570 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, 
Wellington College, he said: “The first thing for a boy to learn, after 
obedience and morality, is a habit of observation—a habit of using his 
eyes. It matters little what you use them on, provided you do use 
them. They say knowledge is power, and so it is—but only the 
knowledge ‘which you get by observation. Many a man is very 
learned in books, and has read for years and years, and yet he is 
useless. He knows about all sorts of things, but he can’t do them.” 
This is precisely our complaint—the average schoolboy may know a 
good deal about things, but he can’t do them. The ordinary school 
training does not, in fact, develop the “wits,” to use a popular and 
expressive term for the observing and reasoning faculties; but it is 
certain the wits require training. It is because the teaching of 
experimental science tends to develop the wits that those ies us 
who know its power are so anxious for its introduction. 
We must carefully guard against being satisfied with the mere -intro- 
duction of one or more science subjects into the school curriculum: 
some of those who strenuously advocate the introduction of science 
teaching perhaps do not sufficiently bear this in mind. Chemistry, 
physics, &c., may be—and I fear are, more often than not—taught in 
such a way that it were better had no attempt whatever been made to 
teach them. I hold that it is of no use merely to set lads to prepare 
oxygen, &c., or to make experiments which please them in proportion 
as they more nearly resemble fireworks; and it is not the duty of the 
schoolmaster to train his boys as though they were to become 
chemists any more than it is his duty to fit them to enter any other 
particular profession or trade: the whole of the science teaching in a 
school should be subservient to the one object of developing certain 
faculties. Unfortunately, two great difficulties stand in the way at 
present—viz. the want of suitable books and of a rational system of 
teaching science from the point of view here advocated; and the 
requirements of the universities and examining bodies. Both books 
and examinations are of too special a character: they may suit the 
specialist, but do not meet educational requirements. 
Glaring as are the faults in the existing school system, and ‘although 
it rests with the universities and other teaching and examining bodies 
—if the public do not intervene—to prescribe a proper course of 
instruction for potential schoolmasters and to enforce a rational 
system of training all the mental faculties, we science teachers may 
meanwhile do much by introducing more perfect methods into our 
system of teaching. . . . . I know itis rank heresy to say so, 
but I maintain that in future far less time must be devoted to the 
teaching of ordinary qualitative and quantitative analysis, and that 
technical instruction aS now given in these subjects must find its place 
later in the course. Our main object in the first instance must be to 
fully develop the intellectual faculties of our students; to encourage 
their aspirations by inculcating broad and liberal views of our science, 
not an infinite number of petty details. We must not merely teach 
them the principles and main facts of our science, but we must show 
them how the knowledge of those facts and principles has been 
gained; and they must be so drilled as to have complete command of 
their knowledge. ‘The great majority will not be required to perform 
ordinary analyses, either qualitative or quantitative; it will be 
sufficient for them to have gained such an amount of practical 
experience that they thoroughly ginderstand the principles of 
a Loe “seek 2 
