2O4 Introduction . [ 1 2 



and tiresome insistence on accuracy in early stages. It 

 would be precisely the same mistake as we obstinately 

 commit in the teaching of languages with all our weari- 

 some exercises in grammar." 1 The kind of accuracy which 

 can be cultivated is that which makes simple, illustrative 

 experiments turn out correctly; but, in my judgment, 

 " instruments of precision," suited to refined work, belong 

 only in the hands of advanced workmen. 



IV. THE METHOD USED IN THE NEW YORK COLLEGE FOR 

 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 



The correct sort of training in natural science, like 

 that in other departments, does not aim at the acquiring 

 of certain facts, but the acquiring of certain habits of 

 mind. The school cannot accomplish its purpose by 

 simply giving information, it must teach the child how to 

 study and then graduate him, leaving him to do the 

 studying during the remainder of his life. Kow many 

 citizens can remember the facts which they learned in 

 school and recited glibly at the time. The year's exami- 

 nations over and the summer vacation past, they went 

 back to school to learn the same facts over again. This 

 operation being repeated for several years, filled them 

 with disgust, and, as soon as the law allowed, they went 

 into business in preference to the school. The chief 

 difference between the school graduate who is destined to 

 be an ignorant man and the school graduate who is 

 destined to be a learned man is not so much in the 

 number of facts which each possesses as in the ability each 

 has of acquiring facts and reasoning upon them. Nature 

 is full of lessons, but one person is blind to them and goes 

 on in stupid ignorance while another regards them and 

 becomes a wise man. It is the province of the school to 

 teach persons how to properly regard Nature's teachings; 



i Educational Times, London, March 1, 1889. 



