5 62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



day's debate, is the fact that it has at last dawned upon the leaders 

 of opinion and the makers of our laws that "education" and "instruc- 

 tion " are different things, and that a man may learn a great manv 

 " facts " at school, and have his education to begin when he leaves it. 

 It is lamentable that we have to be continually reminded that we are 

 the only one of the great European countries where this distinction is 

 not recognized and practically carried out in education. Our whole 

 system of education, hitherto, has been a mere cramming of the chil- 

 dren's memories with words, words, words, to the weariness of children 

 and teachers, and with results unsatisfactory to all concerned. As the 

 Times puts it, " To be taught something about gravitation, about at- 

 mospheric pressure, about the effects of temperature, and other simple 

 matters of like kind, which would admit of experimental illustration, 

 and which would call upon the learner to make statements in his own 

 words instead of in those of somebody else, would be so many steps 

 toward real mental development." Sir John Lubbock gave a most con- 

 clusive refutation of the idea that the teaching of science must be at- 

 tended with hitherto unexperienced difficulties, and at the same time 

 proved what a relief science-teaching would be to the ordinary dull 

 routine of instruction, when he told the House that in the Scotch 

 schools the authorities began to take alarm because science-teaching 

 was found so comparatively easy and pleasant by the children. As to 

 the argument that children who have been taught to know something 

 about the object and forces with which they come every day into con- 

 tact contract a distaste for manual labor, we should have thought it 

 had been long ago played out ; it has almost as much force as the story 

 told by another speaker of the boy who had been impudent to his 

 master because the latter could not read his newspaper. 



It is unnecessary for us to go again into the merits of the question 

 which has been so often and so thoroughly discussed in these pages, 

 especially as the Times has put it quite as forcibly as there is occasion 

 for doing at present. It certainly seems sad, nationally suicidal, indeed, 

 that a few more millions of those who will have the destinies of this 

 country in their hands are likely to be launched into active life, with 

 all their education to acquire, ere legislation steps in to give us the ad- 

 vantages which nearly every other civilized nation gives to its children. 

 Every day we hear of the ignorance of the working-classes, every other 

 month "congresses" are held to devise means to remedy the conse- 

 quences of this ignorance ignorance of the laws of health, ignorance 

 of household economy, ignorance of the implements and objects of 

 labor, ignorance of the laws of labor and production, ignorance of the 

 nature of the commonest objects with which they come into contact 

 every day, ignorance of almost everything which it would be useful 

 and nationally beneficial for them to know an ignorance, alas ! more 

 or less shared by the " curled darlings " of the nation. Yet while every 

 day's paper show T s how keen is the industrial competition with other 



