June 24, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



911 



prove the statement of the teacher or the 

 text. Because there was so much that was 

 bad in reliance upon authority in older 

 types of education, it is felt that science 

 must have none of this, but must accom- 

 pany everything by rigorous proof. Fol- 

 lowing this method at its worst, the pupil 

 is stimulated into a condition of perpetual 

 doubt. He meets every statement with a 

 but, and has rather the air of believing 

 that some scientific charlatanry is being 

 imposed on him. This is wrong; science 

 does not have this attitude of perpetual 

 doubt. It requires the most rigorous proof 

 from discoveries of new things, but if each 

 of us had demanded ocular demonstration 

 at each step in our advancing knowledge, 

 we should probably still be somewhere in 

 th€ realm of descriptive inorganic chem- 

 istry. Moreover, it is a serious scientific 

 mistake to let the pupil think that a single 

 experiment performed under the ordinary 

 condition of the beginner's laboratory 

 proves much of anything. If it does, the 

 speaker has seen many curious things 

 proved in his time. Let us be frank : these 

 experiments show at best the line of 

 thought by which the proof is obtained. 

 They illustrate the proof— they do not 

 give it. 



Nor does the theory that the pupil 

 should, in the laboratory, rediscover the 

 fundamental truths of the science, give us 

 a right basis for experimental work. Fol- 

 lowed to the extreme, this method soon 

 reduces itself to an absurdity. Take, for 

 example, the experiments of Lavoisier, 

 which afford such an excellent starting 

 point in the teaching of the subject. The 

 pupil is given some metals and a balance, 

 and is supposed, in an hour and a half, to 

 rediscover what it took the best minds the 

 world then possessed several centuries to 

 accomplish. The fact the pupil's labora- 

 tory record, duly attested by the teacher, 

 indicates that he independently accom- 



plished this prodigious feat is a comment 

 on the system. All that is done in this 

 method at its best, is the arousing of the 

 pupil's curiosity, which is later gratified by 

 judicious suggestions at the proper moment 

 from the teacher. There is no rediscovery ; 

 the line of thought has simply been re- 

 traced, and the big steps have been taken 

 by the teacher. To be a discoverer you 

 must be the author of your own curiosity. 

 Another trouble with this method is that 

 once committed to it the teacher is driven 

 to curious round-about expedients to pre- 

 vent the pupil's having knowledge in ad- 

 vance of the thing he is going to see. There 

 are hundreds of instances where the pupil 

 should have this knowledge in advance. 



The speaker is more and more convinced 

 that while the laboratory should to a cer- 

 tain extent seek to accomplish the things 

 which the holders of two points of view 

 consider desirable, its real purpose is to 

 afford illustrative material, and by illus- 

 trative material he means that which will 

 give concrete ideas — images— of things and 

 processes. One might read hundreds of 

 pages about chlorine, but if he had never 

 seen it he would never know it. This is 

 the great work of the laboratory method, 

 to teach things and not literal symbols for 

 them. We should seek this end, and let 

 other considerations give way to it. 



And we shall not neglect to exercise the 

 pupil's scientific imagination. Chemical 

 thinking requires this faculty. After he 

 has been well grounded in the method of 

 the laboratory, we shall want the pupil to 

 learn to foresee chemical possibilities. The 

 progress of the science has been by the 

 working together of experiment and imag- 

 ination, the one reacting upon the other 

 and each suggesting in turn new steps in 

 the advancing knowledge. 



THE CLASS-ROOM ASPECT OP THE COURSE 



It is no longer being framed exclusively 



