JOZ 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



portant official position, and eminent as 

 an educational leader, are so strikingly 

 opposed to the general verdict of scien- 

 tific educators as to challenge exami- 

 nation. The question is, how shall sci- 

 ence be taught? Only experience can 

 answer. If there is any fact that 

 experience has overwhelmingly illus- 

 trated and established, it is that mere 

 book-teaching of science is void and of 

 no effect nay, that it is worse : that it 

 has an actively injurious effect on the 

 mind, which it deadens with meaningless 

 jargon and befogs with ill-comprehend- 

 ed notions. The highest scientific au- 

 thorities have proclaimed this; and a 

 committee of the American Association 

 for the Advancement of Science put on 

 record three or four years ago their de- 

 liberate opinion that the book science 

 taught in the schools of this country 

 was valueless for any purpose of intel- 

 lectual discipline. Superintendent How- 

 land must have observed in the course 

 of his wide experience how hollow and 

 often how fantastically absurd are the 

 ideas children acquire of things of which 

 they are told, but which they have never 

 seen or handled. Every one who has 

 been a close observer of his own contem- 

 poraries must be aware of many a man 

 and woman who, for want of early and 

 practical familiarity with this or that 

 class of physical facts, labors under a 

 confirmed disability in dealing with all 

 facts of that particular order. How is 

 a knowledge of or interest in flowers 

 and plants (for example) to be acquired, 

 if not by personal handling and ob- 

 servation of the objects themselves? 

 And are there not many persons who, 

 for want of this practical training, go 

 through life with little knowledge of 

 flowers beyond the fact that they are of 

 various colors and odors, and of plants 

 that they are for the most part green 

 and require soil and sunlight for their 

 growth ? Many a man will give abun- 

 dant testimony showing how hard he has 

 striven in mature years to gain a little 

 knowledge from books of this or that 



branch of science, and what terribly up- 

 hill and, in the main, ineffectual work 

 it has been, just on account of defect in 

 his powers of observation, and in that 

 memory for the forms and qualities of 

 physical things which due exercise of 

 the observing habit in early life devel- 

 ops. Take any man on the ground that 

 has become familiar to him by actual 

 observation, and he is at his best. Talk 

 to the sportsman about guns and game, 

 and you are amazed at the profusion 

 and minuteness of his knowledge. Talk 

 to the naturalist, and he is inexhaustible 

 in his descriptions and explanations of 

 the objects of his craft. Talk to the 

 geologist, and you will find that the strata 

 and their fossil contents are the true re- 

 alities amid which he lives. But talk to 

 any man about that which he has only 

 learned from books, and, though his 

 speech may be copious, it will lack a 

 certain living quality that comes only 

 from conversance with realities. Even 

 in such a domain as history, which some 

 may say can not be learned except from 

 books, there is a marked difference be- 

 tween the man whose memory is sim- 

 ply laden with names and dates, and the 

 man who has become, in a sense, practi- 

 cally acquainted with the memorials of 

 past ages who has studied their monu- 

 ments, their arts, their coins, their char- 

 ters, their institutions, and who has 

 vivified the whole by a knowledge of 

 similar things belonging to the present 

 time. It is safe to say tbat no man will 

 ever understand history from the mere 

 perusal of a narrative; he must, in a man- 

 ner, make himself a contemporary of the 

 times he is reading about ; and then he 

 may know the past a little as an intelli- 

 gent man of affairs knows the present. 



We had a splendid example here in 

 this city not many weeks ago of what 

 book-teaching of science amounts to. 

 The "Evening Post " gave a selection 

 of over fifty answers given by young 

 women of the average age of seventeen, 

 all pupils of our public schools, most of 

 them having gone through the highest 



