Abstract
ENGLISH boys and girls at the present day are the victims of excessive lesson learning, and are also falling a prey, in increasing numbers year by year, to the examination-demon, which threatens to become by far the most ruthless monster the world has ever known either in fact or in fable. Ask any teacher who has to do with students fresh from school his opinion of them: he will say that in the great majority of cases they have little if any power of helping themselves, little desire to learn about things, little if any observing power, little desire to reason on what they see or are called on to witness; that they are destitute of the sense of accuracy, and satisfied with any performance however slovenly; that, in short, they are neither inquisitive nor acquisitive, and as they too often are idle as well, the opportunities offered to them are blindly sacrificed. A considerable proportion undoubtedly are by nature mentally very feeble; but the larger number are by no means without ability, and are, in fact, victims of an acquired disease. We must find a remedy for this state of things, or perish in the face of the terrific competition now setting in. Boys and girls at school must be taught from the very earliest moment to do and to appreciate. It is of no use our teaching them merely about things, however interesting—no facts must be taught without their use being taught simultaneously; and, as far as possible, they must be led to discover the facts for themselves. Instead of our placing condensed summaries in their hands, we must lead them to use works of reference and acquire the habit of finding out; they must always be at work applying their knowledge and solving problems. It is a libel on the human race to say, as many do, that children cannot think and reason, and that they can only be taught facts; early childhood is the time at which these faculties are most apparent, and it is probably through failure to exercise them then that they suffer atrophy. The so-called science introduced into a few schools in answer to the persistent demands of its advocates has been in most cases a shallow fraud, of no value whatever educationally. Boys see oxygen made and things burnt in it, which gives them much pleasure; but, after all, this is but the old lesson learning in an interesting shape, and has no superior educational effect. I would here repeat what I have recently urged elsewhere, that in the future all subjects must be taught scientifically at school, in order to inculcate those habits of mind which are termed scientific habits; the teaching of scientific method—not the mere shibboleths of some branch of natural science—must be insisted on. No doubt some branch of chemistry, with a due modicum of physics, &c is the subject by means of which we may best instil the scientific habits associated with experimental studies, but it must be the true chemistry of the discoverer, not the cookery-book-receipt pseudo-form which has so long usurped its place. Whatever be taught, let me repeat that mere repetition work and lesson learning must give place to a system of allowing children to do things themselves. Should we succeed in infusing the research spirit into our teaching generally, then there will be hope that, in the course of a generation or so, we shall cease to be the Philistines we are at the present time; the education given in our schools will be worthy of being named a “liberal education,” which it never will be so long as we worship the old world classical fetish, and allow our schools to be controlled by those who reverence this alone, having never been instructed in a wider faith.
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Scientific Education and Research1. Nature 50, 211–214 (1894). https://doi.org/10.1038/050211b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/050211b0