498 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 



schools the essential feature of elementary education should be the 

 practical studies, whether in connection with the work of the shop, the 

 field, or the home. 



Speaking roughly, the child's time would be about equally divided 

 between practical manipulative work and the ordinary lessons in reading, 

 writing, and reckoning. This, however, does not meaii that what is 

 known as the half-time system, by which the child spends half-time in 

 school and half-time in the commercial shop, is to be commended. On 

 the contrary, such an arrangement interferes with the discipline of school- 

 work and in most instances over-exerts the child at an age when his 

 strength should be carefully husbanded. Moreover, the shop-work cannot 

 be correlated, as in the school it should be, with his ordinary lessons. 

 Indeed, it is desirable that the instruction he receives in the three R's 

 should have a bearing upon his practical work, and should be intimately 

 associated with his surroundings and Lis everyday life. In our Report 

 of 1906 it is stated that the 'faults inherent in our present system of 

 elementary education would be to a great extent removed if practical 

 studies involving hand- work and simple experimental methods of acquiring 

 knowledge were made an essential part of the teaching.' In the Appendix 

 to that Report it is shown how lessons in arithmetic should be founded 

 on actual measuring and weighing, and co-ordinated with the teaching of 

 experimental science. Among the many important recommendations of 

 that Sub-Committee — one of the 'fundamental principles'^ — was that 

 ' so far as possible all reasoning in arithmetic should be from the concrete 

 to the abstract, and that pupils should learn by the manipulation of 

 objects ; and that all rules should represent results of experience.' In 

 the Appendix dealing with nature-study it is stated : ' The experimental 

 teaching in school is easily linked to the outdoor life of field and hedge- 

 row with which the country children are familiar.' The Sub-Committee 

 wisely condemns the working to any definite syllabus. 'A syllabus, 

 they say, may be useful as a humble servant, but it is a very bad 

 master.' 



In my Presidential address to this Section last year I urged that in our 

 elementary schools ' the child should receive less formal teaching, that 

 opportunities for self-instruction through outdoor pursuits, manual 

 exercises, and the free use of books should be increased ; and that as far 

 as possible the teacher should keep in view the process by which in 

 infancy and in early life the child's intelligence is so rapidly and mar- 

 vellously stimulated.' 



To day a report of considerable interest on the teaching of elementary 

 experimental science will be considered. The Report has been drawn 

 up by Mr. Heller, the Secretary of our Committee, with the assist- 

 ance of the Sub-Committee appointed to consider this important branch 

 of elementary education. The Report very properly refers to the suc- 

 cessful efforts of Professor Armstrong during the last twenty years to 

 improve the method of science teaching in our schools. It emphasises 

 the contention of the Committee that the spirit of scientific inquiry must 

 pervade our school teaching if effect is to be given to the educational 

 reforms which we have recommended. In France, the necessity of some 

 such fundamental change in the method of instruction is also recognised. 

 At the recent meeting of the French Association for the Advancement 

 of Science, Professor Paul Appell, of the Sorbonne, took as his subject, 

 ' The teaching of the sciences and the formation of the scientific spirit.' 



