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SCIENCE STUDY 33 



has often been criticized by ultra sensitive people. I refer of course 

 to the dissection or destruction of the object of study. It will be 

 answered that this is seldom practised in elementary schools with even 

 the lowest forms of animals, and plants do not feel, and hence there 

 is no objection to pulling them to pieces. Still the child must be 

 held in constant check to keep down the natural instinct to see what 

 the insides are like, to see what makes "the wheels go round." 

 Perhaps it offers a good opportunity to teach the child not to inflict 

 pain by pulling animals to pieces, but even so it is pretty difficult to 

 differentiate between his curiosity to see how a fly will walk with only 

 two legs, and the scientific dissection for legitimate purposes. In 

 general, the child is naturally enough inclined to pull things to pieces 

 without any encouragement. On the other hand, the most sensitive 

 can not object to an indefinite amount of pestering of a magnet, or a 

 solution. The above matters are simply those of choice, perhaps> 

 and someone may object that we have at best proved an equal claim 

 for attention. There is however a more serious criticism of the pres- 

 ent methods. In the syllabus we find for example a subject given as 

 " the function of the roots." How can this subject be efficiently or 

 rationally treated when the child has little or no knowledge of the 

 simple and fundamental phenomena of solution, much less of capil- 

 larity, or surface tension, or osmosis? It is again expected that the 

 functions of the leaf should be intellectually discussed, without a pre- 

 liminary knowledge of anything about evaporation or combustion, or 

 the subtler effects of sunlight, such as bleaching, discoloration, and 

 chemical change in general. At another time the sap is the subject 

 of the talk and the child is told how and why the sap rises in the tree, 

 when in point of fact nobody knows. Right here is an example of a 

 serious mistake which many teachers make : namely of picking out 

 the plausible or attractive theory of all those which have been sug- 

 gested to explain some phenomenon, and presenting this to the child 

 as if it were finally established. This, "to my mind, is positively bad, 

 and is certainly unnecessary. I have always found that a child is 

 really interested to find something which even the "grown-ups" do 

 not know: they feel encouraged and may even set their little brains at 

 work getting up an explanation of the observation in question. A 

 teacher's usefulness has been seriously impaired the moment he or 

 she poses before the children as knowing it all. 



It will be objected that chemistry and physics require apparatus and 

 materials and these cost money. I would guarantee to buy all the 



