Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/263

Rh tells us it does, in its usefulness as a means of educational discipline, then the methods by which it is learned must be such as to train the eye in observation, the hand in dexterity, and the mind in deduction and verification. Otherwise no educational discipline can be expected from it. It is obvious that these ends can only be attained by practical work; and for practical work two things are absolutely essential—time and apparatus. Four hours a week spent in practical work, together with one or two hours of more didactic instruction, is the least amount of time from which any real benefit can be derived. Furthermore, the practical work must be arranged for in periods of two consecutive hours, otherwise a large part of the benefit will be lost; and, if the seven branches of science now forming part of a girl's education are to be taught with any degree of thoroughness, this amount of time must be consumed in the case of each and all of them. It seems needless to say that such a state of things does not, and without injustice to the non-scientific side of education can not exist. We are come, then, to a deadlock. To carry out the principles laid down by scientists for scientific instruction in a number of branches requires an amount of time which no student can afford to give, and an amount of apparatus which few, if any, schools can afford to provide. Yet it is a matter of daily observation that, in some way or other, educational institutions have succeeded in including all the different scientific studies before mentioned in their graded courses of instruction. The explanation of this condition of things lies in the fact, already alluded to, that the executive side of scientific instruction has been left entirely in the hands of the people of liberal minds, whose fixed idea it is that no scholar should be allowed to reach the conclusion of her school career in ignorance of the broad outlines of all the natural sciences, for she knoweth not the day nor the hour when a superficial acquaintance with some one of them may be required of her. In the present system of instruction, which has been developed in accordance with this theory, girls acquire a knowledge of science in the same way that they acquire a knowledge of all the other studies in their school education—by studying a lesson in a text-book and reciting it to a teacher, who under favorable circumstances accompanies it with some limited amount of demonstration. Yet book work, as any competent judge in scientific matters will agree, is destructive to the vital principle which gives to natural knowledge its use and dignity. Nor is it any more likely to serve the purpose of non-scientific educators, for scientific information thus acquired makes no lasting impression on the mind, and can not exercise any broadening intellectual influence.

From what has been said we hope that the truth of our first proposition has been demonstrated—namely, that the present