cism as to the educational value of science in comparison with other subjects. A large portion of the appendix is devoted to the consideration of these difficulties; to sifting the allegations on which they rest, and to balancing against them the experience of those teachers who have faced and successfully met them. Showing in detail the comparatively trifling cost at which indispensable apparatus can be obtained, the commissioners nevertheless admit the rarity, in the present state of English culture, either of independent science-teachers suited to the larger schools, or of men, such as poorer schools desiderate, combining literary with scientific knowledge. This, however, is an evil of the past rather than of the future, since not the least among the advantages expected from a reformed system of school-teaching is the creation of a race of able teachers, general as well as special. The relative value of science as an implement of mental training is next discussed. Its peculiar excellence is briefly vindicated, as cultivating, in a way attainable by no other means, the habits of observation and experiment, of classification, arrangement, method, judgment; and its suitability to the capacities of the very youngest boys is testified to by Faraday, Hooker, Rolleston, Carpenter, and Sir W. Thomson. Lastly, it is shown that, if this be so, the argument from want of time is no argument at all; that the hours are already wasted which condemn the half of a boy's faculties to stagnation, and render education one-sided and incomplete; and that the claims of different branches of instruction may be easily adjusted by economy of time, improvement in methods, and excision of superfluous studies.
On a review of all these objections and of the answers offered to them, and taking into account the dicta of former commissioners and the practice of other countries, the report advises that literature, mathematics, and science, should be the accepted subjects of education up to the time at which boys leave school, and should all three be made compulsory in any school-leaving-examination or university matriculation; but that after entering the university students should be left to choose for themselves among these lines of study, and need pass no subsequent examination in subjects other than the one which they select. As regards the teaching of science, they recommend that it should commence with the beginning of the school career; that not less than six hours a week should be devoted to it, and that in all school examinations as much as one-sixth of the marks should be allotted to it.
These recommendations possess the two great excellences of authoritativeness and clearness. They are supported by a host of experienced witnesses, as well as by the eminent names whose signatures follow them. Their ideal of school education is simplicity itself. The supremacy of classics is to be dethroned; the artifices of stratification and bifurcation are to be discarded; literature, mathematics, and science are to share a boy's intellect between them from the very first,
