STUDY OF PHYSICS IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 161 



erally hard-worked in other ways. It is easy to theorize on the subject 

 of teaching science, especially physical science, in the second grade of 

 schools, but one should not forget the wearing nature of routine work 

 which is apt to deaden one's enthusiasm. One can not expect a teacher 

 to hold weekly talks with his pupils on force, or to rely upon treatises 

 which are merely descriptive, or to be patient with apparatus which, 

 by frequent use, seems almost puerile, without giving him also a com- 

 paratively rigid standard in the shape of a book by which he can ad- 

 vance in a more or less mechanical manner. Many teachers, therefore, 

 comply with the letter of the law, and with one of the many text-books 

 called Natural Philosophy shorten the popular exposition of the subject 

 to a minimum and demand a certain number of problems under the 

 lever, the screw, the inclined plane, and the pendulum. This mechani- 

 cal teaching succeeds to a certain extent with the bright boys of some 

 methematical tendencies ; but it fails with the great majority, who 

 speedily get a disgust for the whole subject. To add to the teachers' 

 difficulties, many of them have not a sufficient knowledge of the sub- 

 ject to enable them to courageously reject the descriptions of machines 

 with which many text-books are filled, in which the principles are lost 

 sight of in a multiplicity of levers, pulleys, and connecting pieces. 



In teaching a language or a branch of mathematics in a grammar 

 school, one has all his materials ready at hand, a certain author, a 

 certain dictionary, a grammar. In teaching physical science, almost 

 every text-book requires to be supplemented by some apparatus 

 which is not provided with the text-book, and contrivances must be 

 resorted to, and judgment must be used in regard to aids in teach- 

 ing upon which experience seems to be very indefinite. There are 

 wide limits in regard to the cost of this or that piece of apparatus, and 

 difficulties in deciding between instrument-makers. Very often there 

 is no one available to repair an instrument, and the instruction has an 

 added tendency to become mechanical. 



On the other hand, there are enthusiastic teachers who are imbued 

 with the modern popular method of teaching physics by the aid of a 

 lime-light stereopticon. Small appropriations are saved until an ex- 

 pensive instrument can be obtained ; and what may be called a college 

 course in physics is inaugurated in the second grade of schools. It is 

 a laudable ambition to desire to illustrate the subject of physics by 

 the method of projections ; but the policy of expending from one to 

 two hundred dollars for a lime-light for the use of a grammar or even 

 a high school is questionable. 



Professor Mayer, in his excellent little books on the experimental 

 study of light and sound, shows how a water lantern can be con- 

 structed for three dollars, which answers every purpose ; and if there 

 is no sunlight one of the many forms of kerosene lanterns is admira- 

 ble for showing diagrams, the deflections of a galvanometer, crystalli- 

 zations, and minute experiments which a class could not otherwise see 



TOL. XT. 11 



