Science Teaching in Schools

Abstract

IN the discussion as to the teaching of science I have failed to find any distinct expression of an element in the subject which has for years seemed to me of the highest importance, and to which I should like with your permission to call attention. In those of our schools where science is taught it is almost always taken up late in the boy's career, often when he is passing from the lower to the upper school, This I feel sure is a mistake. Think for a moment of the process of evolution of that phenomenon—the English schoolboy. In too many cases he passes through the first, second, and third forms of a school, learning little more than the habit of diligent plodding, and developing little more than the art of storing away an unheardof quantity of dry facts. He learns, for instance, page after page of grammar rules; he learns rules for making numerical transformations; he even learns in the same fashion answers to questions that examiners are known to set for the purpose of finding out whether the pupil has been intelligently taught! The habits so acquired are valuable, but they are acquired at the risk of sacrificing the boy's freshness, and with the subjugation of his habit of independent reasoning. After several years of such training the herald of science comes forward with such a scheme as Prof. Armstrong very properly suggests. The would-be disciple of science is thunderstruck (as probably not a few teachers of science were when they first saw the scheme), but the novelty of the situation, the sight of new appliances and strange results, enable him to pull himself together, and his interest for a time keeps up. Presently he is asked to conduct for himself some simple steps of deductive reasoning; he fails, the whole business is a new world to him, and in the misery of his wishfulness to do something, he beseechingly asks for more dry facts to devour. What is the ultimate result? If science is to be taught effectually it must begin with the earliest years of the educational career, and there is surely no subject that lends itself more appropriately to the youthful mind. Children delight to talk of flowers, of insects, of the wonders of nature; they are ever asking suggestive questions; they are indefatigable collectors of objects of beauty; the Kindergarten system has acknowledged that the child is an orderly being delighting in symmetry and colour. Yet we increase his vocabulary by the word “star” and fail to tell him anything of the wonders of stardom. Why, our very fairy tales are based on just such fabric! To effect this early introduction of science the very best and most considerate teaching is required, as indeed it is a much more difficult task to guide the young student's thoughts than to guide the veteran student's reading. We want, further, a well thought-out progressive scheme of simple general science which shall be suggestive to the teacher of the course to be pursued. To draw up such a scheme is, I am quite aware, not a matter of moments: it would require the association of many minds and many sympathies.