In their protest
against the monotony of the courses provided for young boys the
reformers are right. The trouble is not that science is not taught in
the schools, but that in schools of the highest type, with certain
exceptions, the young boys are not offered it.
Realising the determinism which modern biological knowledge has
compelled us to accept, we suspect that the power of education to
modify the destinies of individuals is relatively small. Abrogating
larger hopes we recognise education in its two scientific aspects, as
a selective agency, but equally as a provision of opportunity. In view
therefore of the congenital diversity of the individual types, that
provision should be as diverse and manifold as possible, and the very
first essential in an adequate scheme of education is that to the
minds of the young something of everything should be offered, some
part of all the kinds of intellectual sustenance in which the minds of
men have grown and rejoiced. That should be the ideal. Nothing of
varied stimulus or attraction that can be offered should be withheld.
So only will the young mind discover its aptitudes and powers. This
ideal education should bring all into contact with _beauty_ as seen
first in literature, ancient and modern, with the great models of art
and the patterns of nobility of thought and of conduct; and no less
should it show to all the _truth_ of the natural world, the changeless
systems of the universe, as revealed in astronomy or in chemistry,
something too of the truth about life, what we animals really are,
what our place and what our powers, a truth ungarbled whether by
prudery or mysticism.
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