21 



NA TURE 



[June 28, 1894 



exercise them then that they suffer atrophy. The so-called 

 science introduced into a few schools in answer to the 

 persistent demands of its advocates has been in most cases 

 a shallow fraud, of no value whatever educationally. Boys 

 see oxygen made and things burnt in it, which gives them 

 much pleasure ; but, after all, this is but the old lesson 

 learning in an interesting shape, and has no superior ^i/Htu/fV/;.!/ 

 effect. I would here repeat what I have recently urged else- 

 where, that in the future all suhjicts must be taught scientifically 

 at school, in order to inculcate those habits of mind which are 

 termed scientific habits ; the teaching of scientific method — not 

 the mere shibboleths of some branch of natural science — must he 

 insisted on. No doubt some branch of chemistry, with a due 

 modicum of physics, &c., is the subject by means o( which we 

 may best instil the scientific habits associated with experimental 

 studies, but it must be the true chemistry of the discoverer, not 

 the cookery-book receipt pseudo-form which has so long usurped 

 its place. Whatever be taught, let me repeat that mere 

 repetition work and lesson learning must give place to a system 

 of allowing children to do things themselves. Should we 

 succeed in infusing the research spirit into our teaching generally, 

 then there will be hope that, in the course of a generation orsn, 

 we shall cease to be the Philistines we are at the present time ; 

 the education given in our schools will be worthy of being 

 named a " liberal education " which it never will be so long as 

 we worship the old world classical fetish, and allow our schools 

 to be controlled by those who reverence this alone, having never 

 been instructed in a wider faith. 



.-Ks regards our college courses, I see no reason to modify the 

 views eipressed in my address to the chemical section of the 

 British .Association at Aberdeen in 1SS5 ; on the contrary, the 

 experience I have since gained as a teacher and e.xaminer has 

 served only to strengthen them and lo convince me of the 

 paramount necessity of a very radical change in our system of 

 instruction, and I rejoice at the increasing evidence of a slate of 

 unrist both at home and abroad. The " thorough " course of 

 qualitative analysis which it has long been customary to impose 

 at a very early period of the student's career must, I venture to 

 think, be relegated to near its close ; this course certainly has 

 not the effect of producing competent analysts, and but too often 

 reduces those who toil through it to the dead level of machines ; 

 in hundreds of cases I have seen students, as it were, hang up 

 their intelligence on the clotbcs-pcg outside and enter the 

 examin.ation room masked with a set of analytical tables, through 

 which alone they allow themselves to be actuated, and to whicli 

 they render the b'.indest obedience. ijualilative analysis 

 actually requires the fullest exercise of the mental faculties as 

 well a; considerable manipulative skill. By introducing this 

 branch of study at too early a period we force our students to 

 act as machines, inasmuch as they do not, and cannot, know 

 enough to work intelligently ; we are but trying to make 

 them run before they have learnt lo walk. Even when the 

 intcraclions on which qualitative analysis is based arc fully 

 studied, and the equations relating thereto are conscientiously 

 written out, the result is not much better, owing to the slight 

 importance of so many of the interactions apart from (heir 

 technical application in analysis, and especially on account of 

 our ignorance of the precise nature of many of the inleichanges 

 of which we avail ourselves: the persistent misrepresentation 

 of (acts which such a course encourages is, in my opinion, one 

 of its worst features. 



I believe that in the near future our students will first be set 

 to solve problems, each in its way a little research, and involv- 

 ing much simple quantitative work ; they will thus be taught 

 chemical method, or, in other words, lite art oj discovery. They 

 will then be taken through a course of quantitative exerciser 

 with the object of making them acquainted, by direct contact 

 with the factn, wiih the fundamental principles of our science, 

 which are but loo rarely appreciated at the present day. After 

 this, they will seek to acquire proficiency in quantitative analysis 

 and in the art of making preparations ; and subsequently they 

 will give sufficient attention lo the study of physical properties 

 lo enable them to appreciate the physico-chemical methods of in- 

 ' "h are now of such importance. The study of qualita- 

 - in detail will be left to the last, .as being ancmincnily 



' ilijccl. Meanwhile, by attendance at lectures, 



by reaijing carefully chosen works of a kind altogether ditTcrcnt 

 from the soul-deslroying text-books we now possess, and espe- 

 cially by the study of classical models in chemical literature, 

 ihcy will have acquired what is commonly spoken of as theo- 



NO. 1287, VOL. 50] 



