THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD WITH CHILDREN. 57 

 THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD WITH CHILDREN. 



Br HENRY LINCOLN CLAPP. 



AT a recent meeting of prominent educators in Boston to con- 

 sider means of promoting work in elementary science, a 

 well-known professor of science said that there was danger that 

 college professors would make out a scheme for teaching science 

 and impose it upon the elementary schools ; that the work was 

 likely to be begun at the wrong end. 



This led another member to say that not a little danger was 

 to be apprehended from the scientists themselves, because many 

 of them taught as if the scientific method demanded that they 

 should begin with the ultimate, undecomposable constituents of 

 things. There was danger that they would hold to their own 

 conceptions of elements and ignore the child's elements. There 

 was a difference of opinion among their pupils, who became teach- 

 ers, as to what elementary science meant. Not a few held that 

 science was classified knowledge and but little else, and that no 

 lesson could be a science lesson unless the objects studied were 

 selected in a natural sequence. He added that children are mid- 

 way between profundities and sublimities, that they know no 

 more about nitrogen than about ether in stellar space, and that 

 they should neither be dragged down nor up to satisfy the de- 

 mands of some one's so-called scientific method. They have their 

 own starting points, and those should be taken by the teacher. 



To this the professor heartily agreed, as did all the others who 

 openly expressed an opinion. Likewise, many other teachers of 

 science readily agree with the points named, when they simply 

 talk about them, but practically deny them in their teaching, for 

 a considerable time at least. It is noticeable that the systematic 

 plans, which they put on paper easily enough at the outset, under- 

 go much modification in course of time as they work with large 

 classes of children. In some unaccountable way the laboratory 

 methods with which they are acquainted prove disappointing 

 when tried with children. 



The method of beginning to teach science with ultimate unde- 

 composable elements, and "building up" step by step, with com- 

 plete sequences and fine inferences, exhibits one phase of science 

 work, especially that done in scientific schools by adult students. 

 In the case of many teachers it seems to furnish all the fascina- 

 tions and advantages of a thoroughly logical method, and to be in 

 perfect consonance with the educational principle, " From the 

 known to the unknown " ; but there seems to be some unreason- 

 able bias or ignorance of facts in the interpretation of the prin- 

 ciple as applicable to children. This interpretation is apparently 



VOL. XLIV. 5 



