5115 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L, 



on the principle of a possible use being found for it is sheer extravagance, and as 

 much apparatus deteriorates in value upon keeping it is not a defensible policy. 

 Yet, as already stated, one can scarcely tell for more than a week ahead what 

 may be required. _ 



A teacher of science in any school must possess the skill which will enable him 

 to assemble standard units of apparatus in such a way as to make it possible to 

 conduct almost any experiment, and the principle of supplying 6uch standard 

 units has been in vogue since science teaching began ; yet a glance around schools 

 will usually show many quite elementary and more or less clumsy attempts at 

 the setting up of simple apparatus. In other words, the science teacher rarely 

 has found time to acquire the skill necessary to enable him to deal efficiently and 

 neatly with the many and various materials that come under his notice. When 

 he is able to command the services of an expert laboratory attendant his work 

 is easier, but even then his possible experiments are bounded by the skill of his 

 attendant and the apparatus shops. His work is thus frequently confined within 

 limits which are unnecessarily and uneducationally small. 



The remedy is to make all science teachers and all laboratory and lecture 

 attendants pass through a course of instruction in the use of simple tools such 

 as could be supplied to any laboratory, and in the various methods usually 

 adopted in the manipulation of different materials used in the construction of 

 apparatus. It is necessary also for a science teacher to know the properties of the 

 various materials he uses and the limits to which he may strain and torture them ; 

 also his own capabilities in the direction of manipulation. 



This remedy has been applied more or less during the past fifteen or twenty 

 years in certain colleges, but in some cases the object has been defeated by 

 supplying all the materials cut to size, so that only the erection of the apparatus 

 to be constructed fell to the teacher-student. During the past five years, however, 

 the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction in Ireland (which con- 

 trols the science teaching in that country) has made it possible for their teachers 

 to attend a systematic course of training such as that outlined above, and to 

 attain, in the space of a few weeks, a training in the use of tools and materials 

 sufficient to enable them to deal with most of the ordinary work which falls to the 

 lot of the science teacher. 



The course followed is roughly one of a hundred hours, of which less than 

 twenty hours are spent in the lecture-room, the work in the lecture-room being 

 mainly concerned with the reasons for the shapes of tools, the theory of their 

 action, the manner of keeping them in working condition ; the properties of 

 materials and the reasons for the use of various materials for. specific purposes. 

 The Department also includes in its lecture course instruction upon the construc- 

 tion and use of the projection-lantern, upon apparatus and diagram design, the 

 care of tools, apparatus, benches, bottles, and other laboratory appliances, and 

 6imilar subjects. 



The practical work consists of four main divisions — work in wood, metal, and 

 glass accounting for the first three, and a general section following, in which 

 many of the ordinary processes of a physical laboratory are undertaken — pro- 

 cesses which all teachers ought to be able to demonstrate, but which unfortunately 

 are only possible with definiteness and certainty to few. This section includes 

 such work as the copying in plaster or in copper of some small objects, the 

 grinding and drilling of glass, the silvering of glass, cementing of various similar 

 or dissimilar materials together, the cleaning of mercury, the preparation of 

 microscope-slides, lantern-slides, the making of scales upon glass, &c. 



It is not the object of the course to turn out makers of apparatus, and for 

 many purposes it is not necessary that the work done should have any high 

 finish ; it is mainly desired to impart the skill in the handling of materials such 

 as will enable and encourage a teacher to set up his own apparatus in his own 

 way Tor an experiment, and, further, to enab'e him to set out a correct specifica- 

 tion for any instrument he requires and which may be beyond his power to con- 

 struct, for it is always made clear to students that much of the apparatus avail- 

 able for scientific work would not pay a teacher for the making ; his time is more 

 usefully employed in other directions. 



Teachers in Ireland no longer are the only ones to enjoy the privilege of 

 attending such a course, as during the past three years a similar one, of three 



