of the first order, if necessary of senior standing, but as young as possible, with a knowledge of the theory of science, to investigate and conduct the introduction of young children, 41-10, to science and scientific method. The problem will be at least fourfold: Ton the emotional attitude of the child toHE ABILITY to absorb instruction depends wards the process of being instructed as well as on the inherited quality of the brain. But the discovery of the idea of discovery and the ability to tolerate fact—which constitute the scientific attitude of mind—are the intellectual basis, on which, together with the emotional factor, subsequent intellectual progress is likely to rest. Thus arises the need for a technique to utilise and develop the child's native curiosity in the way the wheels go round-his interest for instance in mud and water and his pleasure in messing about-in such a way as, in the long run, to obtain the maximum conversion of these drives into a controllable instrument of organised thought. This involves the investigation by careful and delicate observation not only of what sort of activities are best introduced into the environment but what should be the order of opportunity for these activities. Much is done by leaving the child who prefers modelling with clay to heating mercury, or working a lathe to watching caterpillars or painting a table, to do so. But there is no such thing as absolute freedom and the very nature of the opportunities to a large extent limits and dictates his activities. And it is always possible-and this cannot be decided by a priori argument but only by observation-that to sip hastily at every flower may spoil the appetite. I will now be plain that this type of environment-arranging needs also the provision of specially designed apparatus. Apparatus for adolescents is too arbitrary and traditional often in the very irrelevance of its forms, is insufficiently diagrammatic, and being designed for illustration and the support of text book and teacher rather than for discovery requires as experiments on intelligent but innocent adults will show-a pre-knowledge of its purpose. The apparatus needs to be specially adapted to the child's capacity for inference, patience and manipulation, and to be designed to meet the lack of assumptions which are implicit in our adult thinking but in haphazardly collecting which a lifetime may be consumed. There is needed a continually accumulating fluid collection of apparatus suitable for each stage of the child's mental growth, devised clearly enough to enable him to discover in response to effort the answers to his own questions. Further there is needed the verbal apparatus of explanations of the history of men's thoughts and instruments concerning the same problems with which the child is occupying himself; accounts receding further and further back into the past as the child's sense of a past matures, instead of an isolated 'subject' being worked uneasily forward to an ill-patched join with the present. I T 13 special factors limiting or making undesirable the introduction of children of 4-10 to scientific knowledge and scientific thought. That is to say whether the apprehension of multiple and permissive causality which is painful to the human mind with its innate tendency to accept and manufacture explanations in terms of unitary and magical causality, is in early life so much more painful that the forces-equally innate of curiosity and intellectual aggression towards the external world would be stunted instead of stimulated. Or whether, on the other hand, it is not rather a quantitative question, as at present seems indicated-one of developing methods compatible with the child's childishness, with his need of phantasy, and of grading the demands of reality to his capacity. This is the main theoretical question. 54 it is hoped that the occupant of the post As will addition to exercising and developing an art make of the task a piece of scientific work and research leading eventually to the publication of his results-negative as well as positive he will need to make ample records. For this purpose the services of a shorthand-typist will be placed at his disposal. Certain preliminary work with children of 4-7 has already been done at Cambridge at the Malting House School successfully enough to encourage the directors of the school to make a full-time long period appointment specially for its development. Medical Psychology, vii, 2 Continued on next page Continued from preceding page They hope to make of the appointment the beginnings of a research institute into problems connected with education. Hence they are all the more anxious to obtain the services of someone of outstanding suitability for the work. He would need not merely to be a specialist in his own branch but to have some little acquaintance with other sciences, the history of science and the history of religious beliefs. will be apparent that this type of research, Imore than any other, would depend for its success not only on intellectual qualifications but also on a favouring psychological background. Ideally desirable-if the view here taken of the possibilities of such research is justified-would be an immense ability to wait and see, such as would make a good field anthropologist or naturalist-freedom from irritation at the childishness of children, power to see them make false inferences and misuse apparatus, noting the facts but not being annoyed by them. HERE must be an innate willingness to try Tto grasp the child's assumptions and to abstain from using the facile escape of verbal explanations in favour of the method of staging and re-staging occurrences till the child derives from his experience, not merely a particular atom of knowledge which will the more intimately become part of his mental structure, but the knowledge-one of the roots of understanding of the manner in which first-hand knowledge is obtained. Particularly in the child's early years must be eschewed the attitude of the pedagogue— the dealer in predigested