NATURE 



THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 1902. 



A GERMAN VIEW OF ENGLISH SCHOOLS. 

 Der Natur-wissoucliaftUche Untcrricht in England., 

 insbesondere in Physik tind Chetnie. Von Dr. Karl T. 

 Fischer. Pp. viii + 94. (Leipzig : Teubner and Co., 

 1901.) Price mk. 3"6o. 



THIS work treats of the various methods of, and pro- 

 vision for, teaching science, principally physics, in 

 English schools. The author, after a preliminary visit 

 to this country in 1897, was commissioned by the 

 Bavarian Government to spend six months in studying 

 the efforts made in England to introduce the study of 

 science into schools. The variety of organisation which 

 exists in England lends itself to educational experi- 

 ments, and the preference for boarding-schools, where 

 the efforts of the teachers are not interfered with by 

 parental care, often eliminates a disturbing cause which 

 might influence the results of the experiment. It is 

 remarked, that in comparison with continental schools, the 

 school fees are enoimcusly high ; but, without reference 

 to the necessities of the case, the parent is often solaced 

 and his pocket relieved by the bestowal of scholarships 

 upon boys capable of excelling in examination. 



The author appears to have sampled the schools fairly 

 well. Besides visiting many universities and university 

 colleges, he saw the Manchester Municipal Technical 

 School ; the Technical Institutes at Salford, and at 

 Birmingham and Dublin ; the Girls' Central Foundation 

 School ; schools at York, Darlington and Leeds ; the St. 

 Dunstan's College, Catford Bridge ; Tunbridge School ; 

 Clifton College, and Harrow ; besides some smaller 

 schools. The system of object lessons is described, 

 and details of the syllabuses for elementary physics and 

 chemistry in elementary schools are set forth. Similar 

 details are 'given of the teaching in preparatory schools 

 and in typical grammar schools, as well as in public 

 schools. The work of the London polytechnics is 

 sketched. The author contrasts the German technical 

 institutes with these, not wholly to the advantage of the 

 English institutions. The statistics of the Science and 

 Art Department are quoted, as are also its programmes. 



The author has been wrongly informed that chemical 

 laboratories in Great Britain have only of recent years 

 been open to students. Prof Thomas Thomson's 

 chemical laboratory at Glasgow and Prof Hope's labo- 

 ratory of "natural philosophy" at Edinburgh were 

 available at the beginning of the nineteenth century ; 

 and in England, Prof Turner's laboratory was advertised 

 at least as early as 1834. The laboratory of the Pharma- 

 ceutical Society is of about the same age. 



After quoting from Helmholtz, Tyndall, the late Prince 

 Consort and Huxley, it is suggested that the effect of 

 classical studies is to influence the imagination, that of 

 science the understanding, and that the latter is to be 

 awakened only through experimental acquaintance with 

 the facts of science ; and in England, in contrast with 

 most German schools, the end is gained by laboratory 

 practice. This, of course, can be achieved only by 

 making each student carry out the same operation at the 

 NO. 1691, VOL. 65] 



same time ; in other words, by laboratory drill, and the 

 system has been carried to a high pitch of perfection. In 

 many schools the so-called "heuristic" method is 

 adopted, according to which children make discoveries 

 under leading strings. A typical syllabus of the methods 

 of inducing children to make such discoveries is given 

 in full. It would be, perhaps, too much to ask that those 

 who inculcate such methods should first have practised 

 what they preach ; but when it is remembered that it 

 took the best part of two centuries, and the ablest minds 

 of many nations, to discover the composition of air and 

 of water, it is doubtless hardly to be expected that either 

 young children or their teachers would gain much by 

 this method of teaching and learning. The training of 

 science teachers in England is described, and the 

 methods of South Kensington and its imitators are 

 treated of; the cost of apparatus, too, receives ample 

 notice. 



Recent criticism of the " heuristic " system in Eng- 

 land is, as proved by ample quotations, not favourable ;. 

 those who have tried it have had to modify it greatly. 

 Indeed, in the reviewer's opinion (who committed an 

 indiscretion in the same direction in 1882), the conclu- 

 sions are necessarily drawn from far too restricted pre- 

 misses. While very clever lads are interested, they do 

 not, nevertheless, gain the advantages which might be 

 expected from a consideration of the experiments which 

 they make ; and the average student of seventeen or 

 eighteen is simply a machine and his mind a fog — alL 

 that he learns is manipulation, and even that is faulty. 



The conclusion of the book is an attempt to indicate 

 what the English think of the German system and 

 what the Germans hold concerning English methods. 

 For the last, it might have been well to have waited for 

 a second edition, after the present one had made the 

 Germans better acquainted with recent developments 

 of scholastic attempts in England ; for, on the whole, 

 the author has given a very unprejudiced and correct 

 account of his subject. 



But many Germans have already made up their minds 

 on the general question. One often hears a German 

 professor say that he prefers a pupil to come to him 

 ignorant of the subject he has to study, but well drilled 

 in classics and mathematics. Indeed, a prominent 

 English teacher of science confessed to Dr. Fischer that 

 he preferred to teach boys trained on the " classical 

 side," who had specialised in science later, to those 

 trained exclusively on the modern side ; the words are 

 quoted in English : "They prove better, being of higher 

 standard in character." As the late Prof Fitzgerald 

 once remarked, in arguing in favour of the retention of 

 Latin in schools: "There is no other subject in which 

 it is possible to set so many small problems all within 

 the reach of a boy's intellect." But the problems of 

 science, unless they are confined to those of mechanics, 

 in the solution of which mathematics may be made to- 

 bear its important share, are too subtle for the young 

 mind, as indeed the teacher would find who endeavoured 

 to instruct a class in ethics or in jurisprudence, both 

 subjects well deserving of man's attention. One must 

 ask — to what end is all this energy directed ? Is it to 

 educate citizens or discoverers ? If the former, then the 



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