898 Science-Teaching in the Schools. 
been so strongly felt by many scientific men, that they have 
despaired of any successful science-teaching in the schools till a new 
generation of teachers can be raised up. “ Better no teaching at 
all than poor teaching,” is the principle on which they feel them- 
selves reluctantly compelled to advocate the postponement of a 
reform whose need none can feel more strongly than they. But I 
believe the worst teaching we are likely to get is better than none. 
Very poor teaching of science will at least serve to keep before the 
mind of the child the idea that there is an external world which is 
worthy of attention and study. Better that many errors should be 
learned, than that the child should grow up without thinking of 
nature at all. No habitude of mind that is likely to be generated 
by poor teaching can be so bad as the habitude of stolid indiffer- 
ence which is the natural result of the present system. If we wait 
for teachers well prepared, before we introduce science-teaching, we 
shall wait indefinitely. Teachers will prepare themselves after a 
fashion to teach whatever they are required to teach. No way of 
making a boy swim has ever been found so effective as putting him 
into the water. 
There are books in abundance (and the number is constantly 
increasing), from which a teacher possessed of a fair degree of men- 
tal activity can get suggestions which will enable her to doa limited 
amount of science-teaching soundly and well. Paul Bert’s “ First 
Steps in Scientific Knowledge” is an admirable guide for teachers 
of elementary science. Morse’s “First Book of Zoology,” and 
Winchell’s “Geological Excursions,” are books in which acknowl- 
edged masters of science have shown how science may be taught to- 
the young. The series of scientific tracts for teachers now being 
published under the auspices of the Boston Society of Natural His- 
tory are good, as judged from both the scientific and the pedagogi¢ 
standpoint. Worthington Hooker’s books of science for children, 
though now somewhat behind the times, are still attractive and 
helpful books. And the teacher who cannot find something to 
interest the youngest in Johonnot’s series of natural history readers, 
with their delightful blending of fact and fancy, the science and the 
poetry of animated nature, is stupid indeed. 
The teaching of science in the lower schools can be considerably 
helped by the teachers in the high schools. In most high schools 
it is practicable to obtain the services of one or more teachers who 
