REFORMS IN THE TEACHING OF ELECTRICITY 531 



age the outlay on apparatus is condoned if it lead to valuable 

 knowledge. The discipline which Tyndall advocates is in itself 

 as sound as ever but is the instruction what is wanted now? 

 That question fundamentally affects the suitability of a subject 

 as an instrument of mental discipline. 



There is strong warrant for the theory which deprecates the 

 use of what may be called "artificial discipline" and attaches 

 considerable importance to the intrinsic value of the subject- 

 matter which is selected to provide scope for mental gymnastics. 

 All the other subjects of the physics curriculum deal with 

 phenomena continually met with in civilised life, even in that 

 of a boy: all are of interest to the inquiring mind of childhood. 

 This interest makes the discipline less unattractive and leads 

 the boy to make an effort for himself which is of greater value 

 than the most logical course elaborated by the teacher. More 

 important still, he gains some idea of the application of scientific 

 method to matters with which he will be in contact all his life 

 and with many of which he is already familiar. But the school 

 course of frictional electricity is almost ludicrously apart from 

 a boy's environment, present and future. 



Nevertheless, some study of the phenomena of electricity 

 at rest is desirable and by making a further change in the 

 traditional procedure it can be provided satisfactorily. This 

 change is the substitution of voltaic for frictional electricity in 

 teaching electrostatics. In the first efforts towards telegraphy 

 frictional electricity was employed and success was not attained 

 until this was given up and batteries employed ; equal im- 

 portance is of course not claimed for this innovation but there 

 is a certain parallelism in the shifting of outlook, which I believe 

 to be inevitable in this connexion and to be long overdue on 

 the part of teachers. 



There is no doubt that such a substitution is practicable, that 

 it reduces the difficulties of experimental manipulation for boy 

 and master and that it enables us to make use of the knowledge 

 which the boy already possesses instead of transporting him to 

 a region of unfamiliar phenomena. 



As such a method of treatment is not customary it may be 

 worth while to set out in some little detail a short course 

 designed for boys who have gained some knowledge of voltaic 

 electricity, to be included in the preliminary course of current 

 electricity in the same way as electro-magnetics, current induction 



