The links between this
teaching and after life did not seem to be satisfactorily established.
The Board of Education showed the first signs of a change of outlook by
the readjustment in the curriculum giving an alternative syllabus for
girls, and the latitude in this direction is widening by degrees. It
begins to be whispered that even in some boys' schools the laboratory is
only used under compulsion or by exceptional students, and the wave
seems likely to go down as rapidly as it rose.
Probably for girls the strongest argument against experimental science
taught in laboratories is that it has so little connexion with after
life. As a discipline the remedy did not go deeply enough into the
realities of life to reach the mental defects of girls; it was
artificial, and they laid it aside as a part of school life when they
went home. Latitude is now given by the Board of Education for "an
approved course in a combination of the following subjects: needlework,
cooking, laundry-work, housekeeping, and household hygiene for girls
over fifteen years of age, to be substituted partially or wholly for
science and for mathematics other than arithmetic." Comparing this with
the regulations of five or six years ago when the only alternative for
girls was a "biological subject" instead of physics, and elementary
hygiene as a substitute for chemistry, it would seem as if the Board of
Education had had reason to be dissatisfied with the "science" teaching
for girls, and was determined to seek a more practical system.
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