Febrvaky 2-2, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



199 



from the fulness of his own experience, and 

 I must leave this subject to those who have 

 liad experience in conducting large labora- 

 tories crowded with j)upils. 



My own experience has been with a few, 

 unfortunately with very few jmpils of the 

 highest gi-ade. and then, skipping all mter- 

 mediate gi-ades, next with pupils who have 

 come to me uninformed or worse ofl' in being 

 burdened with undigested information. The 

 first of course had almo.st unlimited time 

 and ample facilities, and, therefore, do not 

 come into consideration here. 



My classes have varied from ten to five 

 hundred, but unluckily the binding force of 

 the conditions under which instruction was 

 given did not vary in the same proportion. 

 I have always been obliged to give lessons 

 to the whole class at once, and the time has 

 been invariably limited to comparativelj' 

 few hours. 



I'nder these somewhat difficult conditions 

 it became necessary to adopt some system 

 that would include, as far as pi-acticable at 

 least, tlie idea of self culture, so that the 

 pupils would at anj- rate not be led into the 

 belief that they knew how to handle and 

 use a subject when they rcallj' had only ac- 

 qufred some informatitm and the power to 

 read about it more intelligently, and perhaps 

 also the ability to recognize certain facts of 

 which no educated man should be ignorant. 



Pennit me to exercise one of the usual 

 privik'ges of every speaker and enlarge 

 somewhat the boundaries of this discussion 

 by asking you to consider Laboratory Teach- 

 ing as but one branch of object teaching. 

 We shall then be able to regard it from the 

 point of view of its essential character and 

 see more clearly its aiiplication to cases in 

 which large clas.ses must be dealt with in 

 lecture rooms capacious enough to hold from 

 eighty to five hundred or even more persons. 

 It may then l)e said, tliat in proportion as a 

 lecturer follows objective methods and clings 

 to the habit of making his audience see. 



each for himself or herself, the objects he is 

 talkmg about, in just the same proportion 

 is he trying, at least, to educate them ac- 

 cording to the ideal standards. 



Some twenty-four years ago the Teachers' 

 School of Science was begun in Boston and 

 it became necessary to decide how the les- 

 sons should be conducted. To be faithful 

 to the ideals of science and handle a class 

 as large as could be comfortably seated in 

 the lecture room of the Boston Society of 

 Natural History was the practical problem, 

 and secondarily how to do this so as to lead 

 to the final adoption of natnral history 

 teaching in the public schools. 



Two necessary conditions were assumed 

 as the l)asis of the system adopted : first, the 

 actual study of specimens, and second, the 

 subsequent possession of these Ijy the teach- 

 ers. This system was inaugurated with a 

 class of eightj% and was found to be practi- 

 cable with five hundred persons, and suc- 

 ceeded as well as could be expected with 

 such large audiences. The lectui-ei-s em- 

 ployed b}- the school, which subsequently 

 came for the most part under tlic patronage 

 of the Trustee of the Lowell Institute. Mr. 

 Augustus Lowell, w^ere instructed to con- 

 form to the requirements mentioned above, 

 and the sj-steni has not been materially al- 

 tered since the beginning, except in one of 

 these requirements. Of late years it has 

 not been deemed necessary to have very 

 large classes, nor to distribute specimens in 

 such profusion as during the earlier years 

 in which hundreds of thou.sauds had been 

 given awaj-. The details aj-e very simple. 

 p]very person in the audience is furnished 

 with a certain number of specimens. These 

 are placed by assistants upon temporary 

 tables opposite each chair befbi-e the les.son 

 begins. The tables for large classes were of 

 the .simplest des<'ription, mere boards with 

 a slight moulding to keep objects from roll- 

 ing ofl'. They were made in sections and 

 were fastened to the floor by iron stanch- 



