88 EEPOET— 1888. 



beginners cannot be trusted witli balances sufficiently delicate to be of 

 much value. The stereotyped "test-tubing" course examination of 

 simple salts and mixtures is certainly a very inadequate laboratory 

 course taken by itself; but it has, I believe, its advantages for school 

 purposes in teaching care, order, and cleanliness, and it serves well for 

 the middle classes of the school if properly supplemented by class- 

 teaching, in which the chemical actions concerned in the testing are 

 carefully considered.' 



LXXII. ' Chemistry cannot properly be taught apart from physics ; 

 there is a physical side to every chemical phenomenon. Lecture work 

 should precede laboratory work, and continue pari passu with it. 

 Analysis rationally (not mechanically) taught is an excellent mental 

 training. The two should be closely correlated ; exercises should be 

 given in the laboratory preparatory to or suggested by the subjects 

 treated in the lectures, and facts learnt in the laboratory should be 

 turned to account in the lectures. The teacher must not be tram- 

 melled by text-books : these must be his instruments, not his mastei's. 

 Quantitative treatment of subjects in the lectures should be introduced 

 as far as possible from the first, and as pupils advance they should be 

 trained individually in the use of the balance. Numerical exercises 

 based on (not as a substitute for) lecture demonstration help to give 

 fixity and precision to ideas. Pupils should be trained to think out in 

 their note-books the connection between experimental demonstration 

 and theory, and not have notes dictated to them to be committed to 

 memory. Their knowledge should be tested by frequent short examina- 

 tion papers.' 



LXXIII. ' With regard to the practical work in the laboratory, the value 

 of which cannot be over-estimated as a means of bringing a boy into real 

 touch with his bookwork and developing in him those valuable qualities 

 of patience, accurate obsei'vation, and powers of deduction, so especially 

 necessary to the student of science, analyses of complicated mixtures 

 not found anywhere in the universe are no longer now considered as the 

 object to be aimed at. But there is still too much tendency to regard mere 

 analysis as the aim and object of laboratory work. Rather should a boy 

 be introduced to a progressive course of work which illustrates the more 

 important principles of chemistry, and so be enabled to test the truth of 

 these for himself Here especially a good text-book of practical work is 

 required, as a busy teacher finds it so difficult to get time to devise as 

 well as supervise. Such a course of work must necessarily be limited in 

 many schools, owing to the want of sufficient apparatus or the short houre 

 of work. But still something may be done in this direction, and the 

 mental training will not only be of infinitely more value to the special 

 student, but also to the ordinary boy, who will not be much the wiser for 

 having gone through a course of simple and complex analysis only. I 

 think your Committee might do much towards smoothing the path of 

 teachers by drawing up a memorandum addressed to the head-masters of 

 schools suggesting points for their consideration, and asking them to meet 

 the Committee's views on the subject as far as lies in their power.' 



The Committee feel that these reports have put them in possession 

 of the actual facts connected with the teaching of chemistry in schools, 

 and have made it clear that something should be done in the du-ection 

 of promoting a more uniform and satisfactory treatment of the subject. 



