TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 855 
experiment must next be thought out gradually in every detail. During the 
experiment everything that is noticéable or that happens must be most carefully 
recorded. Finally, the results obtained must be interpreted in the light of the 
question asked, and they must be utilised as stepping-stones towards the further 
prosecution of the inquiry. It is because students so rarely make ‘ experiments’ 
with any clearly conceived purpose in view that we have made so little pro- 
gress hitherto in making ‘science’ an éffective educational discipline. 
Dr. Armstrong dwelt on the impropriety of adopting the Euclidian method of 
stating the answer in advance, so usual among teachers. He insisted on the need 
of writing down as the work proceeds (a) the complete argument on which the 
experiment is based ; (6) everything that is done as it ts done ; (c) the observa- 
tions made ; (d) every inference that can be drawn from the observations, both those 
bearing on the original problem and also those which serve to raise new issues. 
He further insisted that the writing of such records was of supreme value as a 
literary exercise, and that experimental teaching could not be conducted properly 
with the object of giving training in the art of inquiry unless it were combined 
with careful instruction in the art of composition. Taking limestone by way of 
example, he pointed out at length why it should be studied, and how it might be 
studied, following the lines laid down in the well-known British Association 
programmes, which have been more fully developed in his book on the ‘ Teaching 
of Scientific Method’ (Macmillan). 
TUESDAY, AUGUST 23. 
The following Paper and Reports were read :— 
1. Discussion on Methods of Imparting Manual Instruction in Schools. 
Opened by Sir Puttie Maenus, B.Sc. 
It was at the meeting held in Birmingham in 1886, long before the Educational 
Science Section existed, that I had the privilege of first bringing under the notice 
of the Association the subject of manual training as a part of general education. 
Since then great strides have been made. The Association of Manual Training 
Teachers, of which till last year I was President, has done much to improve the 
method of teaching in our public elementary schools. It was, however, to the joint 
committee, composed of representatives of the City Guilds’ Institute and the 
Drapers’ Company, which supplied the funds, and of the late School Board for 
London, which gave the use of its rooms, that the introduction of this subject 
into our schools and its recognition by the Board of Education are mainly due. 
One reason for the rapid appreciation of the value of manual instruction as a 
part of the curriculum of school teaching was that we were fortunate enough to 
adopt from the first in the teaching of the subject a correct method, based on 
sound educational principles. This was not so in science teaching, in which the 
aim of the teaching for many years was information as to facts—facts which 
might be learned from any text-book. Hence we had far less to unlearn in 
manual instruction than we had in science teaching. We had to resist the too 
utilitarian tendency of educational effort a decade since to make manual instruc- 
tion the means of teaching in school a trade; but we did resist it. From the 
first we recognised that such teaching must be a discipline—a means of exciting 
intellectual activity through manual work, and of bringing children’s minds into 
direct contact with real things. Incidental advantages were soon found to follow 
from the methods of teaching first adopted. It was demonstrated as a fact that 
the instruction made all children generally more intelligent, quicker at their 
mental work, and more resourceful ; and whilst the time taken from other studies 
in no way impeded the children’s progress in those studies, but, on the contrary, 
quickened their grasp of new ideas, the special teaching was found to excite the 
interest of such children as showed signs of possessing a particularly lethargic 
