A Note on the Teaching of School Science
Editor’s Note, by Dawn Rhymer
“There is, at the present time, a broad distinction made between science and the humanities.” — Dr. Telford Petrie, 1928
I smiled, as in reading the words of Dr. Petrie, I recognized a friend. Almost a century after Dr. Petrie published his ideas, I heard author and speaker Dr. Jonathan Morrow give a presentation on navigating the five most significant challenges of post-Christian culture. The first challenge? Scientism. Dr. Morrow shares that scientism is the belief that “Science is the only, or at least the best way, we can know things. Knowledge is found in the hard sciences.” I repeat Dr. Petrie’s conviction. There is, at the present time, a broad distinction made between science and the humanities.
As a parent, teacher, scientist, and Charlotte Mason educator, I was intrigued by this relationship of thought that bridged continents, cultures, and generations.
Who was Dr. Telford Petrie (1888–1930)? Reading his obituary, it is clear that he was an accomplished scientist and engineer, having earned his PhD and having made notable contributions in the fields of mechanical engineering, civil engineering, physics, and teaching. But how did he come to be writing for the Parents’ Review in his early forties and at a high point in his career? Some conjecture must be made, but a name stands out as one reads about his life, that of his mother: Emeline Steinthal.
Charlotte Mason Poetry’s Facebook page shares:
In 1887, Charlotte Mason met a lively artist and sculptor named Emeline Steinthal. At the time, Mrs. Steinthal was raising three children under the age of four. Seeking advice, she arranged a meeting with the author of “Home Education.” A friendship and working relationship ensued, and Mrs. Steinthal became instrumental in carrying out Miss Mason’s lifelong vision of the PNEU.
Dr. Petrie was not born at the time of this meeting, and it is a delight to think about his childhood and its formative atmosphere as Miss Mason mentored his young mother.
In this article, which Dr. Petrie wrote in the same year he was appointed to the high position of chief engineer of the Manchester Steam Users Association, he contrasted Miss Mason’s philosophies with those held by the elementary and secondary education of the country in general. I find his presentation full of compelling ideas, both as a homeschooling parent and a high school science teacher in a small school. I chuckled as I read his thoughts on school labs, “To set a class of twenty boys to work through even one experiment in an hour’s time is not easy…”
As we navigate our modern division of science and the humanities, this article encourages us to confidently hold to Miss Mason’s philosophies, trust the Holy Spirit as we make decisions for our children’s education and not fear the future. May our children, whatever path is before them, pursue their passions and, like Dr. Petrie, one day guide the generation after them with principles that have stood the test of time.
By Telford Petrie
The Parents’ Review, 1928, pp. 56-58
The word “science” has at least as many meanings attributed to it as it has letters. In spite of the fact that one of them, in the sense implied when used in the phrase “scientifically accurate,” seems to mean that it is more exact than accuracy itself, it is frequently used in a way that is anything but clear. There was, for instance, considerable confusion of thought when the word was used in that cause célèbre of the Victorian age, “The conflict between religion and science.” There is, at the present time, a broad distinction made between science and the humanities, even to the extent of considering that the methods of acquiring knowledge in each must of necessity be different. In common talk, in advertisement jargon and in the popular press, the word “scientific” is rapidly losing any power of definition it once may have had. It is indiscriminately used to infer “wonderful,” “mysterious,” “clever,” “ordered” (a correct use), “unusual” or “pedantic.” It is frequently contrasted with the words “practical” (at any rate to the extent that the practical man rather prides himself on not being scientific), or “matter-of-fact”; whereas, of course, if the word means anything at all it means matters of fact.
But there are two further and more limited meanings conveyed by the word “science,” which I should like to consider here. These are the interpretations put upon it by Miss Mason in her philosophy and by the elementary and secondary education of the country in general. Miss Mason approached science, as she approached all other knowledge, in the widest possible way. Everything connected with nature, birds, beasts, flowers, weather, stars, rocks, geography itself, and even architecture, all meant science to her mind. She interpreted it to mean, in its broadest aspect, what our immediate forefathers so finely called “Natural Philosophy.”
But she was very insistent in demanding that science should not be divorced from the humanities, that, because a subject was scientific, it should not therefore be presented to the child in the dry and precise manner so frequently found in school scientific text-books. She went so far as to decry the detailed experimental methods of the school laboratory. These she considered as tending to confuse the issue, rather on the lines of the old saying that “you could not see the wood for the trees.” Her whole attitude towards it went even further. You should also be made to realise that the wood was part of the swelling countryside, was, in fact, at one with God’s universe.
It was our knowledge of this wealth of nature which Miss Mason felt was the due of all children. It supplied a framework of “natural law” into which detail could be fitted according to individual tastes and pursuits. This combination of detail with general principles, the former gained by personal observation as far as opportunity served, was Miss Mason’s method of approaching science.
Turn now to the conception of science as more generally taught in the schools of this country. To the average schoolmaster, or schoolmistress, the word means Physics and Chemistry, with Botany as an extra and Mechanics, possibly, as a concession to the engineering tendencies of the age. Natural History, in the public schools at any rate, is usually left to a school society which is run by the boys themselves, whilst the richer schools have their own astronomical observatories—as side shows. As for the grand manifestations of nature all around us, things are, I fear, not much better than in the days when F. C. Selous had to climb out of his Rugby window in the dead of night in order to study bird life.
This conception of science, though narrow, is quite logical, if science is to mean a definite branch of learning divorced from the humanities and from art. It faithfully fulfils the demands of examinations which are interposed between the school and the university. The two chief subjects, Physics and Chemistry, are well taught in considerable detail and every school is expected to have laboratories for experimental demonstration and practical work by the pupils themselves. The feeling of the best teachers is that these subjects cannot be properly grasped without actual experiments carried out in the laboratory, though the difficulties are considerable. To set a class of twenty boys to work through even one experiment in an hour’s time is not easy, and laboratory manuals in use, it is to be feared, frequently fail to stimulate satisfactory thought.
On the other hand, boys and girls who show promise have facilities for inspiration and development of which they are not slow to avail themselves. There is a type of enquiring mind which is best stimulated by experimental proof and in this respect the school laboratory more than justifies its existence. But that is only one aspect of the question. “Should schools be run for the brilliant few or the dull many?” the discussion of which is rather outside the scope of this note.
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