For countless times in history. people have explored the relationship

between science and classics. The pioneers of the teaching of science

imagined that its introduction into education would remove the

convention, artificiality, and backward-lookingness which were 【M1】__________

characteristic of classical studies, but they were gravely disappointing. 【M2】__________

So, too, in their time had the humanists thought that the study of the

classical authors in the original would banish for once the dull pedantry 【M3】__________

and superstition of mediaeval scholasticism. The professional

schoolmaster was the match for both of them, and has almost managed 【M4】__________

to make the understanding of chemical reactions as dull and as dogmatic

an affair as the reading of Virgil’s Aeneid.

The chief claim for the use of science in education is that it teaches

a child something about the actual universe in which he is living, in

making him acquainting with the results of scientific discovery, and at 【M5】__________

the same time teaches him how to think logical and inductively by 【M6】__________

studying scientific method. A certain limited success has been reached in

the first of these aims, but practically none at all in the second. That 【M7】__________

privileged members of the community who have been through in a 【M8】__________

secondary or public school education may be expected to know something

about the elementary physics and chemistry of a hundred years ago, but

they probably know hardly less than any bright boy can pick up from an 【M9】__________

interest in wireless or scientific hobbies out of school hours.

As to the learning of scientific method, the whole thing is palpably

a farce. Actually, for the convenience of teachers and the requirements

of the examination system, it is necessary that the pupils not only do not

learn scientific method but learn precisely the reverse, that is, to believe

exactly that they are told and to reproduce it when asked, whether it 【M10】_________

seems nonsense to them or not.

【M10】