102 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 342. 



the teacher tried to put the student in the 

 attitude of an investigator. He must de- 

 scribe the apparatus — which he has him- 

 self set up — the chemicals and how he has 

 mixed them, the operations he has per- 

 formed ; must trace the phenomena and try 

 to ascertain what the experiment shows, 

 must test his products, and, so far as he is 

 concerned, do real, original work. Finally 

 he must write out in fairly good English 

 all the above operations, observations and 

 results. Later on, when he becomes some- 

 what familiar with the principles of the 

 science, problems of a practical nature are 

 given him to solve — to make given com- 

 pounds, or to separate mixtures. This 

 leads on to qualitative analysis, a brief 

 course in which is quite generally taken now 

 in the high-school, always following general 

 chemistry and often put into a second-year 

 course. 



This accuracy of detail naturally led to 

 two further developments: (1) A logical 

 or scientific sequence of experiments. (2) 

 Quantitative work — which is one of the 

 latest phases of this method. In fact, quan- 

 titative work for beginners, who have not 

 had thorough training in general, quali- 

 tative manipulations, is still a doubtful 

 experiment — one which the colleges, techno- 

 logical and medical schools, are so far an- 

 swering, for the most part, in the negative. 

 Those in favor of the scheme in elementary 

 work reason that it inculcates greater accu- 

 racy and skill in manipulation than mere 

 qualitative work, gives the student an idea 

 of research methods, and makes his work 

 complete. The opponents claim that to a 

 beginner the underlying facts and princi- 

 ples of science are of paramount impor- 

 tance, that the qualitative in evolution pre- 

 cedes the quantitative, and — since time is 

 limited — research methods are better suited 

 to such students as pursue the subject; 

 further. A well-known teacher writes : 

 " The attempts to beat out methods theoret- 



ically correct, the putting quantitative be- 

 fore qualitative and the ignoring of the great 

 primal facts which lead easily into those 

 parts of the subject which concern the 

 great body of men and women, have a 

 tendency to lessen the interest." 



The introduction of the laboratory 

 method presented a new problem. When 

 text-book work was the only feature, every 

 chemistry hour was a reciting period. 

 With the advent of the lecture table came 

 a division of time between demonstration 

 and recitation. The laboratory feature 

 necessitated a further division, involving 

 the question : How much time, relatively, 

 ought to be given to laboratory, to lecture 

 and to recitation ? In the solution of this 

 question there has been no unanimity, 

 rather the greatest diversity, of result, each 

 school with its peculiar environment mak- 

 ing its own answer. In some instances the 

 entire time is devoted to laboratory work, 

 and in such cases the text- book is usually 

 discarded. A new method always runs to 

 extremes in individual cases. As a recent 

 writer says : " Chemistry has suffered from 

 the irresponsible wave of laboratory mad- 

 ness which has swept over the whole 

 educational world. Laboratory work has 

 been carried far beyond its limits, and 

 things have been expected of it which it 

 never did and never can do." It seems 

 safe to believe that the problem will finally 

 resolve itself into a proper equating of the 

 time ratio between text-book, lecture work 

 and laboratory. 



Another outgrowth of the last quarter 

 is the conference, and reciprocal recitation 

 — to coin an expression — in which the stu- 

 dent becomes a questioner and the teacher 

 recites and explains. The great value of 

 this method — which may take up half or 

 the whole of a recitation period — can be 

 revealed only on trial. It shows what the 

 teacher never knows before hand, viz., the 

 standpoint from which a pupil views a sub- 



