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inspecting the methods used in teaching it to young children especially. The dreary text-book botany lessons are as worthless as practical rational lessons are valuable.

Professor Miall, who has given very special attention to rational methods of teaching botany, strongly advocates this subject for object lessons for children from the ages of 8—12, and in doing so lays down certain maxims to be followed:

(1) No Latin or Greek technical terms.
(2) No lectures or information lessons.
(3) No book to be produced in class.

(4) The object lesson should always be founded on the actual object.

(5) Never tell the children anything they can find out for themselves.

From 12 to 15 or 16, Professor Miall would hand over the children, as far as science teaching is concerned, to the kind of instruction involved in a good general course of elementary experimental science as being the best possible teaching of a formative character to follow on a suitable course of object lessons on botany or natural history.

Where botany is taken systematically in schools as the main science subject he would make great claims on the time-table. He says:

"Here may I just make a remark upon the subject of time in the teaching of botany, because, though many things are denied to the teacher of botany, which are necessary to his efficiency, I think the most cruel denial to which he is subject is the denial of adequate time. The practice has sprung up of considering that about an hour a week is a good allowance for a particular branch of science, especially for botany, which is not held, altogether, I think, in the highest esteem. An hour or two a week in botany is not an unusual allowance. Now any such allowance as that seems to me utterly nugatory. You might just as well cross the subject out as allow an hour a week

to it. It is part of a miserable system which pervades the school course in general, and which results from our great anxiety to bring in a number of subjects, and our unwillingness, when a number of incompatible things are offered to us, to make a selection among them; and so the whole school course is ruined.......That is one of the reforms which is most pressing, and, to put my views of this subject in a practical form, if. I were a schoolmaster or were drawing up a time table for a school, I should be inclined to take some such practical step as this. Every important subject which is taught at all should, as a rule, come round pretty nearly every day. One does not want to be over-precise, and therefore I say pretty nearly every day. But a lesson once or twice every week in an important subject does not count. The results are not permanent. Unless it comes pretty nearly every day, it does not very much signify. And the course relating to a particular subject should last, in my opinion, at least a year or two. If it does not come round pretty nearly every day, and for a year or two, the probability is that no permanent impression is made."

Here we are treading on very dangerous ground-the time to be given to rational science teaching; but it is a difficulty which will solve itself. During the past few years this kind of teaching has been on its trial, and has come out of it.splendidly. It has steadily taken a more and more prominent position in public favour. It has come to stay. Even now, however, the enormous possibilities of associating with it instruction in other subjects by the removal of some of those unnecessary and baneful partitions, by which instruction in various branches of study is separated into water-tight compartments, is only imperfectly grasped. But we must not hurry matters. Vast progress has been made during these later years of the nineteenth century in this direction, and the old system is absolutely irrevocably doomed: nothing can resuscitate it. The wonder is that this new method was not introduced long years ago. But, then, this tardy introduction of reforms, especially in educa

tional matters, is essentially English. We move very slowly, but when we have moved there is no turning back. As a matter of fact, the principles now advocated were those advanced by Pestalozzi and his followers a century ago. There is nothing really new. We are very insular as a people, and in nothing more so than in our want of interest in, and ignorance of, the history of educational movements on the Continent.

There is not time in a short lecture of this kind to more than touch upon the subject of the "Training of Teachers." Whatever difficulties there may be in the teaching of ordinary class subjects by those who have not had adequate training, they are increased tenfold when we have to deal with the rational teaching of science. Where a dozen teachers can successfully impart information, not one can command that necessary restraint and give that wise guidance which will enable children to discover for themselves. In the great educational reforms, which we shall see introduced in all probability during the next few years, much attention will undoubtedly be given to an improvement in the provision for the training of primary and secondary teachers, and when this is done, there will be little to fear for the future of rational science teaching. And I venture to think that when the history of educational movements in England during the nineteenth century is written, a very prominent place will be allotted to the reforms instituted during the latter part of the century in science teaching in schools.

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CHAPTER VIII.

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION IN THE

NINETEENTH CENTURY.

BY

SIR PHILIP MAGNUS.

THE question of the kind of education best suited to industrial and professional pursuits, and how to provide it, has occupied a large share of public attention during the last twenty years. The problem is not, however, by any means a new one, and during the early years of the century it was carefully and frequently considered by many competent and zealous thinkers, and not a few attempts were made to solve it.

In the present lecture I hope to be able to trace the connection between those early endeavours and recent more or less successful efforts, and to give, within the time at my disposal, even a brief outline of the progress of industrial teaching during the nineteenth century; I must necessarily pass in very rapid review many important incidents, and must be content if I am able to bring into prominence some only of the

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