OCTpBER 13, 1898] 



NATURE 



575 



Teaching the Teachers. 

 Until the year 1762 the Jesuits had the education of 

 France almost entirely in their hands, and when, there- 

 fore, their expulsion was decreed in that year, it was only 

 a necessary step to create an institution to teach the 

 future teachers of France. Here, then, we had the 

 Ecole Normale in theory ; but it was a long time before 

 this theory was carried into practice, and very probably 

 it would never have been had not Holland d'Erce- 

 ville made it his duty, for more than twenty years, by 

 numerous publications, amongst which is especially to be 

 mentioned his "Plan d'Education, "printed in 1783, to point 

 out, not merely the utility, but the absolute necessity for 

 some institution of the kind. As generally happens in 

 such cases, this exertion was not lost, for, in 1794, it was 

 decreed that an Ecole Normale should be opened at Paris, 

 " ou seront appelds de toutes les parties de la Republique, 

 des citoyens dejk instruits dans les sciences utiles, pour 

 apprendre, sous les professeurs les plus habiles dans tous 

 les genres, I'art d'enseigner." 



To follow these courses in the art of teaching, one 

 potential schoolmaster was to be sent to Paris by every 

 district containing 20,000 inhabitants. 1400 or 1500 

 young men, therefore, arrived in Paris, and in 1795 the 

 courses of the school were opened first of all in the 

 amphitheatre of the Museum of Natural History. The 

 professors were chosen from among; the most celebrated 

 men of France, the sciences being represented by 

 Lagiange, Laplace, Haiiry, Monge, Daubenton, and 

 Berthollet. 



While there was this enormous progress abroad, re- 

 presented especially by the teaching of science in 

 Germany and the teaching of the teachers in France, 

 things slumbered and slept in Britain. We had our coal 

 and our iron, our material capital, and no one troubled 

 about our mental capital — least of all the universities, 

 which had become, according to Matthew Arnold (who 

 was not likely to overstate matters), mere hauls lyc^es, 

 and "had lost the very idea of a real university,"* 

 and since our political leaders generally came from 

 the universities little more was to be expected from 

 them. 



Many who have attempted to deal with the history of 

 education have failed to give sufficient prominence to the 

 tremendous difference there must necessarily have been 

 in scientific requirements before and after the introduction 

 of steam power. 



It is to the discredit of our country that we, who gave 

 the perfected steam engine, the iron ship, and the loco- 

 motive to the world, should have been the last to feel the 

 next wave of intellectual progress. 



.•\11 we did at the beginning of the century was to found 

 mechanics' institutions. They knew better in Prussia, 

 " a bleeding and lacerated mass,"- after Jena (i8o6),King 

 Frederic William III. and his councillors, disciples of 

 Kant, founded the University of Berlin, " to supply the 

 loss of territory by intellectual effort." Among the 

 universal poverty money was found for the Universities 

 of Kcenigsberg and Breslau, and Bonn was founded in 

 1818. As a result X)f this policy, carried on persistently 

 and continuously by successive Ministers, aided by wise 

 councillors, many of them the products of this policy, 

 such a state of things was brought about that not many 

 years ago M. Ferdinand Lot, one of the most distinguished 

 educationists of France, accorded to Germany " a supre- 

 macy in Science comparable to the supremacy of England 

 at sea." 



But this position has not been obtained merely by 

 founding new universities. To Germany we owe the 

 perfecting of the methods of teaching Science. 



I have shown that it was in Germany that we find 



1 " Schools and Universities on the Continent," p. agt. 

 -•"University Education in England, France and Germany," Sir 

 Rowland Blennerhassett, p. 25. 



NO. 151 I, VOL. 58] 



the first organised science teaching in schools. About 

 the year 1825 that country made another tremendous 

 stride. Liebig demonstrated that science teaching, 

 to be of value, whether in the school or the university, 

 must consist to a greater or less extent in practical 

 work, and the more the better ; that book work was next 

 to useless. 



Liebig, when appointed to Giessen, smarting still 

 under the difficulties he had had in learning chemistry 

 without proper appliances, induced the Darmstadt 

 Government to build a chemical laboratory in which 

 the students could receive a thorough practical training. 



It will have been gathered from this reference to Liebig's 

 system of teaching chemistry, that still another branch of 

 applied science had been created, which has since had a 

 stupendous effect upon industry ; and while Liebig was 

 working at Giessen, another important industry was 

 being created in England. I refer to the electric tele- 

 graph and all its developments, foreshadowed by Galileo 

 in his reference to the " sympathy of magnetic needles." 



Not only then in chemistry, but in all branches of 

 science which can be applied to the wants of man, the 

 teaching must be practical— that is, the student must 

 experiment and observe for himself, and he must himself 

 seek new truths. 



It was at last recognised that a student could no more 

 learn Science effectively by seeing some one else perform 

 an experiment than he could learn to draw effectively by 

 seeing some one else make a sketch. Hence in the 

 German Universities the Doctor's degree is based upon 

 a research. 



Liebig's was the fons et origo of all our laboratories — 

 mechanical, metallurgical, chemical, physical, geological,, 

 astronomical, and biological. J. NoRM.\N Lockyer. 

 ( To be continued.) 



OPENING OF THE THOMPSON-YATES 



LABORATORIES AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE^ 



LIVERPOOL. 



T^HE latest addition to the noble series of buildings 

 -*• now fast surrounding the old lunatic asylum in 

 which University College, Liverpool, started work seven- 

 teen years ago is devoted to the Schools of Physiology 

 and Pathology. The professorships in these subjects- 

 were endowed and equipped by the late Mr. George 

 Holt some years ago ; and now suitable laboratories, on 

 a magnificent scale, have been erected by the generosity 

 of the Rev. S. A. Thompson- Yates at a cost of nearly 

 30,000/. 



The building is of Liverpool grey brick and Ruaboii 

 terra-cotta in the renaissance Gothic style. It is L-shaped, 

 one wing extending towards the north, where it joins the 

 pathological museum of the old medical school buildings^ 

 and the other towards the east, the entrance being at the 

 angle where the wings join. There are three floors and 

 a basement. The two upper floors are occupied by 

 physiology, under Prof. Sherrington ; and the ground 

 floor and basement by pathology, under Prof. Boyce. 

 A large lecture theatre, the fine staircase and halls, and 

 a few other apartments for the use of students are commoi> 

 to the two departments. Simplicity of plan has been 

 the aim of the architects (Messrs. A. Waterhouse and 

 Son), and there has been little or no expenditure of 

 space in corridors and passages. As some of the 

 rooms are to accommodate large numbers of workers, 

 and so require to be lofty, while others are the private 

 studies of individuals where a high ceiling would mean 

 waste of space, a free use has been made of the expedient 

 of mezzanines, by which the smaller rooms have been 

 interpolated between the floors. The lecture theatre is- 

 very completely fitted for lantern illustration, including 

 the projection microscope, the chromoscope, the 



