Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/282

270 that there is no mistaking the writer's meaning; there are no perplexing problems to he solved; the pupils can learn the short lessons with ease, and the recitations should go on with the utmost smoothness and facility. Yet this perfect conformity of the hooks to old established school habits, while it has secured their immense success, raises serious questions as to their adaptation to the improved methods of study which are now demanded in early scientific education.

From this point of view we think the title of the series misleading, and that as a consequence the books are liable to be put to a wrong use. The term primer suggests the lowest grade of elementary school-books—first books for primary classes, or for children beginning to study. The "Science Primers" are obviously unsuited for this purpose. We should say that the distinguished gentlemen who prepared them, and who are all of them occupied in the absorbing work of scientific research in their respective departments, have not given due attention to that very important matter in early education—the minds of children. This is, in fact, a science by itself of great interest and no little complication, and for the most part quite alien to the special pursuits of these authors. A man may be deep in physics and profound in astronomy, and yet know very little of the mechanism, growth, and various conditions of the unfolding faculties of the child. It matters nothing how clear, simple, and accurate is the text of a primer if it is not skillfully suited to the early stages of mental activity; and this is where the "Science Primers" fail as books for beginners.

It is clear that children can not at first grasp generalizations; and to begin by giving them general principles, and making them learn lessons embodying the results and outcome of scientific thought, is a fundamental educational mistake. They should begin with the simple, the concrete, the familiar, and be very gradually and very slowly led on to combinations of ideas and the perception of simple relations; and only in the higher stages of mental growth should they be tasked with those highest products of science—system, exactness, and abstraction. Knowledge may be put into a child's mind wrong-end foremost, so to speak, and so as to disturb and paralyze its faculties, rather than to favor their natural and healthy growth. The first step in the scientific education of children ought not to be an abrupt transition from their intercourse with the natural objects around them to lesson-learning from books; it should be simply to direct and guide them in making observations. The process should be continuous with their unguided and spontaneous activities, and stimulated by the cultivation of curiosity. Play may run into simple experiments under such careful management as not to create weariness or distaste for this kind of effort.

The "Science Primers" do not sufficiently conform to this method to make them suitable books for beginners. They in fact belong to the advanced, if not the adult, stage of mental development. In the first two books that were published, the "Primer of Physics" and the "Primer of Chemistry," there is a common preface, in which it is said that "the object of the authors has been to state the fundamental principles of their respective sciences in a manner suited to the pupils of an early age. They feel that the thing to he aimed at is not so much to give information as to endeavor to discipline the mind in a way that has not hitherto been customary, by bringing it into immediate contact with Nature herself. For this purpose a series of simple experiments has been devised, leading up to the chief truths of each science. These experiments must be performed by the teacher in regular order before the class." This is all that is said