Science-Education and Its Importance
Outline:1. Introduction.
2. Importance in modem education.
3. The world is so dominated by the achievements of science.
4. Need for looking at things with a scientific spirit.
5. Conclusion.
In this age of science, it seems so redundant to speak of the place of science in education! For many people, education means the acquisition of scientific knowledge. Indeed, we may say the problem now is how to keep science in its proper place in a system of education.
Since the nineteenth century, science has been making rapid progress, and scientific inventions have altered men’s mode of life. It is but natural, therefore, that science should be the most important factor in the scheme of things. Civilization consists now in the ability to possess and use the mechanical aids that science provides, and civilized life requires a knowledge of the things that science has produced. This being so, science has come to have an increasingly important place in modem education. No education is complete if it has not been at least partially scientific.
No education can be complete to day if it is entirely a “liberal” education, that is, if the study of some science has not been a part of it. The world is so dominated by the achievements of science that a man who has not some training in scientific matters will be hardly fitted for modem civilized life. At every turn, in almost every walk of life, an acquaintance with scientific things is necessary. If a man’s education has consisted of only the arts, it will be a one-sided education, not suited to the conditions of modem life.
But the value of science as part of one’s education is not merely that it enables one to be at home in this scientific age. The study of science in itself is a discipline. It makes one less prone to take things on the evidence of hearsay; one is more inclined to experiment and to test. Nothing is worth believing that has not been actually proved. A scientific education enables one to be more observant, and to be more cautious in coming to conclusions. It teaches one to analyse and examine things and not to be satisfied with appearances. For more important than the mere knowledge that science brings the scientific attitude of mind which a scientific study helps us to acquire. There is need for sentiment, imagination, passion, poetry, but there is, equally, the need for looking at things with a scientific spirit. Many of the ills of man are due to the fact that he has refused to face them scientifically, but has allowed sentiment and passion to cloud the issues. Science must, therefore, form a part of all education.
These and many others are the uses of science as a part of education, but only as a part. A form of education in which science usurps all the student’s time and attention, giving no room to the study of history, and literature, religion and arts, must be a very inadequate one. Life is greater than this or that item of knowledge, and the end of all education must be to enrich the life of the individual. For this purpose, education must be, in the truest sense, liberal. Science must have a place in it, worthy of the importance of science. But the things of the spirit must not be choked out of existence by too much importance being given to the study of science and the phenomena of the physical world.
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