NOTES 629 



In connection with the meeting there were exhibits of apparatus by members 

 and dealers. A description of most of these would be of interest only to teachers ; 

 but one, by Mr R. G. Durrant, of Marlborough College, is of more general 

 scientific importance. This was the use of crystal violet in indicating the hydrion 

 content of aqueous solutions of acids. When a strong acid is added to a solution 

 of the dye, an orange tint is produced : on dilution, or on the careful addition of 

 an alkali, there is a gradual change through the colours of the spectrum, until 

 violet is reached. By adding measured proportions of the dye to different con- 

 centrations of various acids, the hydrion contents are revealed by the tints obtained. 

 Mr. Durrant's figures agree well with data obtained by conductivity experiments. 

 He says that the dye also lends itself in a remarkable manner to the illustration of 

 such phenomena as reversible action, equilibrium, and the progress of chemical 

 change ; and he suggests that it may be useful as an indicator in certain titrations, 

 since it shows the approach to neutrality before this is actually reached. 



Colonel Sir Ronald Ross presided during the meetings. As his address to the 

 members was reported in Nature of January 9, it is not commented on here, except 

 to quote the expression, " With our teaching ot most things, we potter about in the 

 porch and never look into the temple at all." This proved to be the keymote of 

 many of the subsequent discussions. For years past the members of the Associa- 

 tion have been criticising their own methods of teaching science, with a feeling, 

 vague at first and then more clearly defined, that something was wrong somewhere. 

 At the time when the Association was formed, science teaching had little weight 

 in the public schools : for the most part the subject was taught only to those boys 

 who had special need of it, the future specialists in science. That being so, it was 

 natural — though perhaps wrong, even for these — for the subject to be presented in 

 a systematic and formal manner. All the science masters in the public schools 

 had been through the classical routine ; they had approached the literature of a 

 language through its grammar, and they applied the traditional method in the 

 teaching of their own subject. The result was that the boys who failed to achieve 

 their object of specialising in science had " pottered about in the porch and had 

 failed to look into the temple at all." Now, however, circumstances are changing : 

 far more boys are studying science than mean to make special use of the subject 

 later ; and it is coming to be realised that even for the future specialists a more 

 liberal treatment of the subject is to be desired. 



The discussions, therefore, were carried on along two main lines of thought : 

 reform in the methods of teaching, and the effects of external influences. With 

 regard to the former, early specialisation, it is agreed, is wrong : sixteen years, or 

 thereabouts, is the earliest age at which a boy should be allowed to follow his bent 

 at the sacrifice, to a certain extent, of other important subjects of the school 

 curriculum. This is the age at which he is faced with the first>school examination, 

 designed to test his general education rather than his special abilities. For boys 

 younger than this the courses in science training should be self-contained, not 

 designed to lead up to something which, in the majority of cases, does not follow. 

 The human interest should be kept in the foreground all the time. No school 

 course in general science is adequate if, by the omission of the biological sciences, 

 the phenomena of life are disregarded entirely. As Mr. G. H. V. Civil (Welling- 

 ton College) pointed out, in such teaching there is difficulty in ensuring accuracy 

 and diligence on the part of the pupils ; but that is a problem for schoolmasters to 

 solve without falling once more into the error of going into too much detail at the 

 outset. Mr. W. D. Eggar, in opening a discussion on this subject, described an 

 experiment at Eton College of having some of the classical masters responsible for 



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