Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/602

586 There is, however, a danger with all laboratory manuals, which must be sedulously avoided, and the danger is generally greater the more precise the descriptions. They are apt to induce mechanical habits which are fatal to the true spirit of laboratory teaching. Not long ago I asked a student, who was working in our elementary laboratory, what he was doing. He answered that he was doing No. 24, and immediately went for his book to see what No. 24 was. I fear that a great deal of laboratory work is done in a way which this anecdote illustrates, and, if so, it is a mere waste of time.

"When teaching qualitative analysis it was always with me a constant struggle to prevent just such a result, and many of the excellent tables which have been prepared to facilitate analysis simply encourage the evil practice. It is an error to which college students, with their exclusively literary preparation, are especially liable, and I have no question that the proper conduct of our laboratories would be made much easier if the students came with a previous scientific training.

Thus far I have dealt solely with generalities, and my object has been not so much to give definite directions as to make suggestions which might lead to better systems of teaching. The details of these systems may vary widely, and yet all may lead to the desired result if only the true spirit of scientific teaching is preserved, and a teacher's own system is generally the best system for him. This leads me to explain my own system of teaching chemistry—which presents some novelties that may be of interest, and, although it has been worked out in detail in the revised edition of the "New Chemistry," just published, still a few words of explanation may be of value at this time in setting forth its salient points.

Chemistry has been usually defined as the science which treats of the composition of bodies, and in most text-books the aim has been to develop the scheme of the chemical elements, and to show that, by combining these elements, all natural and artificial substances may be prepared. In the larger text-books, which aim to cover the whole ground and to describe all known substances, such a method is both natural and necessary. But, as an educational system, this mode of presenting the subject is, as a rule, profitless and uninteresting. The student becomes lost amid details which he can only very imperfectly grasp, and the great principles of the science, as well as their relations to cognate departments of knowledge, are lost sight of. Moreover, the system is unphilosophical, because it presents the conclusions of chemistry before the observations on which they are based. Any one who has attempted to teach chemistry from the ordinary elementary text-books must have experienced the truth of what I have said.

A student learns a lesson about sodium and the various salts of this metal, and, after glibly reciting the words of the text-book, how much more does he know of the real relations of these bodies than he did