22 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [ 3: ,-jan., , 9 o 7 



known as carbonic acid gas. Because it consists of oxygen and one 

 other simple substance it is called an oxide. When carbon or any 

 other substance unites with oxygen, it is said to oxidize or undergo 

 oxidation. 



But how can we account for the charcoal becoming so hot while the 

 oxidation was going on ? It must be that the chemical union, in some 

 way, produced or caused the heat and the bright light, for as soon as 

 the oxidation ceased both the heat and the light disappeared. 



University of New Brunswick, John Brittain. 



Fredericton, N. B. 



TWO QUESTIONS OF METHOD 



Dr. Hornaday's paper, in a recent issue of The Review, raises 

 two questions of method: one of general method in nature-teaching 

 and one of detail. The latter is the one to which the most interest 

 must attach — that of determining the point of time in the pupil's 

 career, or the stage of his intellectual development, when the pro- 

 visional and partial classifications of the nature-study grades shall 

 give place to the ultimate generalizations of science. This is a mat- 

 ter which framers of courses of study have yet to dispose of. 



The former question — that of the validity of the general method 

 pursued by representative teachers — is one which hitherto had been 

 considered as settled. Indeed, to deny the pedagogic principle 

 which prompts the school to pursue its way to the goals of science 

 along paths strewn with the natural interests and every-day expe- 

 riences of the child is to discredit the method revealed by psychology 

 for the pursuit not only of nature-study but of every subject of the 

 school-curriculum. Is not our critic overlooking in instruction an 

 element which the teacher of childhood has to reckon with ? Is he 

 not fixing attention too much upon the ultimate truths to be learned 

 and too little upon the young learner in his intellectual, emotional 

 and his experiential relations to those truths? Does he not, for the 

 nonce, view as a sufficient end the acquisition of systematic knowl- 

 edge, no matter by whom systematized? Is not this static knowledge 

 a commodity to be quickly and easily procured by a process (to 

 adopt his own figure) of tunneling of text- book facts and figures into 

 empty heads ? Is not his ideal pupil too much a passive recipient, 

 and his ideal teacher too much a discloser of shortcuts to knowledge 

 — a knowledge that falls short of power? 



