Mr. Macan's Address 293 



rank. It is quite true that for many years past all 

 the principal County Councils have given facilities to 

 selected teachers, in numbers of from ten to twenty 

 per county per annum, to undergo these courses of 

 training. While upon this point I would like to urge 

 that what is desired by the teachers and for the 

 teachers, in these short courses at any rate, is not 

 advanced science courses, much less a renewal of their 

 past acquaintance with systematic science study, but 

 a definitely mapped-out and restricted series of lessons 

 capable of being reproduced almost exactly with the 

 simplest and cheapest apparatus available in the 

 village school. 



But this does not by any means represent the whole 

 work done in the direction of familiarizing teachers 

 with natural phenomena regarded scientifically, and 

 giving them the materials wherewith to interest their 

 scholars in the same. The Saturday classes which 

 have gone on intermittingly for the last eight or ten 

 years in the principal counties, whether dealing with 

 the various branches of science, manual training, or 

 drawing, have all worked towards the same end. As 

 these are brought almost to the teachers' doors, and 

 have been established in perhaps some hundred of the 

 leading centres of population each year, their influence 

 by this time must have been far-reaching. The foun- 

 dation of school gardens in connection with the ele- 

 mentary and continuation schools, and the visits of 

 the skilled experts of the County Councils in botany 

 or horticulture, all serve as much for the instruction 

 of the teachers as of the scholars. But a point which 

 has been very much lost sight of is the value to 

 teachers of the reorganization of the schools of science 



