THE AIM AND METHODS OF MODERN EDUCATION
The aim of education is to enable a person to act wisely in every emergency of life whatever his particular calling may be, but it is hardly possible to act wisely without some knowledge of the relation between cause and effect. This is true whether we are engaged in the practical affairs of life, in the pursuit of knowledge, or in the effort to extend knowledge by research. It is sometimes argued that a woman of trained intellect can easily acquire the art of housekeeping, and this is no doubt 76 the case if we limit the art to the choice and supervision of competent domestics, but there can be no doubt that there are many women of trained intellect who not only suffer themselves but entail suffering on others from inability to discern good housekeeping, in our sense of the word, from bad. It must be remembered that courses of education should be framed for the training of unmethodical and unpractical minds, which may and often do accompany the highest forms of intellect, as well as for those of a naturally orderly and practical bent.
We all consciously or unconsciously make use of the facts of science: we do not send eggs by parcel post merely placed in a box, we do not even send one egg in a box that exactly fits it, we are careful to surround each egg with soft paper or some other elastic material in sufficient quantity to distribute the effects of the blows that we know the box will be subjected to in the post, so that the eggs may not be broken; if we place a tray of china on a table, we are careful that it should not project beyond the table so as to fall when we let it go; we do not pour hot water into cut-glass tumblers, and we do not mix effervescing drinks in wine-glasses. We should call a person ignorant who was unaware of the probable results of doing the things enumerated above; but if the accidents following want of knowledge were always so simple, ignorance would not be a matter of much importance, and we might be willing to let our girls learn by experience. Unfortunately, the neglect of a 77 scientific law has led in the past, and may lead in the future, to much more serious, even fatal results, and Solomon has applied a not very complimentary epithet to those who have wisdom forced upon them by involuntary experience. It is to the publication of statistics which show the alarming spread of such diseases as consumption and the terrible waste of infant life, that we owe the awakening of the public mind to the need for systematic training in science and scientific method.