606 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 
to have to do; for one thing, being much more exhausting. He cannot shirk his 
duties and sit down waiting for students to come to him. When teaching 
degenerates into mere maintenance of discipline, everything being regarded as 
right if the pupils are quiet and seem to be diligent, it is necessary to make a 
radical change, usually a dismissal of the teacher. It used to be that a science 
master gave an experimental lecture, and afterwards he had a very easy time, 
letting the students follow a set routine in the laboratory, but this will no longer 
do; such attendance at lectures and laboratory work means poor mental training. 
Now, I would work out a system for English, English composition, English 
poetry and prose, geography, history, and other English subjects, on the lines that 
we have found so successful in Natural Science. An enormous change has been 
effected during the last fifteen years in the teaching of mathematics. The older 
methods always failed with the average boy or man. The new system, which is 
sometimes called Practical Mathematics, is based on the idea that students shall 
work experimentally, just as they do in their Natural Science. It is found that 
their eyes and faces are bright, they work hard, and they evidently enjoy their 
work. We have merely introduced common sense into the teaching; we have 
approached the student’s mind from other points of view than the old academic 
one, from the only side on which he has ever been taught anything—the side of 
observation and trial. He weighs and measures. He does experimental 
geometry and mensuration, and is assisted by abstract reasoning just to the 
extent which interests him; he makes plans of the school buildings and maps 
of the district; algebra becomes interesting when in co-ordination with experi- 
ments in mechanics and physics; trigonometry becomes interesting in the actual 
measurements of heights and distances. The infinitesimal! calculus is bound to 
be a weapon which any boy of fifteen easily gets to understand by actual use 
when he is dealing with dynamic experiments. In fact, the physical and 
mathematical laboratories are in one, and the same teacher takes charge of both 
subjects and teaches them as much as possible together. 
Furthermore, in the preparation of an account of an investigation there are 
practical lessons in English composition ; there is sketching, and also more careful 
drawing with instruments, and the finding of empirical laws, using squared paper. 
In such a school every subject is being taught through all the other subjects ; 
every boy is doing the work in which he is greatly interested, and no boy is 
attending merely and putting in time. Furthermore, out of school-time there 
might be the usual restrictions as to ‘ bounds,’ but otherwise I would let a boy do 
pretty much ashe pleased. ‘Prep.’ at boarding schools and home lessons for boys 
at day schools are to be quite discredited. I would—it may cost a little more 
money—allow a boy to work in the workshops or laboratories or library or in his 
own room or common rooms at anything he pleases in this off-time, and I would 
give him advice only if he asks for it. If I saw a boy reading a penny dreadful 
T would not stop him; nor if he were reading Paine’s ‘ Age of Reason,’ or any 
wretched treatise on psychology or logic. I would in no way discourage a boy 
from acquiring a greater and greater fondness for reading, knowing that this is 
the foundation of future happiness and education, and that no harm which he 
can get from his reading is of the slightest importance in comparison with the 
importance of our main object. As he grows up he will become less and less 
fond of the sixpenny magazine. The school can at its best be merely a prepara- 
tion for the lifelong education of the man. I would not keep the boy at school 
after-sixteen. Let him then go into business, or to a science or technical school, 
or to the University. } : ; ; 
Unfortunately for the present no University will take men without an 
entrance examination involving other languages than English. This is a great 
evil, but it is not going to last much longer. In the meantime eu competent, coach 
will prepare any student to pass the necessary examinations (say, in Latin and 
Greek) in three months, even if there is much other work to do. This is not a 
matter of learning any classics; it is rather the manufacture of some contempt 
for the classics, a necessary evil for the present. Indeed, for the present, but 
let us hope not for long, there are many other necessary evils. We have to find 
competent enthusiastic teachers, we have to persuade governing bodies to pay 
salaries two or more times as-great as at present, we have to make parents see 
that some mental training and fondness for reading and writing are really of 
value, and that Tom Sawyerism about Latin is only childish. 
