86 
On Technical Education. 
[February, 
foi a book is ever at hand to be consulted, and the student 
can pei use and refer to those portions of the subject which 
he does not at the first thoroughly comprehend ; whereas 
the words uttered by the ledturer, if not understood at the 
^ e y ^ ie uttered, in most cases produce no after mental 
enedt, ceasing even to be remembered as mere words. 
. ^ ven as a method for cramming students for examina- 
tions the mere attendance on ledtures has been found to be 
inopeiative with the majority of students; hence the adop- 
tion of the system which has just been described, of com- 
pelling as fai as possible the students to take down the exadt 
woids the ledturer utters; it may be more efficacious than 
the system it has superseded in cramming students, but 
what is it but the vicious system of rote learning carried 
out to its fullest extent ? It leaves the intelledt uncultured, 
lor it foices, as far as it can, the student to be a mere passive 
lecipient of others ideas, and it prevents him, as far as 
can, from being an adtive inquirer and self-instrudtor. Even 
when students are not compelled to take down the exadt 
words, they are very apt of themselves to fall into this rote 
system if the ledtures are not made catechetical: the 
Examineis for University work in great towns have diredted 
attention to this failing in their Reports ; they have stated 
that the written answers on several of the questions taught 
contained not much more than a reprodudtion of what had 
been said by the ledturers ; they were a repetition of formu- 
lated phiases, in place of an intelligent assimilation and 
reprodudtion of their general purport. 
But what will be the condition of a student if he is taught 
by an ignoiant teacher who adopts this rote system : would 
not the study of a good standard work on the science even 
if the science were an experimental one, be far preferable to 
the uttenngs of such a teacher ? And that there are such 
teachers abroad those who have been behind the scholastic 
curtain are aware. On one occasion a note-book, owned by 
a student who was being taught on this rote system, was 
placed in my hands ; the part of the book to which my at- 
tention was diredted had been signed corredt by the 
professorial teacher : it consisted of a series of chemical 
equations, which were intended to describe the chemical 
changes which take place in the different forms of the gal- 
vanic battery ; although signed corredt by the Instrudtor 
every one of the equations was incorredt, and the errors 
were so glaring that they proved unmistakably the great ig- 
ncnance of the subjedt which existed in the minds both of 
the teacher and the taught. If this sad lack of knowledge 
