How far should our Teaching and Text-books have a Scientific Basis?

Extract

At a meeting of Natural Science Men, held a couple of years ago at Berlin, the question which I have proposed to ourselves was discussed. Much to the surprise of the adherents of Darwinism, Prof. Virchow maintained, that the doctrine of Darwin should not be taught in any institution lower than the University, that it should not enter the text-book of natural history used in a school of any grade from the volks schule up to the Gymnasium and Realschule. I am not able to judge whether Virchow's view is too conservative in the field of natural science. But it is possible in any branch of learning to set before students theories and generalizations when they ought to be fed upon the old, hard and dry facts and laws. This method is the more vicious; the newer these theories and the vaguer these generalizations. But when the latest results consist of new facts and new laws of language well established, conservatism in the adoption and in the teaching of them becomes a great fault and a great injustice. I admit, that there is danger in going too fast and too far in adopting and teaching the new results, but in the department of Modern Languages as in many other departments the danger lies in the other direction, not merely in ultra-conservatism in appropriating and digesting the new results, not merely in ignoring them, but in unpremeditated, unconscious, down right ignorance of them.