926 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 



■will prosper best who lets none of them drop out of sight. Do not forget, 

 too, that inclination is the moditiable requisite; we can stimulate, and even create 

 it; we can also fatally discourage it. It is only natural education, I still maintain, 

 which can count upon the energetic co-operation of the child. 



On the other hand, if we ignore aptitude, iuclination, and opportunity — if we 

 pour out information upon which the pupil does no work, merely because we 

 think it ought to be good for him, then we have a dull, perhaps a sullen, mind to 

 deal with, which neither will nor can learn to good purpose. The example for all 

 time of artiticial education is, or lately was, the setting of every boy in every 

 grammar school to learn Latin, if not Latin and Greek. 



Those who believe that natural education is at once the most formative and 

 the most productive, that it helps to build up body and mind, that it encourages 

 the acquisition of truly useful knowledge, should attend to one point which often 

 escapes notice. Natural education demands leisure for the pupil. At the present 

 moment the leisure of the pupil has been reduced to a very small amount indeed. 

 We strive for efficiency, for good examination results, for knowledge of useful 

 things. The negligence of the old race of schoolmasters, which winked at 

 monstrous abuses but allowed a certain independent school-life, has been re- 

 placed by zeal and conscientiousness, which occupy every hour, and sometimes 

 treat independent occupations as mere idleness. Long rambles, such as were the 

 delight of my boyhood, when we used to go miles in search of a wasp's nest, are 

 in certain modern schools abolished by compulsory games. Some day or other 

 (the reform will not come in my time) we shall recognise that the chief occupa- 

 tion of the young child should be spontaneous natural play. 



That interesting book called ' Public Education,' now nearly a hundred years 

 old, in which we find a description of the methods practised by llowland Hill and 

 his brothers at Hazelwood and Bruce Castle, is inspired by the desire to make 

 education natural and not merely artificial ; so is that older and still better book, 

 'Edgeworth on Practical Education.' There are modern English schools which 

 give fair opportunity for natural education. I pass over some, perhaps many, 

 out of mere ignorance ; but I will name two which I happen to know — Bedales 

 School and the Friends' School at Bootham, York, both of which have discovered 

 how to combine natural education with efficiency. 



Heuristic Methods. 



Ur. Armstrong's heuristic method is well known in this section. He tells us 

 that neither the name nor the thing is altogether new, and the same may be said 

 of nearly every educational expedient. Promising schemes are proposed, tried 

 perhaps on a small scale, and dropped, often for lack of enterprise on the part of 

 the teachers, and years after someone discovers them again. Dr. Armstrong tells 

 us' where he got the name, and quotes a passage from Edmund Burke, which 

 clearly describes the method. It is now a good many years since 1 saw Mr. 

 Heller give several lessons on this plan in elementary schools in London, and was 

 then permanently convinced of the real value of the heuristic method. I only 

 wish that we had a score of such, each worked out as carefully as Dr. Armstrong's 

 model. 



The method need not be confined to experimental science, nor to science at all. 

 I have attempted something of the same kind in elementary biology. Why should 

 not teachers of history carry out a little historical research with the help of 

 an upper form.^ Suppose that the subject chosen was English town and country 

 life in the sixteenth century. Plarrison's Description of England, Shakespeare's 

 plays, Walton'.s Lives, some of the modern books which collect the testimony of 

 foreign visitors during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., Spenser's View 

 of the state of Ireland, and Hume Brown's Scotland before 1700 are, let us 

 suppose, accessible to the class. Useful materials from these and any other 

 sources might be arranged in a card-index. Co-operation is eminently desirable, 



' The Teaching of Soierttifie Method, ^-e., 190.S, p. 235 



