ON STUDIES MOST SUITABLE FOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 501 



Report of the Sub-Cuvimittee on Elementary Experimental Science. — Members : 

 Professor H. E. Armstrong, Mr. Hellee {Secretary), Dr. Kimmins, a7id 

 Professor Smithells. 



Twenty Years of Progress. 



This branch of instruction in primary schools has been the subject of 

 inquiry within recent years by two Committees of the Association. The 

 fundamental principles that should guide the teaching of elementary 

 experimental science were clearly enunciated in the 1889 and 1890 

 Reports of the Committee of Section B on the teaching of chemistry. 

 The experience of the past fifteen years tends to emphasise rather than 

 to modify the recommendations of those Reports. During this period a 

 remarkable transformation has taken place in the teaching of elementary 

 science in this country, traceable in its origin to the 1889 and 1890 

 Reports and to the indefatigable efforts of Professor Armstrong and 

 other members of that Committee to achieve reform. In place of a large 

 number of alternative specific subjects, none of them really fundamental 

 in character, it is now insisted that there should be one general intro- 

 ductory course, indoctrinating that alphabet of scientific method and 

 knowledge upon which the intelligent study of all specific sciences is 

 based. The Reports directed attention to the overwhelming importance of 

 method in instruction by insisting that mental training and the formation 

 of accurate habits of observation, of work, of reasoning, and of descrip- 

 tion were at the early stage of education of far greater moment than 

 the accumulation of facts or the ability to answer examination questions 

 on these facts. The deliberate intention to achieve these ideals must 

 lie behind all teaching of elementary science. To accomplish such ends 

 it was found necessary to recommend a complete change in the methods 

 of instruction commonly practised and in the attitude of the teacher 

 towards his pupils and his subject. The ' results system ' of the ' Science 

 and Art Directory ' and the Board of Education's ' Code ' had, after 

 twenty years, well-nigh killed the art of elementary teaching, the learning 

 of rules and half-understood facts having become general. The method 

 of experimental inquiry is the only natural method of gaining a know- 

 ledge of scientific facts but such a method is the very antithesis of the 

 didactic method of instruction too generally in vogue. 



The practical method of inquiry now known as ' heuristic ' has been 

 defined as 'carefully directed inquiry.' Instruction should take the form 

 of the experimental solution of a series of problems arranged in rational 

 sequence. The motive for the experiment must be the outcome of 

 skilful teaching, in which the teacher has led his pupils from the known 

 to the unknown and to a clear conception of the problem to be solved ; 

 the experiment should not be merely an occasional effort to substantiate 

 one of the many facts that the teacher has told his class. 



Teaching in which experimental results are to foi'm the basis of 

 reasoning and to be regarded as suggesting new problems should involve 

 precision ; the facts must at least be true or the method is obviously of 

 no more value than those it is intended to supplant. Measurement may 

 be the basis of experiments and quantitative thinking should always be 

 encouraged. 



The Reports referred to have profoundly influenced directly and 

 indirectly the science teaching in secondary schools. Well-equipped 



