Mr. Major's Address 159 



way that they can intellectually get round, hy feeling 

 all round, the items dealt with. A flat drawing or 

 ground-plan may be useful afterwards as a mejnoria 

 tecJmica of the subject, but the object itself is at first 

 the lesson itself. 



In examining classes in nature-knowledge I ex- 

 amine from the object as much as possible, and begin 

 by drawing from the class what are the obvious 

 (visible, tangible) properties of the object, before 

 falling back upon mere information tacked by the 

 teacher (and always necessarily loosely tacked) on 

 to the object. Knowledge is to very little extent 

 real knowledge unless it has been acquired by the 

 knowledge-seeker himself It is his eyes and hands, 

 not his teacher's, that must gather up the materials of 

 thought, reason, comparison, discrimination of likeness 

 and difference, and, above all, inferences. 



It does not matter so much what we teach, as how 

 we teach it. Chess is almost as useful as Euclid to 

 strengthen reasoning-power. 



The greatest weakness of elementary instruction is 

 that it is the echo of a book — a small cram-book very 

 often, and I deeply regret that these small cram-books 

 are again coming to the front as of old. And yet the 

 multiplicity of real natural objects that are close to 

 our hands is almost boundless. There is really an 

 embarrassment of riches if teachers were trained ob- 

 servers instead of book-worshipers. A roadside heap 

 of stones, gathered for road-mending; a pebble from 

 stream or sea-shore; a grass plant; a bird's ^^^ or 

 nest; a stickleback or "gold-fish" in a glass jar; and 

 a thousand other objects, are what alone are necessary 

 for illustration of natural laws and processes of life. 



