational Section here with a view to illustrating teaching, and those which
are themselves intended to teach. Under the latter category would come the
specimens put up in schools, in local and in other museums. We are interested
to-day in the special examples which have been brought together at the Frauco.
British Exhibition. They illustrate education generally, but they also serve
to show the great hold which Nature-teaching has obtained over the educational
establishments in this country.
Those who are familiar with what was shown at Regent's Park in 1902 and
in Burlington Gardens in the following year will recognise in the exhibitions here
a great many of the schools which gained distinctions on the occasions in
question.
Among the elementary schools we have Chislehurst Road School, Orpington,
and Orleston School. Among secondary schools we have the Friends' School
at Bootham and King Alfred's School at Hampstead; the Girls' Schools of the
Public Day School Trust and those of the Church Schools Company. We have,
moreover, an excellent exhibit from the Froebel Institute, illustrating the training
of the students and the teaching in the school.
There are three points to which one might allude. The Curator's spirit
seems to be more dominant than in any Educational Exhibition seen before. The
exhibitors appear to be more alive to the necessity of marketing their waies well,
4 The South-Eastern Naturalist, 1907, pp. 1-17.