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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII. No. 1114 



advanced courses, lectures are of great 

 value. They give a general view of the 

 territory as a whole, they distinguish the 

 more important from the less important 

 items, and they enable the student to con- 

 duct his own private study of the subject 

 with intelligence. I am referring mainly 

 to the elementary course for freshmen, 

 where not one member of the class in twenty 

 has ever studied in the true sense, or has 

 any knowledge of how to study. It is a 

 part of the benefit he gets from the course 

 that he learns how to study and acquires 

 the necessary habits. Listening to lectures, 

 in such a case, if the lectures are well con- 

 structed, only deludes him into thinking 

 that he has fully grasped the subject, and 

 prevents him from studying. Additional 

 class-exercises given by assistants and sub- 

 ordinate instructors do not help the situa- 

 tion materially. Often the assistants do 

 not keep in close touch with the mode of 

 presentation of the lecturer. Always the 

 students feel that, since assistants handle 

 this work, it must be less important, and 

 so it suffers in effectiveness. After trying 

 both plans, it will be found that incom- 

 parably better results are obtained by giv- 

 ing two or more sections, of thirty to forty 

 students each, to a competent instructor, 

 and letting him conduct the whole work of 

 each section. The lessons are assigned in 

 advance, and due preparation is insisted 

 upon. 



There are other disadvantages of the 

 lecture method for freshmen. The lec- 

 turer must adjust his speed to that of the 

 slower, if not the very slowest members of 

 the class, although many of its members 

 could follow equally well if the pace were 

 tripled. With the slower students spend- 

 ing more time in preparation, and this and 

 the other variable factors thus relegated to 

 the home study, the class becomes more 

 uniform, and either twice as much ground 



can be covered in the hour, or the ground 

 can be covered twice as thoroughly, accord- 

 ing to the nature of the topic. 



That the student has thus acquired a 

 more thorough foundation in chemistry, 

 and that he has learned how to study, are 

 both of great advantage when the next 

 course is taken. When the lecture method 

 has been used, the students have still to be 

 taught the necessity for continuous study 

 and how to do it, and progress in the next 

 course is slow. Then also, the fleeting im- 

 pressions, detained temporarily by a few 

 days of violent but superficial study just 

 before the examination, have almost en- 

 tirely evaporated, and overlapping and 

 repetition of all the necessary facts and 

 principles is an absolute necessity. For 

 this reason, also, much time is lost. Effi- 

 ciency demands that something of perma- 

 nent value be accomplished each year, and 

 there is every reason against postponing 

 the application of efficient methods to the 

 second year. 



Again, questioning shows at once which 

 points have been understood by all, and 

 which points have remained unclear, and 

 the time is spent on the latter. Also, the 

 recollection of past topics, when the need 

 of applying them arises, can be tested, mis- 

 understandings can be recognized and re- 

 moved, and lapses of memory can be rem- 

 edied. The method finds out infallibly 

 what is needed, and how much in each case 

 is needed, and permits the doing of pre- 

 cisely what is necessary. The process in- 

 volves continual measurement of the exist- 

 ing results. A lecturer can only guess at 

 what is needed, and how much of it, and 

 must necessarily be more or less in error 

 on every occasion. The method advocated 

 has for the chemist the attraction of being 

 quantitative and, with practise, the experi- 

 mental error becomes negligible. 



Still again, since the lectures are sys- 



