172 SCTEXCE AND ART AND EDUCATION vii 



with so much as you are called upon to teach — 

 soak yourself in it, so to speak — until you know it 

 as part of your daily life and daily knowledge, and 

 then YOU will be able to teach anybody. That is 

 what I mean by practical teachers, and, altbough 

 the deficiency of such teachers is being remedied 

 to a large extent, I think it is one which has long 

 existed, and which has existed from no fault of 

 those who undertook to teach, but because, until 

 the last score of years, it absolutely was not possible 

 for any one in a great many branches of science, 

 whateyer his desire might be, to get instruction 

 which would enable him to be a good teacher of ele- 

 mentary things. All that is being rapidly altered, 

 and I hope it will soon become a thing of the past. 

 The last point I haye referred to is the ques- 

 tion of the sufficiency of time. And here comes 

 the rub. The teaching of science needs time, as 

 any other subject; but it needs more time propor- 

 tionally than other subjects, for the amount of 

 work obyiously done, if the teaching is to be, as I 

 haye said, practical. "Work done in a laboratory 

 involves a good deal of expenditure of time with- 

 out always an obvious result, because we do not 

 see anything of that quiet process of soaking the 

 facts into the mind, which takes place through the 

 organs of the senses. On this ground there must 

 be ample time given to science teaching. What 

 that amount of time should be is a point which I 

 need not discuss now; in fact, it is a point which 



