SCIENCE TEACHING. 571 
analysis; that they shall have learnt to appreciate the sacredness 
of accuracy ; and that they shall have acquired sufficient manipulative 
skill to be able when occasion requires to carry into execution the 
analytical process which their text-books tell them is applicable, and 
even, if necessary, to modify the process to suit circumstances. . 
The necessity for some change must, I venture to think, be patent to 
all thoughtful teachers, and especially to those who are called upon to 
fulfil the painful duties of an examiner. The railway book-stalls have 
made us acquainted with “Confessions” of all sorts, but if the “ Con- 
fessions of an Examiner” were to be written they would be far more 
heartrending than any. The examiner in chemistry, let him go where 
he will, scarcely dares to ask a question to which the answer cannot 
be directly read out from a text-book. He will be told “that such 
and such a compound is formed by the action of so and so upon so 
and so,” but he will usually find blank ignorance of the phrase “by 
the action of,” and as to the mode of performing the operation. The 
examiner would, however, be bound to agree with the teacher that it 
is almost impossible to induce students to seek information outside 
the lecture-room, and except in the ordinary cram text-books, and 
that it is hopeless to expect them to devote attention to anything 
unless it will pay in a subsequent examination—in fact that the old 
university spirit of acquiring knowledge for its own sake is almost 
unknown among our science students. Herein lies one of the 
teacher’s most serious difficulties, as he is more often than not bound 
to teach in a particular way, or to teach certain subjects, in - entire 
opposition to his own views, in order to qualify his students to pass a 
particular examination. . . . . The examiner, on the other hand, 
is often placed in a difficult position; it is clear to him that the 
system under which the students he is called upon to examine have 
been taught is a bad one; yet he feels that he has no right to set 
questions such as he honestly believes should direct the teaching into 
proper channels, because he knows that the teacher is immovable, and 
it is not fair to make the examinees the victims of a system for which 
they are not responsible. Hence, perforce, the teacher goes on 
teaching badly and the examiner examining badly. Difficulties of 
this kind are bound to make themselves felt at a transition period like 
the present, and will only disappear if we recognise the grave respon- 
sibility which rests upon ourselves and improve our methods of 
teaching and our text-books: these, in too many instances, are 
unsuited to modern requirements, and are being made worse by 
stereotyping, and the practise which is gradually creeping in of 
merely changing the date on the title-page and the numeral before 
the word “ edition,” thus engendering the belief that the information 
is given up to date. 
“ Both in teaching and examining two important changes ought 
forthwith to be made: our students ought at the very beginning of 
their career to become familiar with the use of the balance; and the 
imaginary distinction between so-called inorganic and organic com- 
pounds should be altogether abandoned. I do not mean students 
should be taught quantitative analysis as ordinarily understood, but 
that instead of endeavouring to make clear to them by explanation 
only the meaning of terms such as equivalant, for example, we should 
set them to perform a few simple quantitative exercises in deter- 
