SCIENCE IN SECONDARY SOHOOLS. 137 
discovery of the principles involved in the typical triumphs of applied 
science. In this method Archimedes’ Principle is regarded not as a 
‘ property of fluids’ nor as means of determining specific gravities, but 
as the principle that explains the flotation of ships; the study of the 
processes by which metals are won from their ores displaces chemical 
inquiries of academic interest; to study electricity is to analyse the 
working of the electric bell, the dynamo, the installation for wireless 
telegraphy. In other words, such topics as these, instead of being 
regarded as ‘ applications’ of scientific principles, to be taught if time 
and the demands of a public examination allow, are treated as the foci 
of interest from whose study the pupil’s knowledge of the scientific 
principles is to emerge. 
Lastly, we must recognise that the ‘ systematising motive ’ is one 
that has long been worked in our schools beyond its natural strength. 
Not infrequently teachers of some experience express the doubt 
whether boys and girls are capable of studying science before the age 
of fifteen or sixteen. Still more often university professors of science 
express the wish that their students might come to them with minds 
unperverted by the teaching of the schools. Whatever truth these 
pessimistic suggestions contain is probably accounted for by the failure 
of teachers to mould their instruction in conformity with the natural 
development of children’s minds. The young man (or woman) who 
teaches science in schools from the point of view of the university often 
achieves with the best intentions a disastrous amount of harm. The 
mischief will not be prevented until it is universally recognised that 
the logical theory of a science should be not the terminus a quo of 
instruction, but the terminus ad quem. 
VY. EXPERIMENTAL AND DESCRIPTIVE TEACHING. 
Methods of Instruction.—School instruction in science has, in 
England, taken the form of individual practical work, laboratory 
demonstrations, and lectures. In some cases laboratory work is carried 
on independently of the lectures as regards subjects, while in others it 
is arranged to run parallel with the theoretical course. Frequently 
all lessons are given in the laboratory by means of demonstrations 
and discussions in conjunction with practical work, and there is little 
lecturing in the usual sense of the term. ‘The basis of the instruction 
in science in schools where this plan is adopted is the laboratory work, 
and points are explained or elaborated as they are reached in the 
practical course. 
Another plan is to make the laboratory work ancillary to the lectures, 
and to regard it as a necessary means of making the pupil understand 
clearly some points dealt with in them or met with in his reading. 
The Unique Value of Laboratory Work.—The primary value of 
laboratory work in schools is that it brings the pupil into direct contact 
with reality through his own senses and his own manipulation. In 
this way only can he learn to see things in their right proportions, to 
distinguish the essentials of an experiment from the non-essentials, 
and obtain a firm grasp of a scientific subject. Reading about an 
