Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/601

Rh however, an advantage to be gained in subsequently reviewing the subject as presented in a good text-book, and such a book may be of great use in preparation for an examination. But how far examinations are of value in enforcing the acquisition of knowledge of an experimental science is a question on which I feel a grave doubt. Certainly their value is very small if, as is too frequently the case, they lead the student to defer all effort to make his own the knowledge presented in the lectures, until a final cram.

The management of lectures, text-books, and examinations, will not, however, offer nearly so great difficulties to the teacher as the management of the parallel experimental course of laboratory teaching. In the last the methods are less well tried and demand of the teacher a very considerable amount of invention and experimental skill. To follow mechanically any text-book would result in a loss of the proper spirit with which the course should be conducted and which constitutes its chief value. No experiments are so good as those which have been devised by the teacher, or, still better, by the pupils themselves. A mere repetition of a process, according to a definite description, has no more value than a repetition of a form of words in an ordinary school recitation. The teacher must make sure that the student fully understands what he is about, and comprehends all the connections between observations and conclusions which it is his aim to establish. Moreover, he must constantly encourage his students to think and work for themselves, and direct them in the methods of inductive reasoning. The failure of an experiment may be made most instructive if the student is led to discover the cause of the failure. A leak in his apparatus may be turned to a similar profit if the student is shown how to discover the leak, by carefully eliminating one part after another until the weak point is made evident.

The direction of an experimental laboratory is no easy task. The teacher must make each man's work his own, and follow his processes of thought as well as his experiments with the most careful attention. With large classes much time can be saved by going through each process on the lecture-room table and giving the directions to the class as a whole; but this does not supersede the personal attention and instruction which each student requires at the laboratory table. Moreover, in laboratory teaching the teacher must rely, as we have said, on his own resources, and but few aids can be given. There are books, however, which will help the teacher to prepare himself for his work, and I am happy to say that a book entitled "The New Physics," prepared by my colleague. Professor Trowbridge, is now being printed, which I hope will greatly promote the laboratory teaching of physics. Nicholl's abridgment of Eliot and Storer's "Manual" has long served a similar valuable purpose in chemistry, and there are many excellent works on "Qualitative Analysis," a study which is admirably adapted to develop the power of inductive reasoning.