228 Fourth Conference 



to lose sight of the chief aim of all education, viz., to 

 train students in the habit of doing those things which 

 they do not wish to do. 



There is no real difficulty, in my own experience, in 

 preserving a real interest, even when the students are 

 working at high pressure during the whole of their time. 



Those who come to us are either Training-College 

 students (the Established Church of Scotland) or 

 teachers sent by the Lanarkshire County Council. 

 All are over twenty-one, and both classes contain a 

 large preponderance of women. On the whole we 

 have had 470 students under instruction. The time 

 allowed to us has alway been very much less than we 

 should have liked. Generally we expect fifteen lec- 

 tures of three-quarters of an hour each, fifteen labora- 

 tory attendances of at least two hours to three hours, 

 and five excursions in the country. In fifteen lectures 

 it is quite possible to give a sufficiently good foun- 

 dation for any future work which the students wish to 

 do by themselves, and it is certainly possible to give 

 them an enormous amount of practical suggestions 

 and hints which could not be obtained from any 

 book, or, indeed, in any other way. There is no reason 

 whatever for such lectures to be dry, formal, or wanting 

 in original research. In fact, on this subject a teacher 

 must altogether fail if he follows text-books or the 

 ordinary university courses. It seems to have been 

 suggested that all lectures are necessarily dry, stereo- 

 typed, and dull. Those who have had the privilege 

 of listening to the late Professor Tait, or to Professor 

 James Geikie, must emphatically protest against such 

 a view. There is, of course, no doubt that they re- 

 quire a tedious preparation, much uninteresting and 



