Practical Exercises in Elementary Meteorology

Abstract

MR. ROBERT D. WARD has written a book for the use of schools and training colleges, which we should think would be very popular with teachers and pupils alike. With the former, because he indicates to them the proper method of giving instruction in meteorology, and, at the same time, supplies so many valuable hints, that he makes their work more profitable, without increasing the severity of their duties. To the latter, because his object is, among others, to turn the numerous meteorological observations that are made at many high schools to practical account, to clothe the dry bones of mere instrumental readings with an intelligent purpose, and to infuse a new and sustained interest into a mechanical routine. Nothing, we imagine, can be more wearisome than the continual record of temperature and pressure and other data of which no definite use is made. The educational value of such a practice must be very slight, and Mr. Ward has recognised the necessity of improving this mechanical record, and, at the same time, of investing the ordinary class teaching with a definite practical purpose. He has taken both pupils and teachers by the hand in a way that should produce most encouraging results. Doubtless many others have perceived defects in the methods of teaching meteorology, but it is Mr. Ward's merit that he has known how to apply a practical remedy. He, first of all, takes his pupils without instruments, and shows how much can be done by the exercise of ordinary intelligence and trained organised powers of observation. Many a teacher, we imagine, when he sees the numerous questions which Mr. Ward puts, and to which intelligent answers can be given by simple, if acute, observation, will take shame to himself that he has not adopted similar, and even extended, methods for infusing life and interest into the study of a science that is too often regarded as dull and insipid. Here is a specimen, taken at random, of what a pupil is expected to acquire from his own observations.

Practical Exercises in Elementary Meteorology.

By Robert DeCourcy Ward, Instructor in Climatology in Harvard University. Pp. viii + 195. (Boston, U.S.A.: Ginn and Co., 1899.)