retical knowledge, but too often regarded by us as of secondary 

 importance, and which it is so difficult to make Englishmen 

 realise means a proper understanding of the subject. Students 

 so trained — imbued from the outset, even from early school days, 

 with theresearch spirit — will at all times be observant and critical, 

 nay, even logical : dogmatic teaching will cease to have any 

 charm for them : they will actually take deep interest in their 

 studies — a result devoutedly to be hoped for, as nothing is more 

 galling to the teacher at the present day than the crass indiffer- 

 ence of the average student and his refusal to give attention lo 

 anything unless it will pay in an examination. At the close of 

 such a course, the student will be thoroughly prepared lo under- 

 take original investigation, distinctly with the object of exhibit- 

 ing his individuality and originality, and not, as at present, wilh 

 the object of acquiring for the first lime an insight into ihe 

 methods of the investigator ; he will thus be spared the un- 

 pleasant discovery which the advanced student now too often 

 makes that his early training has unfitted him, rather than 

 prepared him, for the task of original inquiry. 



But to attain to this happy state it will be necessary that school 

 education be " rationalised" and improved, as I have already 

 ndicated ; that the material placed at our disposal be of far 

 higher average qualiiy than heretofore ; and that the period of 

 study be lengthened. 



As it offers but few prizes and unfortunately has no sinecures 

 — which, however objectionable from an abstract point of view, 

 are actually of the greatest service to many causes — chemistry 

 has hitherto failed to attract much ability. Very many com- 

 mence its study because they have an idea that chemists are 

 always making interesting expetimenls of the firework order 

 such as the conventional lecturer shows to a popular audience, 

 and when the drudgery of actual practice is discovered by the 

 young worker to be something very different from the rosy 

 picture which such displays had excited in his mind, it often 

 turns out that a mistake has been made in the choice of a 

 career ; ^uch mistakes will occur less frequently when our 

 schools are so conducted that we shall be able to find out what 

 our boys and girls are fit for. Too often those who lake 

 up the study of chemistry are destitute of the mental 

 ability required to comprehend so dilhcull and wide a sub- 

 ject, even if possessed of considerable manipulative skill ; 

 very many of these never can rise to the dignity of chemists, 

 and it is clear that in the future some disunction must be 

 made between cultured chemists and those who are 

 but mere skilled workmen in some special branch of the subject ; 

 even " analyst " is too broad a term, in many cases ; " tester" 

 might, perhaps, be coined for the purpose. When we teachers 

 aie in a position to advise a parent that his son has not the 

 making ol a chemist in him, but that he would do well as a food 

 tester, manure tester, or iron tester, for example — and the ailvice 

 is understood and appreciated — we shall be relieved of much 

 anxiety. We have to bear in mind Huxley's remark — thai the 

 future ol the country depends, in industries as in everything 

 else, on gelling our capacities to the lop and, if possible, send- 

 ing our incapacities lo the bottom. Infinite mischief has been 

 done in this country by the intrusion into our industries of large 

 numbers of men dubbed chemists, who have no right whatever 

 to the name — from no fault of their own, but owing to their 

 imperfect training, and more especially the ignorance of 

 employers. Experience has shown only too fully that no one 

 has derived any real advantage from this slate of alVairs. We 

 may hope for better things in the future, especially if our 

 colleges generally are led to impose an entrance examination. 

 I am satisfied, from Ihe experience that we have had at the 

 City and Guilds of London Central Technical College, that 

 it is of ulmost importance that those who are to study chemistry 

 should at least have acquired a sound elementary knowledge of 

 mathematics ; that those »ho prove to be salislactory students of 

 cheiiiislty are almost invariably those who are fairly proficient in 

 mathematics, and vice versa. "It is almost impossible to 

 become a chemist in less than three or four years of constant 

 application." (Author's preface to Lavoisier's " Klements of 

 Chemistry," English translation by Kerr, 5lh ed. 1802.) Such 

 being the opinion nigh on a century ago, what must our view 

 now be? And yet there is a strange illusion abroad that a 

 three years' course suffices to make a bad who has had no previous 

 training whatever in scientific method a "full blown" chemist, 

 worlhy of considerable hire : It is often heart-rending to the 

 teacher 10 see lads of great promise forced out into the world] 

 largely by this prejudice, just at the most critical period of their 



