LANGUAGE STUDIES IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 203 
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There is a third reason of great value why a larger study of the sciences 
should find its place in secondary schools at the expense of language 
studies. This reason is of special pedagogical interest. 
The curse of much of the effort in education, whether in secondary 
school or in college, has been in the past, and still is, that subjects have 
been so largely taught as mere matter of information. There can be no 
doubt that it is well to be informed on as many subjects as possible, but 
it is a truism in pedagogics that information is not training and power. 
Possibly the reason for this serious fault in educational methods is very 
iargely found in the unpractical and theoretical character of the body of 
she subjects that have filled up the schemes of study so generally in the 
past. 
The recovery from this fault lies in the prosecution of nature studies. 
They at once present facts of a different order ; phenomena appear ; we 
see, handle, observe, infer, coordinate, classify, establish laws, generalize. 
[mmediately we find how silly and inadequate would be any attempt to 
beach science and explore nature merely to see a fact. Facts present 
themselves ; we note them, and do well to remember them, but in the use 
we make of these facts lies great mental training. Attention, comparison, 
judgment are stimulated. The highest operations of the mind are called 
into play, and we find the chief value of facts thus gleaned to be, to our 
minds and to those of our pupils, their disciplinary value and not their 
worth as isolated, disconnected facts. Education is training, discipline. 
All that trains and disciplines educates. The great value of scientific 
study is that it induces and compels the alert and quickened sense. Per- 
ception is vivid. Language studies may be, can be—nay, more, should be— 
saught as disciplinary subjects, but thev are not so susceptible of this as 
science studies are. 
So fully are we of the Worcester Academy convinced of the great 
amportance of this fact, that we require a full year’s work in laboratory 
physics of every pupil who would finish our course, whether going to col- 
lege or not, or to whatever college going. When fathers write us, asking 
whether we ‘“ coach ” for this college or that, remarking that physics is 
not required for the college he wishes his son to enter, our uniform reply 
is that we ¢“ coach ” for no college, and that as far as physics is concerned 
we are a law unto ourselves. But we discover power in many a boy where 
it had not been suspected, and equally we find limitations of mind where 
Latin and Greek had not revealed them. There should be, then, an enlarge- 
ment of the sciences as subjects that invite to disciplinary studies rather 
than to studies of mere information. Then what may have been difficult 
mental processes become easy and familiar ; “lines of least resistance ” 
are established ; careful observation, logical deductions, and accurate gen- 
eralization become the habit of the mind by training. The power to 
observe carefully, to collect facts. make comparison, and infer general laws