216 SECTIONAL>DDRESSES. 



outlook and develop the capacity of the minds which receive it, and 

 not be determined by the facilities it offers for examinational tests. 



A third reason for the relative absence of general scientific education 

 in schools is the demands which the teaching might make upon appa- 

 ratus and equipment. Simple quantitative work in physics, chemistry, 

 or botany can be done in the laboratory with little apparatus, and a 

 single experiment may occupy a pupil for several teaching periods. 

 To attempt to provide the means by which all pupils can observe for 

 themselves a wide range of unrelated facts and phenomena belonging 

 to the biological as well as to the physical sciences is obviously 

 impracticable, and would be educationally ineffective. Experi- 

 ments carried out in the laboratory should chiefly serve to train 

 and test capacity of attacking problems and arriving at precise results 

 just as definitely as do exercises in mathematical teaching. But 

 knowledge by itself, whether of quantitative or qualitative character, is 

 not sufficient, and it becomes power only when it is expressed or used. 

 Every observation or experiment carries with it, therefore,' the duty of 

 recording it clearly and fully in words or computations, or both, and 

 if this is faithfully done laboratory work of any kind may be made an 

 aid to English composition as well as an incentive to independent inquuy 

 and intelligent thought. 



It is very difficult, however, to devise a laboratory course of generiil 

 science which shall be both coherent and educative; shall be, in other 

 words, both extensive in scope and intensive in method. I doubt, 

 indeed, whether any practical course can perform this double function 

 successfully. Probably the best working plan is to keep the descriptive 

 lessons and the experimental problems separate, using demonstrations 

 in the class-room as illustrations, and leaving the laboratory work to 

 itself as a means of training in scientific method or of giving a practical 

 acquaintance with a selected series of facts and principles. The main 

 thing to avoid is the limitation of the science teaching ta what can be 

 done practically ; for no general survey is possible under such condi- 

 tions. Even if two-thirds of the time available for scientific instruction 

 be devoted to laboratory experiment and questions provoked by it, the 

 remaining third should be used to reveal the wonder and the power and 

 the poetry of scientific work and thought ; to be an introduction to the 

 rainbow-tinted world of Nature as well as provide notes and a vocabulary' 

 which will make classical and contemporary scientific literature intel- 

 ligible. If there must be a test of attention and understanding in con- 

 nection with such descriptive lessons, because of the spirit of indifference 

 inherent in many minds— young as well as old — let it be such as will 

 show comprehension of the main facts and ideas presented and know- 

 ledge of the meaning of the woi'ds and terms used. In this wayij 

 descriptive lessons may be used to provide material for work and active 

 thought, and light dalliance with scientific subjects avoided. 



It may be urged that no knowledge of this kind has any scientific^ 

 reality unless it is derived from first-hand experience, and this is no | 

 doubt right in one sense ; yet it is well to remember that science, like art, 

 is long while school life is short, and that though practical familiarity) 

 with scientific things must be limited, much pleasure and profit can be 



