526 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



of that subject in connection with science teaching ; so we will 

 see how electricity fares in the typical public school science 

 course. 



It is probably a by-product of the epoch-making work of 

 Kelvin that many physical subjects were at one time regarded 

 as somewhat beyond the capacity of young boys, on account 

 of the considerable amount of mechanics which is required for 

 their adequate treatment. It was very easy to design an 

 elementary course in Heat, Light or Sound which makes no 

 such demand ; as it was less easy to do so with Electricity, it 

 became the custom to take boys through successive courses in 

 Heat, Light, Sound, Mechanics, Magnetism, Frictional Elec- 

 tricity and then Current Electricity. Before the last was 

 reached, all the pupils except the science specialists had 

 usually dropped out, ignorant even of the elements of a subject 

 which probably interested them more than did all the others. 

 In dealing with boys we are still open to the reproach of dis- 

 regarding the processes natural to the immature mind, whether 

 of the individual or the race ; our methods of training are so 

 highly developed that we are afraid to let a boy do anything at 

 all until he has shown in an examination that he is trained for 

 it. A child is encouraged to speak his mother-tongue even 

 when his efforts are decidedly imperfect ; his teachers at that 

 stage are prepared to let him blunder but schoolmasters are too 

 conscientious to suffer that and expect a finish and fulness of 

 comprehension appropriate to a much later stage, thereby 

 getting a very small output and killing all interest and fresh- 

 ness. We lead boys into a desert and keep them marching 

 there, not even letting them climb Pisgah when it comes in 

 their way ; the great majority never reach the promised land. 

 So " the man in the street," who was one of that majority, 

 sometimes scoffs at our science teaching as too academic, whilst 

 the boy resorts to his magazines and the motor papers, whence 

 he gathers more of what he wants than he does from our lessons. 

 In this way he gets rough but very illuminating ideas of tele- 

 phones, wireless telegraphy, dynamos, the stability of aeroplanes, 

 two and four stroke cycle engines and such like matters, teachers 

 treating him the while as if he were a boy of the early Victorian 

 period. There is much to be said for following the historical 

 course of discovery in many subjects but the developments of 

 applied electricity have so diverted the main road of progress 



