6i4 THE POPULAR SC1E2JCE MONTHLY. 



SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BOARD SCHOOLS.* 



By Pkof. H. E. AEMSTRONG, F. E. S. 



AT the request of my friend and former pupil, Mr. W. M. Hel- 

 - ler, I have undertaken to say a few words by way of intro- 

 duction to the course which he is about to give here to assist a 

 number of you who are teachers in schools in the Tower Hamlets 

 and Hackney district under the School Board for London a 

 course of lessons expressly intended to direct your attention to 

 the educational value of instruction given solely with the object 

 of inculcating scieiitific habits of mind and scientific ways of 

 working ; and exj^ressly and primarily intended to assist you in 

 giving such teaching in your schools. 



Nothing could afford me greater pleasure, as I regard the in- 

 troduction of such teaching into schools generally not board 

 schools merely, but all schools as of the utmost importance ; in- 

 deed, I may say, as of national importance ; and I now confidently 

 look forward to the time, at no distant date, when this will be 

 everywhere acknowledged and acted on. Personally I regard the 

 work that I have been able to do in this direction as of far greater 

 value than any purely scientific work that I have accomplished. 

 At the very outset of my career as a teacher I was led to see how 

 illogical, unsatisfactory, and artificial were the prevailing methods 

 of teaching, and became interested in their improvement. My 

 appointment as one of the first professors at the Finsbury Tech- 

 nical College forced me to pay particular attention to the subject 

 and gave me abundant opportunity of practically working out a 

 scheme of my own. I was the more anxious to do this, as I soon 

 became convinced that if any real progress were to be made in 

 our system of technical education, it was essential in the first 

 place to introduce improved methods of teaching into schools 

 generally, so that students of technical subjects might commence 

 their studies properly prepared ; and subsequent experience has 

 only confirmed this view. Indeed, it is beyond question, in the 

 opinion of many, that what we at present most want in this coun- 

 try are proper systems of primary and secondary education the 

 latter especially. Now, most students at our technical colleges, 

 in consequence of their defective school training, not only waste 

 much of their time in learning elementary principles with which 

 they should have been made familiar at school, and much of our 

 time by obliging us to give elementary lessons, but, what is far 

 worse, they have acquired bad habits and convictions which are 



* From a revised address delivered at the Berncrs Street Board Sclioal, Commercial 

 Road, Loniion, on October 9, 1894, and publislied in Nature. 



