144 ON SCIENCE AND ART 



perficial and curious only, soon becomes minute, serious, 

 and practical." 



Ladies and gentlemen, I could not have chosen better 

 words to express in fact, I have, in other words, ex- 

 pressed the same conviction in former days what the 

 influence of scientific teaching, if properly carried out, 

 must be. 



But now comes the question of properly carrying it 

 out, because, when I hear the value of school teaching 

 in physical science, disputed, my first impulse is to ask 

 the disputer, "What have you known about it?" and he 

 generally tells me some lamentable case of failure. Then 

 I ask, "What are the circumstances of the case, and how 

 was the teaching carried out?" I remember, some few 

 years ago, hearing of the head master of a large school, 

 who had expressed great dissatisfaction with the adop- 

 tion of the teaching of physical science and that after 

 experiment. But the experiment consisted in this in 

 asking one of the junior masters in the school to get 

 up science, in order to teach it; and the young gentleman 

 went away for a year and got up science and taught it. 

 Well, I have no doubt that the result was as disappoint- 

 ing as the head master said it was, and I have no doubt 

 that it ought to have been as disappointing, and far more 

 disappointing too; for, if this kind of instruction is to 

 be of any good at all, if it is not to be less than no good, 

 if it is to take the place of that which is already of some 

 good, then there are several points which must be at- 

 tended to. 



And the first of these is the proper selection of topics, 

 the second is practical teaching, the third is practical 

 teachers, and the fourth is sufficiency of time. If these 

 four points are not carefully attended to by anybody 

 who undertakes the teaching of physical science in 



