APPENDIX 



SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS 



A good " method" for any subject in school, and for the affairs of 

 life generally, attains the ends desired with a minimum of waste in 

 time and effort. In school work the teacher's personality and prepara- 

 tion, the varied experiences and natures of pupils, and the different 

 conditions under which instruction must be given, all enter into the 

 teaching problem as variable factors. Any one best way of teaching 

 a secondary school science is out of question. "Diversity in method 

 but unity in aim" may well be a motto for science teachers. Never- 

 theless, until through much experience a science teacher establishes a 

 procedure peculiarly his own, yielding better results than any other 

 ways employed, it is well to follow plans found satisfactory by others. 



In his own class work the author seeks to keep before the minds of 

 prospective teachers that the teaching process is something more than 

 a mere discussion of any group of facts, however great their values as 

 knowledge material. It is of primary importance that pupils be 

 trained to acquire facts for themselves, and that they become able to 

 discriminate in the relative worth of these facts. A natural spirit of 

 inquiry concerning the significance of nature's ways is thus stimulated 

 and directed. 



Teaching conditions will commonly make necessary the use of a text 

 as the chief source of information for pupils since it gives relationships 

 of greatest educational worth likely to be foreign to their thought, and 

 conclusions of utmost importance not likely to be reached by them. 

 But it is the author's belief that large emphasis should be laid upon 

 laboratory procedure in the teaching of General Science. There is a 

 wide difference in educative values for the beginner in sciences between 

 what he learns through experiments and through the experiences of 

 life, and what he gets from books alone. To make beginning work in 

 science a study of books only is contrary to the spirit of the work, and 

 destructive of its ends. Later in the school course, with acquired 



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