Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/515

Rh in his browsing, and induced to take up something more than selections, and he may easily be induced to get off selections by heart if his teacher does not show his contempt by speaking of such exercises as Rep. [repetition].

Let the teacher take a leaf out of our methods of teaching chemistry and physics. It has been shown that twenty-five boys doing work in the laboratory during a lesson of an hour and a half or two hours can be managed by one teacher. Experimental lectures in a lecture room have now been greatly discarded; such lessons as I speak of take place in the laboratory, but reliance is placed particularly upon the personal attention of the teacher being given to each group of students in charge of an investigation, the group not being usually greater than four in number, and often being less than two. These students are sometimes merely verifying or testing a statement made by the teacher or found in a book, but they are often finding out things for themselves. One idea underlying the work is that there ought to be more and more illustrations of simple fundamental principles. It is long before these simple things really become part of a boy's mental machinery; things like the mere definition of force, for example. It is, of course, quite different work for the teacher from anything that he used to have to do; for one thing, being much more exhausting. He can not shirk his duties and sit down waiting for students to come to him. When teaching degenerates into mere maintenance of discipline, everything being regarded as right if the pupils are quiet and seem to be diligent, it is necessary to make a radical change, usually a dismissal of the teacher. It used to be that a science master gave an experimental lecture, and afterwards he had a very easy time, letting the students follow a set routine in the laboratory, but this will no longer do; such attendance at lectures and laboratory work means poor mental training.

Now, I would work out a system for English, English composition, English poetry and prose, geography, history and other English subjects, on the lines that we have found so successful in natural science. An enormous change has been effected during the last fifteen years in the teaching of mathematics. The older methods always failed with the average boy or man. The new system, which is sometimes called practical mathematics, is based on the idea that students shall work experimentally, just as they do in their natural science. It is found that their eyes and faces are bright, they work hard, and they evidently enjoy their work. We have merely introduced common sense into the teaching; we have approached the student's mind from other points of view than the old academic one, from the only side on which he has ever been taught anything—the side of observation and trial. He weighs and measures. He does experimental geometry and mensuration, and is assisted by abstract reasoning just to the extent which interests him; he makes plans of the school buildings and maps of the district; algebra