NA TURK 



237 



THURSDAY, JULY 10, 1879 



CLEMENTS' ORGANIC CHEMISTRY 

 A Manual of Organic Chemistry, Practical and Theoreti- 

 cal, for Colleges and Schools, Medical and Civil Sen-ice 

 Examinations,and especially for Elementary, Advanced, 

 and Honours Students at the Classes of the Science and 

 Art Department, South Kensington. By Hugh Clements, 

 of H.M. Civil Service. (Blackie and Son, 1879.) 



A GOOD text-book should be correct as to facts and 

 descriptions, so as to leave nothing for the 

 student to unlearn ; it should, without being tedious or 

 cumbrous, be minute as to the information it contains, 

 so as to spare the student the necessity of going 

 over the same ground again ; its arrangement should 

 be thoroughly logical, building up the science from its 

 first principles, and presenting it to the reader as a con- 

 nected whole and not as a collection of dislocated and 

 dissevered members ; its language should be lucid, 

 terse, and vigorous, in order to relieve the intellect and 

 memory from any unnecessary strain; and, finally, it 

 should be written by a person who not only knows the 

 subject, but knows also how to teach it. 



It is greatly to be feared that the encouragement offered 

 by the Science and Art Department to the teaching of 

 the various sciences included in its syllabus has not been 

 productive of unalloyed good ; it has called into existence 

 a rast number of presuming and incompetent "science 

 (so-called) teachers," and has undoubtedly been the 

 ultimate cause of the deluge of illogical, incorrect, and 

 imperfect text-books that has for years past flooded the 

 educational market. These worthless and pernicious 

 books naturally divide themselves into two classes, and it 

 is very hard to tell which class is the more mischievous. 

 In the first class we have the books that carry on their 

 very faces conclusive evidence that they are written by 

 individuals who know little or nothing of the subject they 

 are pretending to treat — by men who have an enormous 

 amount to learn before they can have anything whatever 

 to teach. When these savants condescend to treat of 

 experimental science, it becomes at once evident that 

 they are writing about experiments they have never per- 

 formed and apparatus they have never seen. 



In the second class we have abler, but certainly not better 

 books — these are the books written by fairly erudite 

 authors, but written with a motive that is a disgrace to 

 the author, an insult to the teacher, and a monstrous 

 injustice to the student — they are the barefaced cram 

 books — books written in order to enable the student to 

 pass a specified examination, and not to aid him in ob- 

 taining any real knowledge of the subject. We are truly 

 sorry to find that these miserable volumes are very exten- 

 ively patronised and adopted by teachers, and if we are 

 M judge from recent articles and speeches cramming and 

 spotting the questions "are considered not only legitimate 

 It praiseworthy proceedings. For the credit of the teach- 

 ig profession we are happy to say that there are many 

 onest and able teachers with whom a correct and 

 orough knowledge of the subject is the first considera- 

 on, and a " pass " but a subordinate one ; yet it must be 

 mfessed that an alarming number of teachers seem to 

 Vol. XX. — No. 506 



think that "science teaching" consists [in imparting to 

 their students a few leading facts without any attempt at 

 showing their connection or their] bearing upon one 

 another, and in getting them to learn, by ; ote, stereotyped 

 answers to a few stock questions, trusting to chance that 

 in one shape or another a sufficient number of these stock 

 questionsw'iWtaxn up to enable their pupils to obtain at least 

 33 per cent, of attainable marks, and so entitle them to a 

 "second class." Other teachers, considerably more able, 

 but scarcely more conscientious, study the hobbies and 

 the idiosyncracies of the examiners, and in the course of 

 several years' practice manage to attain a wonderful 

 amount of skill and success in securing passes. On the 

 strength of this success they gain a pretty wide reputation 

 as "excellent teachers," while in reality they impart to 

 their pupils little or no knowledge of their subject as a 

 science ; all the information is conveyed and accepted on 

 the mere ipse dixit of the teacher without any attempt at 

 logical demonstration, and as a natural result teacher and 

 taught get thoroughly imbued with a most pernicious 

 dogmatism, which must be entirely eradicated before 

 either becomes susceptible of any true scientific educa- 

 tion. Much of the so-called science teaching has exactly 

 the opposite effect to what the Science and Art Depart- 

 ment intended it to have, and the money granted year 

 by year has mostly gone to the pockets of successful 

 crammers, while the honest painstaking teachers have 

 had but a meagre share of the coveted loaves and fishes 

 and a still more meagre share of fame. 



Had Mr. Clements's volume been a solitary instance it 

 would not have merited even a passing notice, but when we 

 remember that it is only a specimen, and probably not the 

 worst, of a rapidly-increasing class, we feel that as a repre- 

 sentative of that class it deserves a fair and serious con- 

 sideration. As some of the essentials of a good text-book, 

 we have enumerated correctness and completeness as to 

 facts and descriptions ; when an author describes any pro- 

 cess he should do it correctly and with sufficient minuteness 

 to enable the student to comprehend every step of it, and^ 

 if he possesses the requisite apparatus, to go through it 

 himself without further aid or direction. We shall quote 

 from the book before us a few paragraphs relating to 

 some of the simpler processes of organic chemistry, and 

 let the reader judge how much assistance a student can 

 derive from them. On pp. 3-13 the author gives direc- 

 tions how to perform "combustions" and the quantitative 

 analysis of organic compounds generally. The engraving 

 of the potash bulbs in Fig. i, p. 4, is certainly misleading, 

 and no one, either from the engraving or the accompany- 

 ing explanation, could ever find out how the CO, finds its 

 way to the bulbs p ; if it was necessary to put in an 

 engraving and a description of it at all, it was certainly 

 quite as necessary that both should be correct and intelli- 

 gible ; at present they are neither. In his description of 

 the method of determining the C and H in an organic 

 compound, the author has hopelessly mixed up two dis- 

 tinct processes, viz., combustion in a closed tube and 

 combustion in a current of air or oxygen. The tube in 

 the engraving is represented as closed at one end, and 

 there is no reference whatever to a tube open at both 

 ends ; consequently we fear that many students would 

 attempt to introduce the platinum boat from the right- 

 hand end of the tube. It may be said that their common 



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