844 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



rudely counter to all tlie natural 

 ideas of a child in regard to the uni- 

 verse, nor to impose upon him at 

 once the somewhat oppressive con- 

 ception of unvarying law, but to 

 cause the idea of law to steal gradu- 

 ally into the mind, and to reveal and 

 assert itself more and more through 

 the successive observations which a 

 judicious teacher will lead the child 

 to make. Childhood, it should be 

 needless to remark, is a period of 

 great outward activity — a period 

 "when impressions from the world 

 around are crowding in on the mind ; 

 it is not to any great extent a j)eriod 

 of reflection ; and any studies, there- 

 fore, which make a premature or 

 excessive demand on the refl-ecting 

 powers can not fail to do harm. 

 The youngest child will generalize 

 to some extent — that is to say, will 

 do it fitfully and in regard to famil- 

 iar matters ; but wide generalizations 

 in regard to unfamiliar matters lie 

 outside of its natural sphere; and, 

 if forced on its attention, will not 

 only fail to interest, but will, in di- 

 rect proportion to the insistence of 

 the teacher, depress the whole play 

 of the mental faculties and injuri- 

 ously affect the development of the 

 physical system. This is a point 

 where many teachers go astray. 

 Generalizations are so interesting to 

 the adult mind, they seem to help it 

 forward so powerfully, and to be 

 as it were so self-luminous, that a 

 teacher requires to possess more than 

 the usual amount of comprehension 

 of and sympathy with the child mind 

 in order to recognize that they are, 

 in the main, unsuited to the latter, 

 and therefore only to be applied 

 sparingly in its education. This, 

 we conceive, explains why "clever" 

 people, so called, often make but in- 

 ferior teachers of the young. In 

 spite of all the psychology and peda- 

 gogics they may have absorbed — 

 perhaps occluded — they can not suffi- 



ciently and permanently, day in 

 and day out, distinguish between 

 the mature and the immature in- 

 tellect. 



Science, like everything else, to 

 be taught successfully needs to be 

 taught with sympathy. There should 

 be sympathy with the subject as well 

 as sympathy with the pupil. The 

 reason why, in the hands of certain 

 teachers, language and literature 

 prove so stimulating as studies, is 

 that the teachers feel them to be re- 

 lated to the higher operations and 

 finer perceptions of the mind, and 

 succeed in conveying this idea to 

 those whom they instruct. The 

 teacher of science should not be con- 

 tent to occupy any lower ground. 

 The laws and facts which he ex- 

 pounds have their own correlation 

 with the past history and future des- 

 tinies of mankind, and with the 

 whole compass of human thought. 

 In dealing wdth the young we should 

 endeavor to humanize science as 

 much as possible, and to present it 

 as having its origin in the everyday 

 impressions of sense, and as being in 

 its essence merely an improved and 

 beneficent interpretation of the world 

 in which we live. 



Unless the Bishop of London is a 

 far more reactionary person than we 

 take him to be, what he would ban- 

 ish from elementary schools is just 

 what we would ourselves banish, 

 had we the power, namely, that for- 

 mal, didactic, authoritative instruc- 

 tion in the facts and theories of sci- 

 ence which is more adapted to wither 

 than to nourish the youthful mind, 

 not such teaching as takes the form 

 of a gradual and sympathetic intro- 

 duction to the true order of Nature. 

 Science is just as good for the young 

 as for the old, on the one condition 

 that those who teach it are them- 

 selves scientific enough to under- 

 stand the minds they are dealing 

 with. And the advantage of begin- 



