October 20, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



435 



that of arousing interest in common oeeur- 

 renees, 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 

 supposes 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 de- 

 vise experiments to test their own explanations 

 of what they themselves have observed. It is 

 impossible, however, to be true to heuristic 

 method's 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 an- 

 swer, and the time may be well spent in form- 

 ing habits of independent thinking about evi- 

 dence obtained at first-hand, but the work can- 

 not also embrace a presorited range of scien- 

 tific topics. Yet under existing conditions, in 

 which examinations are used to test attain- 

 ments, this double duty has to be attempted by 

 even the most enlightened and progressive 

 teachers of school science. ■ There can, indeed, 

 be no profitable training in research methods in 

 school laboratories under the shadow of exam- 

 ination syllabuses. Where there is freedom 

 from such restraint, and individual pupils can 

 be permitted to proceed at their own speeds in 

 inquiries initiated on their own motives, suc- 

 cess is assured, but in few schools are such con- 

 ditions practicable; so that, in the main, strict 

 adherence to the heuristic method is a policy 

 of perfection which may be aimed at but is 

 rarely reached. 



A necessary condition of the research meth- 

 od of teaching science is that the pupils them- 

 selves miist consider the problems presented to 

 them as worth solving, and not merely labora- 

 tory exercises. Moreover, the inquiries under- 

 taken must be such as can lead to clear conclu- 

 sions when the experimental work is accurately 

 performed. It may be doubted whether the 

 rusting of iron or the study of germination of 

 beans and the growth of seedlings fulfils the 

 first of these conditions, and the common adop- 

 tion of these subjects of inquiry is due to 

 custom and convenience rather than to recog- 

 nition of what most pupils consider to be worth 

 their efforts. It needed a Priestley and a 

 Lavoisier to proceed from the rusting of iron 



to the composition of air and water, and even 

 such an acute investigator as Galileo, though 

 well awar'e that air has weight, did not under- 

 stand how this fact explained the working of 

 the common suction pump. If research meth- 

 ods are to be followed faithfully, and what 

 pupils want to discover afcout natural facts and 

 phenomena is to determine what they do, then 

 teachers must he prepared to guide them in 

 scores of inquiries both in and out of the 

 laboratory. Under the exigencies of school 

 work it is impracticable to contemplate such 

 procedure, and all that can be usefully attempt- 

 ed is to lead pupils to read the book of Nature 

 and to understand how difficult it is to obtain a 

 precise answer to what may seem the simplest 

 question. 



The mission of school science should not, 

 indeed, be only to provide training in scientific 

 method — valuable as this is to every one. 

 ' Such training does cultivate painstaking and 

 observant habits, and encourages independent 

 and intelligent reasoning, but it can not be hel-d 

 in these days that any one subject may be used 

 for the general nourishment of faculties which 

 are thereby rendered more capable of assimi- 

 lating other subjects. Modern psychology, as 

 well as everyday experience, has disposed of 

 this belief. If the doctrine of transfer of 

 power were psychologically sound, then as good 

 a case could be made out for the classical lan- 

 guages as for science, because they also may be 

 taught so as to develop the power of solving 

 problems and of acquiring knowledge at the 

 same time. "When, therefore, advocates of par- 

 ticular courses of instruction state that they do 

 not pretend to teach science, but are concerned 

 solely with method, they show unwise indiffer- 

 ence to what is known about educational values. 

 Locke's disciplinary theory — ^that the process 

 of learning trains faculties for use in any fields, 

 and that the nature of the subject is of little 

 consequence — can no longer be entertained. It 

 has now to be acknowledged that information 

 obtained in the years of school life is as im- 

 portant as the process of obtaining it; that, in 

 other words, subject matter as well as the doc- 

 trine of formal discipline must be taken into 

 consideration in designing courses of scientific 

 instruction which will conform to the best edu- 

 cational principles. 



