lii REPORT — 1867. 



the cleverer boys. The teaehiug must he based on personal examination 

 of flowers, assisted by diagrams, and everything like cram strongly dis- 

 couraged. 



Mechanics are found rarely to be done -well by those who are not also the 

 best mathematicians. Eut it is a subject which in its applications interest 

 many boys, and would be much better done, and would be correspondingly 

 more profitable, if the standard of geometry and arithmetic were higher than 

 it is. The ignorance of arithmetic which is exhibited by most of the new 

 boys of fourteen or fifteen would be very surprising, if it had not long since 

 ceased to surprise the only persons who are acquainted with it ; and it forms 

 the main hindrance to teaching mechanics. Still, under the circumstances, 

 the results are fairly satisfactory. 



The geological teaching need not be discussed at length, as it is temporary, 

 at least in the middle school. Its value is more literary than scientific. The 

 boys can bring neither mineralogical, nor chemical, nor anatomical know- 

 ledge ; nor have they observed enough of rocks to make geological teaching 

 sound. The most that they can acquire, and this the majority do acquire, 

 is the general outline of the history of the earth and of the agencies by 

 which that history has been effected, with a conviction that the subject is 

 an extremely interesting one. It supplies them with an object rather than 

 with a method. 



Of the value of elementary teaching in chemistry there can be only one 

 opinion. It is felt to be a new era in a boy's mental progress when he has 

 realized the laws that regulate chemical combination and sees traces of order 

 amid the seeming endless variety. But the number of boys who get real 

 hold of chemistiy ft-om lectures alone is small, as might be expected from the 

 nature of the subject. 



Of the value of experimental teaching in physics, especially pneumatics, 

 heat, acoustics, optics, and electricity, there can be no doubt. Nothing but 

 impossibilities would prevent the immediate introduction of each of these 

 subjects in turn into the Hugby curriculum. 



Lastly, what are the general results of the introduction of scientific teach- 

 ing in the opinion of the body of masters ? In brief it is this, that the school 

 as a whole is the better for it, and that the scholarship is not worse. The 

 number of boys whose industry and attention is not caught by any school 

 study is decidedly less ; there is more respect for work and for abilities in 

 the different fields now open to a boy ; and though pxirsued often with great 

 vigour, and sometimes with great success, by boys distinguished in classics, 

 it is not found to interfere with their proficiency in classics, nor are there 

 any symptoms of overwork in the school. This is the testimony of classical 

 masters, by no means specially favourable to science, who are in a position 

 which enables them to judge. To many who would have left Rugby with 

 but little knowledge, and little love of knowledge, to show as the results of 

 their two or three years in our middle school, the introduction of science 

 into our coiu'se has been the greatest possible gain : and others who have 

 left from the upper part of the school, without hope of distinguishing them- 

 selves in classics or mathematics, have adopted science as their study at the 

 Universities. It is believed that no master in Eugby School would wish to 

 give up natural science and recur to the old cui'riculum. 



