212 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES, 



was clearly formulated by Spencer in the words, ' Children should be 

 led to make their own investigations, and to draw their own inferences. 

 They should be told as little as possible, and induced to discover as 

 much as possible ' — principles which cover all that is implied in what 

 has since been termed ' heuristic ' teaching. 



Professor Armstrong's particular contribution to educational science 

 consisted in the production of detailed schemes of work in which these 

 principles were put into practice. Ideas are relatively cheap, and it 

 needs a master mind to make a coherent story or useful structure from 

 them. This was done in the courses in chemistry outlined in Reports 

 presented to the British Association in 1889 and 1890, and the effect 

 was a complete change in the methods of teaching that subject. ' The 

 great mistake, ' said Professor Armstrong, ' that has been made hitherto 

 is that of attempting to teach the elements of this or that special branch 

 of science ; what we should seek to do is to impart the elements of 

 scientific method and inculcate wisdom, so choosing the material studied 

 as to develop an intelligent appreciation of what is going on in the 

 world.' One feature of heuristic instruction emphasised by its modern 

 advocate, but often neglected, is that which it presents to the teaching 

 of English. Accounts of experiments had to be written out in literary 

 form desci'ibing the purpose of the inquiry and the bearing of the results 

 upon the questions raised, and wide reading of original works was 

 encouraged. A few years ago English composition was regarded as a 

 thing apart from written work in science, but this should not be so, and 

 most teachers would now agree with the view expressed by Sir J. J. 

 Thomson's Committee on the Position of Natural Science in the Educa- 

 tional System of Great Britain that ' All through the scieirce course 

 the greatest care should be taken to insist on the accurate use of the 

 English language, and the longer the time given to science the greater 

 becomes the responsibility of the teacher in this matter. . . . The con- 

 ventional jargon of laboratories, which is far too common in much that is 

 written on pure and applied science, is quite out of place in schools.' 



When heuristic methods are followed in the spirit in which they 

 were conceived, namelj', that of arousing interest in common occur- 

 rences, and leading pupils to follow clues as to their cause, as a detective 

 unravels a mystery, there is no doubt as to their success. No one sup- 

 poses that pupils must find out everything for themselves by practical 

 inquiry, but they can be trained to bring intelligent thought upon 

 simple facts and phenomena, and to devise experiments to test their 

 own explanations of what they themselves have observed. It is impos- 

 sible, however, to be true to heuristic methods in the teaching of science 

 and at the same time pay addresses to a syllabus. A single question 

 raised by a pupil may take a term or a year to arrive at a reasonable 

 answer, and the time may be well spent in forming habits of independent 

 thinking about evidence obtained at first-hand, but the work cannot also 

 embrace a prescribed range of scientific topics. Yet under existing 

 conditions, in which examinations are used to test attainments, this 

 double duty has to be attempted by even the most enlightened and pro- 

 gressive teachers of school science. There can, indeed, be no profit- 

 able training in research methods in school laboratories under the 



