October 7, 1909] 



NA TURE 



429 



tj ensure a provision of higher agricultural education 

 for farmers in all parts of the country, a national 

 system that is not dependent on the caprice or the 

 poverty of any county council. 



The novel feature in the memorandum besides the 

 Inter-Departmental Committee is a proposal to create 

 a Rural Education Conference, consisting of repre- 

 sentatives of the County Councils' Association, the 

 Agricultural Education Association, and other agri- 

 cultural organisations, with certain oflicers of the two 

 Boards. Such a consultative committee seems to 

 smaclc of the Board of Agriculture's favourite attitude 

 of asking the farmers what it can do for them, but 

 perhaps the influence of the Board of Education, 

 which takes a less humble view of its own expert 

 qualifications and powers to give a lead, will supply 

 the stiffening and find a means of translating the 

 suggestions of the conference into practice. 



SCIENCE TEACHING IN GERMAN SCHOOLS. 



THE habit of self-depreciation, or at any rate the 

 latest manifestation of it, which is now so pro- 

 minent a feature of our national life, can be traced 

 to its beginning in a general dissatisfaction with our 

 system of education. At a time when there was no 

 misgiving as to the superiority of our navy, when 

 our commercial supremacy was still unchallenged, 

 and when no foreigner dared to be our rival in the 

 world of sport, it was nevertheless felt that in the 

 science of education we had much to learn from 

 abroad. If our secondary schools, especially the great 

 " public schools," were allowed to have been success- 

 ful in the formation of character, yet the intellectual 

 equipment of those who passed through them was, 

 and still is, held by many to be miserably 

 inadequate. Germany, on the other hand, is 

 regarded as the land, par excellence, where not 

 onlv the schoolmaster knows and does his business, 

 but where a parental Government has elaborated an 

 almost ideal system of mental training. It is in- 

 teresting, therefore, to hear that in one important 

 province of school work — the teaching of natural 

 science — there is another side to the picture. 



Dr. Erich Leick i finds it necessary to bring before 

 the minds of the German public certain points that 

 with us for some years have been received as axiom- 

 atic, and are no longer discussed. In England we 

 believe and act on the doctrine that no scheme of 

 education, even for the children of well-to-do classes, 

 should omit all reference to the living world of 

 nature. It is, moreover, generally agreed that courses 

 of practical lessons where common objects are studied 

 bv each pupil form the best means whereby the power 

 of observation, clearness of expression, and the induc- 

 tive methods of science can best be acquired, let alone 

 a general interest and love for living things. Yet 

 in Germany up till now, so we learn from Dr. Leick, 

 natural-history lessons, if given at all in the secondary 

 schools, have been of the old didactic kind, in which 

 the teacher lectures almost entirely for one, or at most 

 two, school hours in the week, and practical work is 

 conspicuous for its absence. This seems to hold good 

 for other branches of science, especially in the classical 

 gvmnasia, where, as Dr. Hoppe 2 tells us, practical 

 work in physics is not insisted on, and is done only by 

 " Freiwillige." His pamphlet, in fact, is written to 

 show that some boys will do laboraton,' work out of 

 school if allowed, and he gives hints as to the best 

 e.xercises for such volunteers. 



1 "Die binlogischen Schiilerubungen. '* By Erich Leick. (Leipzig: 

 Quelle and Meyer, iqog.) 



- " Freiwilli^ie Schiileriibungen in Physik in humanistischen Gymnasien." 

 Ey Prof. Dr. Edmund Hoppe. (Leipzig ; Quelle and Meyer, igog.) 



KO. 2084, VOL. 81] 



It need scarcely be said that thoughtful teachers 

 in Germany are dissatisfied with this state of things, 

 and it is gratifying to read in Dr. Leick's account 

 that the example of England is gradually affecting 

 German science teaching. In fact, anyone who has 

 read Mr. O. H. Latter's article on the teaching of 

 science in secondary schools, recently published as an 

 educational pamphlet by the Board of Education (see 

 Nature, August 12, p. 192), may well rub his eyes 

 with astonishment at the antiquated systems still pre- 

 vailing in many of the German Gymnasien and Real- 

 gymnasien compared to those of our own schools. Is 

 it too much to hope that our improved methods of 

 teaching may bring forth fruit in the next generation, 

 and do much to remove the reproach we are con- 

 stantly hurling at ourselves that we are an unscientific 

 nation ? 



The limits of this notice forbid a discussion of either 

 of these interesting pamphlets. Suffice it to say that 

 Dr. Leick, after a review of the gradual introduction 

 of inductive methods into the study of natural science, 

 describes the ups and downs that biological teaching 

 has met with in Germany, and acknowledges the part 

 played by the authorities of Hamburg and Bremen 

 in insisting on natural history being taught in their 

 schools. He shows clearly enough the kind of mental 

 training that biology alone can give, although he is 

 no revolutionari,' who would sweep away humane 

 letters out of the field. Especially noteworthy is his 

 tactful reference to the problem of sex, how it can 

 best be dealt with by natural-history lessons in the 

 hands of a sympathetic teacher. Doubtless the details 

 of his scheme invite criticism, especially the use of 

 the compound microscope by young pupils, but they 

 offer food for thought to ail who have to teach his 

 subjects. 



Dr. Hoppe 's little work may be well offered to those 

 classical masters in our public schools, if such there 

 be, who still believe, like Darwin's headmaster, that 

 natural science is a waste of time, and have forgotten 

 in their zeal for grammar the true spirit of inquiry 

 of the ancient Greeks. Teachers of practical physics 

 mav gain some useful hints from his list of exercises. 



But, as has already been suggested, the chief interest 

 to British teachers in these pamphlets lies in the fact 

 that thev give us glimpses of what we should not 

 have suspected in so scientific a country as Germany. 

 They confirm the present writer's impression after 

 hearing a science lesson in a German Realschule, that 

 the bovs were standing aside and w-atching rather 

 than taking off their coats and joining in the work 

 themselves. M. D. H 



ANTON DOHRN. 



THE whole biological world will feel a pang of 

 grief at the news of the death of Anton Dohrn, 

 the founder and director of the Zoological Station of 

 Naples. It is true that he had accomplished the great 

 work which he set himself forty years ago, and had 

 seen the projects and dreams of his youth fully realised — 

 and more than realised. I met Dohrn first in 1870 at 

 Liverpool, when Huxley was president of the British 

 Association, and in May and June of the next year 

 went, after a winter spent in Leipzig, to join him at 

 Jena, where he was a " privat-docent " in zoology. 

 He was then thirty years of age, and had done some 

 excellent embryological work on the Crustacea, in 

 furtherance of which he had passed some months at 

 Naples and Messina. His father, with whom I later 

 spent some weeks at Naples, was a very remarkable 

 man, one of the iron-willed, somewhat grim type of 

 North Germans, a handsome old gentleman, known 

 throughout Europe as a great collector of Coleoptera, 