reality and secondhand knowledge-in favour of that of the co-investigator, not least in order that when later in life the child needs second-hand knowledge more and more, he shall the better be able to accept and handle it. HE directors of the Malting House School are aware of the formidable nature of these desiderata. They do not however intend them as an absolute condition of the appointment but rather as an all-round view of the problem, stated in the hope that others may sufficiently share in the attitude outlined to be attracted to the work notwithstanding its difficulties. While they are willing to consider applications for the post from the teaching profession, they look rather to those who have already engaged in some sort of scientific work and whose reactions to children have not been influenced by the necessity of teaching them. In order to be able to obtain the services of the man most suited Professor SIR ERNEST RUTHERFORD, P.R.S., Professor PERCY NUNN, D.Sc., and Mr J. B. S. HALDANE, have kindly consented to assist the directors in the final selection of candidates. N the belief that there may be a substantial number of parents who I are dissatisfied with the overworked ignorance of the majority of our schools and are at the same time anxious to avoid the emotionallydetermined efforts of cranks, the directors of the Malting House School, Cambridge, have decided to convert it into a partly residential school, at present for children from 4 to 9. The Malting House School, founded as a day school in October, 1924, by Cambridge parents, is a non-profit making institution and in addition it has been fortunate enough to secure from friends of education financial support, so that it shall be run with the sole consideration of educational efficiency and progress. The directors would be glad to hear from parents who have children of the age whom they might care to send to the School. The fees will be £115 per annum inclusive. The following is a statement of the assumptions on which the existence of the school is based and of the methods used there: THE HE body of knowledge which the changing economic and social order of the twentieth century demands, particularly from the middleclass individual, is likely to increase yet further and requires for its greatest use and greatest enjoyment the backing of an organised collection of emotional and intellectual drives. It is highly probable that these drives, usually grouped together in the term curiosity, exist in the early lives of most people, and that their striking loss in later years, rendering many born with good brains intellectually ineffective and tired of life, is due to some large extent to laming by early influences. The most consciously held aim of the educator should therefore be to avoid damaging these drives, and, lest his life should pass in loading ships with ballast, to rank that aim before that of the instillation of knowledgeparticularly in the early years when relatively little knowledge can be instilled and great damage can be done. At present there is no recognised, infallible or easily-applied technique for the preservation of curiosity during education. Nevertheless the directors believe that the learning of how to learn and a scientific scrutiny of familiar things, an attitude of critical curiosity and intellectual aggression to the unknown, require to be preceded by the discovery of the idea of discovery. The method employed at Cambridge with children ranging from 3 to 7 to forward this result is on the one hand to eliminate the arbitrary authority of the pedagogue and to substitute for it the attitude of the co-investigator ("Let's find out" and not on any verbal information is the answer given to most questions), and on the other hand to provide an environment with more than usual scope for activity, intellectual and social, including apparatus which shall both set problems and provide their solutions. For instance: a lathe, stimulative poser of many arithmetical and geometrical questions-apparatus showing the expansion of materials under heat where nothing visible may happen except with patience a garden with plants (which may without taboo be dug up every day to see how they are getting on, leading mainly to the discovery that that is a temptation best resisted if growth is desired)—animals which breed -weighing machines graded from a see-saw with weights, through kitchen scales, to a laboratory balance-typewriters to bridge the gap between writing and reading-doublehandled saws which compel co-operation— and clay for modelling, where phantasy pays toll to skill and effort. Complementary to, but always lagging behind this, is the attitude more and more implied for the child that "Life is too short for you to discover all that the human race has discovered before you" (this is a fact that we cannot wait for a child to discover) "and now I am going to teach you. And the things I am going to teach you were discovered in the same kind of way as you yesterday discovered that sand would not burn on a bonfire, that water is PRIVATE enquiry having failed to produce the candidate required, the directors have recently issued on a widespread scale the above advertisement of their need for an all-round scientist-if necessary of senior standing to investigate and conduct the introduction of children to scientific thought and method. The object of the directors in advertising so widely has been to obtain the attention of a large number of scientists-not necessarily pedagogues --and therefore as large a range of applications as possible from which to make a selection. They hope also by stating publicly their view of a problem, which has not yet received sufficient attention, to precipitate the attention and agreement, disagreement or co-operation of all those— scientists, parents, educationists or members of the general public-who are interested in its solution. HILE visitors to the school are welcomed, Wit may be mentioned that a week's activities of the children have been filmed (the children |