TRADITION IN EDUCATION 193 



it is more than unjust to misrepresent and condemn a system 

 for the failures really due to badly equipped, half-hearted, 

 unsympathetic exponents. 



Prof. Thompson's suggestions for the improvement of 

 science teaching read singularly : " A lesson on the microscope 

 followed by an hour's excitement in examining or making 

 slides ; a talk about the telescope and the wonders it reveals, 

 with an actual instrument to see and handle ; a chemical chat 

 about oxygen, followed by a few fireworks; all these will be 

 of absorbing interest to intelligent boys of twelve or thirteen. 

 After that a few more systematic lessons will attract, without 

 exhausting the attention of the hearers." Apart from the 

 unscientific view of age limitation made evident by these 

 suggestions, the fallacy involved was pointed out by Spencer : 

 " To tell a child this and to show it the other is not to teach 

 a child to observe but to make it the recipient of another's 

 observation." No! interests alone are but the frame of mind 

 which looks out for possible experiences, their value is in the 

 leverage they afford, not in the accomplishments they represent ; 

 they are not ends in themselves. " We do not trust the scientific 

 qualities of one who does not feel quite differently about a fact 

 which he himself observed from the way he feels about something 

 he has read or heard." Again: "Among all the habits which 

 science requires us to form, none is more important than the 

 habit of learning when there is no man to teach us, of profiting 

 by our own past errors, of rising on stepping stones of our 

 mistaken selves to correcter judgments." 1 We do not want 

 to teach science but to train in scientific method and there 

 must be a clear line of demarcation between what the individual 

 has observed and what he has learned at secondhand ; to learn 

 from authority and to verify for oneself being almost as essential 

 as to discover, for no man can find out for himself all he needs 

 to know. 2 The boy must have an observational and experi- 

 mental 3 acquaintance with the salient and everyday facts of 

 nature and on lines which foster clearness of thought, con- 

 centration of attention, skill of hand, precision of eye and 



1 The Preparation of the Child for Science, M. E. Boole. 



* " Life is too short for inventional methods only, a child of to-day ... is 

 entitled to the heritage of civilisation." — R. E. Hughes, The Making of Citizens. 



3 " Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something 

 new ; it alone can give us certainty." — Poincare, Science and Hypothesis. 



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