5 o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



reason about simple things we must be quite sure that they really are 

 simple to him, that he understands them. For example, many educa- 

 tionists say that the study of geometry is just right for a boy. Well, 

 yes, for five per cent, of all boys, boys who can take in abstract ideas. 

 They take to Euclid as a duck takes to water. But for the other ninety- 

 five per cent, geometry is very hurtful, because unless they continually 

 experiment with rulers and compasses they do not understand what the 

 reasoning is about. In ancient times only very old and exceptionally 

 clever men were allowed to study geometry. We now assume that it 

 ought to be an easy study for the average English boy. Generation after 

 generation we stupefy the average English boy with demonstrative 

 geometry, and we call him a duffer so often that he thinks himself a 

 duffer, and even his mother thinks him a duffer, and, indeed, we have 

 done our best with geometry and Latin to make him a duffer. Only 

 for his football and cricket, which teach him to reason a little, he would 

 become a duffer. And yet in my opinion if this average boy were prop- 

 erly taught in school he would prove to be very superior to the boy who 

 is usually called clever. The schoolmaster calls a boy clever because he 

 is exactly like what the schoolmaster himself was when a boy ; but I am 

 afraid that I place little value on the schoolmaster's cleverness, whether 

 as a boy or a man. Eeasoning can be taught through almost anything 

 that a boy does, but more than all things through his experiments in 

 natural science. Formal lessons on reasoning, on logic, are utterly use- 

 less, and I may say that set lessons on almost any subject are utterly 

 useless for the average boy. 



Milton's poems are greatly praised. Well, I am not going to say a 

 word against the people who talk in public about the most wonderful 

 epic in our language and who never read it ; but how many people have 

 read Milton's magnificent prose works? Milton first taught me the true 

 notion of education, that the greatest mistake is in teaching subjects in 

 watertight compartments. It is the idea underlying one of the most 

 instructive books ever written, " Sandford and Merton." When teach- 

 ing a subject, teach all sorts of other subjects as well. If Mr. Barlow's 

 boys were interested in astronomy he showed them stars and planets 

 through a telescope for a night or two, but he gave them no stupefying 

 course on astrononry. He gave them stars and the solar system just as 

 long as they were interested. He used a globe as well as mere maps in 

 teaching them geography and history, but the soul-destroying idea of a 

 course of study on " the use of the globes " did not commend itself to 

 him. They walked over the fields and took an interest in trees and 

 flowers, but he gave them no stupefying course on botany. When he 

 gave them a lesson on English grammar or literature he taught them 

 at the same time the geography and history and the fairy stories of their 

 country. How can a man give a course on grammar or geography or 

 history or anything else without diverting his talk in an interesting way 



