588 



NATURE 



rOcTOBER 22, 189I 



MORE SUGGESTIONS FOR COUNTY 

 COUNCILS. 



County Councils and Technical Education. By J. C. 

 Biickmaster. (London : Blackie and Sons.) 



UNDER the above title Mr. Buckmaster, who for 

 many years has been connected as teacher, lec- 

 turer, and organizer with the Science and Art Depart- 

 ment, gives some statistics relating to technical educa- 

 tion, and his views on the best way of utilizing the funds 

 in the hands of County Councils. We need hardly say 

 that, backed as they are by so long an experience, his 

 opinions deserve the most careful and respectful con- 

 sideration. 



Briefly stated, Mr. Buckmaster believes in class teach- 

 ing as opposed to lectures, and in utilizing as far as 

 possible existing elementary and science and art teachers. 

 " Unless," he says, " the sympathy of teachers and other 

 educationists can be enlisted, the most carefully considered 

 schemes of County Councils can only end in partial or 

 complete failure." Again, 



" Lectures by themselves are never to be highly 

 valued as a means of education. In a lecture on 

 science, to create and sustain an interest, you must 

 be popular, and to do this you avoid the complex 

 difficulties of the science, which are often the only intel- 

 lectual parts of it. . . . Lectures, unless followed up by 

 thought and reading on the part of those who hear them, 

 fail as a means of education, &c., &c." 



All this is excellent, and the warning is useful. But 

 when Mr. Buckmaster comes to the application of these 

 principles he is not quite so happy. For example, he 

 is unjust to the University Extension system, which he 

 does not clearly understand, and treats as though it were 

 mere popular lecturing, like the work of the old Mechanics? 

 Institutes. Now, though we have no belief that the Uni. 

 versity Extension machinery can fill the place of ele- 

 mentary class teaching, we cannot accept the implied 

 suggestion that courses of ten or twelve lectures (often 

 arranged in sequences of two or three sets of twelve 

 lectures), each lecture followed by a class for the more 

 serious students, and by written paper work corrected by 

 the lecturer, and the whole course tested by independent 

 examination, form an engine of instruction scarcely above 

 the level of a clever conjuror's performance. 



His constructive suggestions are, first, to use element- 

 ary teachers to give object-lessons in simple science — a 

 most useful proposal, about to be carried out in various 

 counties as soon as the teachers themselves can be properly 

 trained for the work ; and secondly, to multiply science 

 and art classes. " The best technical instruction for 

 some time will be a wider development and extension 

 of the educational work of the Science and Art Depart- 

 ment by means of night classes and continuation science 

 and art schools." This depends, of course, on the mean- 

 ing to be attached to " development." If it merely means 

 multiplication, the statement is open to serious question. 

 No one can know better than Mr. Buckmaster the special 

 dangers attaching to the system which he advocates — 

 the abuses which grow up round a system which makes 

 the financial success of the class, and usually the salary 

 of the teacher, depend on the result of an examination. 

 In our opinion, the machinery of the Science and Art 

 NO. 1147, VOL. 44] 



Department will long continue to be a most useful and 

 important factor (though not to the exclusion of other 

 agencies) in the development of technical instruction. 

 But the present is the great chance to consolidate and 

 improve, rather than merely extend the work. If the 

 County Council funds are so granted as to correct the 

 evils which inevitably arise out of such a system of pay- 

 ments on results as is adopted by the Department — if its 

 control is used to render more effective the inspection as 

 opposed to the mere examination of science and art 

 classes— then the portion of the grant given to promote 

 the work aided by the Science and Art Department will 

 be well spent. But no claim on the part of this or 

 any other single agency to a monopoly of all technical 

 instruction above the rank of that which can be given 

 by the village teacher can be conceded. Mr. Buck- 

 master does not in so many words make the claim, but 

 he sometimes seems to imply it by minimizing the value 

 of most other experiments which County Councils are 

 attempting. It is virtually a plea for educational bureau- 

 cracy against local experiment. But we have not yet 

 reached the stage, if, indeed, we ever do so, when variety 

 of experiment can be dispensed with. Some of the ex- 

 periments will probably fail. But it is only by wide and 

 free experimenting that the " fittest " will be discovered. 

 Mr. Buckmaster has confined himself, probably on pur- 

 pose, to the elementary branches of technical instruction, 

 and is silent on its higher developments. Manual work 

 he only just mentions, and not with much sympathy. His 

 criticisms on the wood-carving taught by ladies in villages 

 is not, perhaps, too severe ; but it is strange that he does 

 not give a hint that systematic manual training may be 

 (as it has been for a long time in other countries, and 

 lately in our own) made of real educational value. Not 

 a word is said of the worst defect of all in our educational 

 system — the want of good, cheap, secondary schools, 

 which the present grant may do so much to remedy. 



Though, however, Mr. Buckmaster takes a rather 

 cramped and narrow view of the outlook, his pamphlet is 

 full of valuable, if rather partial, ideas. 



The pamphlet opens and concludes with some useful 

 statistical and other information taken from various pub- 

 lications of the National Association for the Promotion 

 of Technical and Secondary Education. Readers who 

 do not know the source from which these pages are 

 derived may be puzzled by a reference to "the Com- 

 mittee " (p. 41), which by some error in editing has been 

 left still standing, without explanation, in Mr. Buck- 

 master's pamphlet. 



\ THE MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 

 Missouri Botanical Garden : Second Annual Report. By 

 William Trelease. Pp. 188; Plates 48, reproduced 

 Photographs 5, and Plan of Garden. (St. Louis, 

 Missouri : Published by the Board of Trustees, 1891.) 



THE Board of Trustees of the Missouri Botanical 

 Garden have instructed the Director to edit for 

 publication each year a volume setting forth the objects 

 of the Garden and the School of Botany, and the results 

 accomplished by each. The first volume of this series 

 was issued in December 1890, and contained an account 



