430 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



of the truth of my statement and to impress the fact upon 

 their slack memories, I give demonstrations : I am not experi- 

 menting. 



We fail in making science teaching effective largely because it 

 is not experimental and argumentative: certain facts are more or 

 less impressed upon the memories of our pupils but nothing more. 



The extraordinary value of experimental work is almost 

 wholly lost under our present system, whether it be in school 

 or college or university, owing to the general misunderstanding 

 I have referred to. Our colleges need reform in this respect 

 more than our schools — because the teachers are trained in them. 



The system we adopt of lecturing to our students and then 

 directing them to work from printed instructions in the 

 laboratory is as vicious as it is possible to make it. We know 

 it to be an absolute failure in practice, every examination 

 proving this to be the case ; yet we go on our way rejoicing. 

 We science teachers, in fact, are often as hopelessly narrow in 

 our outlook as are literary teachers — probably because we have 

 allowed the literary example to influence us : we start under 

 literary guidance and but few of us shake off the allegiance. 



One great reason is that we begin too late ; the child's 

 natural desire to observe and experiment, to reason on the 

 basis of observations made and from the results of experi- 

 mental inquiry, must be developed, encouraged and fostered 

 in every possible way. The habit is soon lost if in the least 

 neglected — dogmatism has killed it throughout the ages ; 

 perhaps it kills it more effectively now than has been the case 

 at any previous time, because it is aided by books and especi- 

 ally by the monstrously pernicious agency man has invented 

 to oppress his intellect — our accursed examination system. 



If proper habits are to be acquired, the foundation must 

 be laid soundly in earliest youth and the mortar of practice 

 never allowed to dry until the edifice be complete. An uncom- 

 promising resistance must be offered to all who deny the truth 

 of this assertion ; it raises the most important of all the issues 

 to be considered by teachers. We were beginning to make the 

 doctrine felt in schools when enthusiastic but uninstructed 

 faddists came along with that rankest and most pretentious of 

 hybrids, Nature Study— a. subject which, as commonly taught, 

 involves no study and has little, if any, connection with Nature ; 

 which is confessedly " unscientific " in its aims and methods. 



