NATURE 



x6i 



THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 1881 



LECTURES ON TEACHING 

 Lectures on Teaching, Delivered in the University of 

 Cambridge during the Lent Term, 1880. By J. G. 

 Fitch, M.A. (Cambridge: University Press, 1881.) 



OUR review of this new contribution to the now 

 copious and increasing educational literature of the 

 country has been delayed by causes complimentary to its 

 author. The felicity and charm of the style, the freshness 

 of treatment of even hackneyed topics, and the interest 

 and practicalness of the matter, rendered the reviewer's 

 proverbial dipping into a book impossible in this case, 

 and the work had to be read for its own sake as much as 

 for that of criticism. The author has long been known 

 as one of our most earnest practical and enlightened 

 educationists, and though perhaps not a polemical pioneer 

 in the educational field, an advanced, safe, and healthy 

 thinker on the important problems involved. Of this new 

 utterance of her husband, the uxor dilcctissima, to whom 

 the book is curiously but most appropriately dedicated, 

 has no reason to be ashamed, even though it is not the 

 newest poem or novel, and only a prosaic, but by no means 

 prosy, volume of " Lectures on Teaching " — a title, by 

 the way, much too modest for the quality of the book, 

 which should in future editions be exchanged for one 

 more worthily distinctive and more expressive of its 

 contents. 



The occasion of its production is one of no small 

 interest and importance in the history of educational 

 progress in this country. For some years back, there 

 have been made some laudable attempts to secme for 

 education University recognition and standing, by the 

 appointment of Professors of Education. The first 

 practical effort in this direction was made by the College 

 of Preceptors, which had the merit of appointing, in 1873, 

 the first Professor of Education in Britain, the late 

 enthusiastic and enlightened Joseph Payne. This was 

 followed by the establishment of Education Chairs, in 

 1874, in the Universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews. 

 It took some time for our greater conservative Universities 

 to adopt, even in part, such an unwonted innovation, 

 though earnestly and repeatedly pressed to do so in 

 Memorials from the Head-masters of our great Public 

 schools, whom they had trained as scholars but neglected 

 as teachers ; leaving them to gain what professional skill 

 they have, as they themselves confess, at the expense of 

 their pupils. At length, in 1879, Cambridge came to the 

 conclusion that it would no longer be derogatory to them 

 to patronise to some extent the new Science of Education ; 

 and a "Teachers' Training S)'ndicate " was appointed, 

 which issued a scheme of examination in the history, 

 theory, and practice of education, with lectureships on 

 these branches of the subject. The first course was given 

 by the well-known genial educationist, Mr. Quick, on its 

 history ; the second, by Mr. James Ward, on its science ; 

 and the third, by Mr. Fitch, on its practical aspects, which 

 we have now before us. The next step for these Uni- 

 versities to take, which they must — shall we say cordially 

 will ? — take before very long, will be to do for education 

 what has been done for other subjects — to give it full 

 Vol. XXIV. — No. 608 



University status by the appointment of Professors of 

 Education — a step that will do more than aught yet 

 attempted to give teaching and teachers the standing, 

 influence, and emolument to which the importance of their 

 work to national culture and progress justly entitle them 

 from the lovest to the highest ; and a step that will more 

 than repay the Universities themselves, which would thus 

 be entering, as Mr. Fitch well observes, " on an honour- 

 able and most promising field of public usefulness," that 

 will help to " make the work of honest learning and of 

 noble teaching simpler, more effective, and more delightful 

 to the coming generations." 



Though deprecating any claim to be a systematic 

 treatise, or a " manual of method " on the subject, the 

 book traverses the greater part of the general field of 

 inquiry, and to the practical student and teacher will be 

 found more helpful, suggestive, and scientific than more 

 elaborate and pretentious text -books. The work is singu- 

 larly readable, attractive, sound, sensible, and practical, 

 and altogether free from hobby-horsincss. Though sub- 

 ordinating theoretical treatment, Mr. Fitch is, as a rule, 

 scientific in spirit and suggestion ; and when discussing, 

 as he does, controverted questions that generally rouse 

 polemical combativeness, if not bitterness, he does this 

 with so much of the siiaviter, and with such genial per- 

 suasiveness in favour of his conclusions, which are for the 

 most part sound and abreast of recent opinion, that the 

 book is calculated, in an unusual degree, to carry en- 

 lightened conviction on many problems into the conser- 

 vative ranks of University men, still too impervious to 

 change in their traditional views of education. Canvass- 

 ing, as Mr. Fitch does, so many subjects of controversy, 

 it cannot be expected that his conclusions will be generally 

 accepted — on not a few we deem him in error, and should 

 be prepared to join issue ; but they are always so presented 

 as to command, and to gain, the most careful considera- 

 tion and to disarm opposition — an invaluable element with 

 the class he specially addresses. 



The mere headings of the chapters show the interest 

 and extent of the field traversed. We have " The Teacher 

 and his Assistants," in which an inspiring, noble, but far 

 from Utopian, ideal is held up for imitation : " The School, 

 its Aims and Organisation," in which such important 

 questions, as what a liberal education is, what subjects 

 should be taught, and the like, are discussed : " The 

 School-room and its Appliances," where excellent practical 

 suggestions are given towards maldng our schools the 

 healthy, comely, and educative centres they ought to be 

 in any wise community : " Discipline," in which this vital 

 element in school life is treated with admirable spirit and 

 wise counsel, traversing the various disciplinary influences 

 that ought to be brought to bear on the child, before the 

 ultima ratio of corporal punishment is resorted to, which, 

 though not condemning it altogether, he wisely thinks 

 "is almost wholly unnecessary, does more harm than 

 good, and in just the proportion in which teachers under- 

 stand their business, they will learn to dispense with " : 

 "Learning and Remembering," where some sensible 

 practical hints are given as to the use and abuse of that 

 universal school hack, the memory, the treatment of which 

 he rightly considers a very good test of "the difference 

 between skilled and unskilled teaching," though his psy- 

 cholog)' of this so-called faculty is questionable, savouring 



