52 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



oneseli — on which the most advanced science depends, may by a proper 

 system be cultivated in the youngest scholar of the most elementary 

 school. Curiosity and the desire to find out the reason of things is a 

 natural, and to the ignorant an inconvenient, propensity of almost 

 every child; and there lies before the instructor the whole realm of 

 nature knowledge in which this propensity can be cultivated. If 

 children in village schools spent less of their early youth in learning 

 mechanically to read, write and cipher, and -more in searching hedge- 

 rows and ditch-bottoms for flowers, insects, or other natural objects, 

 their intelligence would be developed by active research, and they 

 would better learn to read, write and cipher in the end. The faculty 

 of finding out things for oneself is one of the most valuable with which 

 a child can be endowed. There is hardly a calling or business in life 

 in which it is not better to know how to search out information than to 

 possess it already stored. Everything, moreover, which is discovered 

 sticks in the memory and becomes a more secure possession for life 

 than facts lazily imbibed from books and lectures. The faculty of 

 turning to practical uses knowledge possessed might be more culti- 

 vated in primary schools. It can to a limited extent, but to a limited 

 extent only, be tested by examination. Essays, compositions, problems 

 in mathematics and science, call forth the power of using acquired 

 knowledge. Mere acquisition of knowledge does not necessarily confer 

 the power to make use of it. In actual life a very scanty store of 

 knowledge, coupled with the capacity to apply it adroitly, is of more 

 value than boundless information which the possessor cannot turn to 

 practical use. Some measures should be taken to cultivate taste in 

 primary schools. Children are keen admirers. They can be early taught 

 to look for and appreciate what is beautiful in drawing and painting, 

 in poetry and music, in nature, and in life and character. The effect of 

 such learning on manners has been observed from remote antiquity. 



Physical exercises are a proper subject for primary schools, espe- 

 cially in the artificial life led by children in great cities: both those 

 which develop chests and limbs, atrophied by impure air and the want 

 of healthy games, and those which discipline the hand and the eye — the 

 latter to perceive and appreciate more of what is seen, the former to 

 obey more readily and exactly the impulses of the will. Advantage 

 should be taken of the fact that the children come daily under the 

 observation of a quasi-public officer — the school teacher — to secure 

 them protection, to which they are already entitled by law, against 

 hunger, nakedness, dirt, over-work, and other kinds of cruelty and 

 neglect. Children's ailments and diseases should by periodic inspection 

 be detected: the milder ones, such as sores and chilblains, treated on 

 the spot, the more serious removed to the care of parents or hospitals. 

 Diseases of the eye and all maladies that would impair the capacity of 



