Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/265

Rh the extensive knowledge which is expected of them. They listen to lessons which the teacher imbibes ordinarily from a text-book designed for the special purpose of preparing candidates for the graduating examinations. In this new kind of Bible from which the teacher refreshes himself each day, physiology, zoölogy, botany, and geology are methodically arranged by layers or slices, of which a dose of four layers (irrespective of the thickness of the layer) must be absorbed per month. The scholar has a text-book which is a résumé of the teacher's, filled with indigestible prose, crowded with scientific terms, where classification follows classification. After learning so many Greek and Latin derivatives, will there be time to observe the dentition of an animal, to analyze a flower, or compare stones? No; the natural history collections of our schools remain under lock and key; the teachers forget to use them, and the scholars to look at them. But the text-book must be learned. Does the teacher make his own drawings? Usually he contents himself with the more or less exact illustrations of the text-book. How could he possibly find time for drawing, when in one lesson he must describe the whole human skeleton and define rachitis, caries, aukylosis, dislocations, fractures, and sprains, and in another give pell-mell the characteristics of the Chenopodiaceœ, Polygonaceœ, Euphorbiaceœ, Urticaceœ, Laurineœ, Juglandaceœ, Cupuliferœ, Salicineœ, Betulaceœ, and Plataneœ!

Picture to yourself an audience of youthful Parisians who, for the most part, have never seen hemp except in cloth, or oak except in a chair or table, a prey to this discriminating instruction! Some of them go to sleep or lose themselves in reveries where natural history has no part; others refresh themselves with candy under their desk tops. And this is the best thing they could do. Just as insects, when placed in a deadly atmosphere, resist asphyxia by closing their stigmata and ceasing to breathe, so our children escape the harmful effects of our instruction by closing their eyes and ears. The result is threefold: On leaving the primary school they know nothing about natural history, but sometimes think they know considerable; secondly, this ill-directed study not only has not developed their habits of observation and their judgment, but has accustomed them to speak inaccurately and carelessly of things of which they have no knowledge; and, thirdly, most of these little savants hold science in great contempt.

Is this what the reformers in education expect? We do not believe it, and we think that they may rightly hope for something better if the instruction be given by the only method which is in harmony with the subject: that of observation and experimentation. Collections must be made not only of curiosities but of common things; there must be a garden where the seed may grow