Lectures to Working Man

Abstract

THE workmen of England wish for more education. I speak of the better classes of them; those who can read and write and cast up accounts in some sort of fashion, though it may in many cases be a poor one. There is a great desire, which is very widely spread among them, for some kind of higher education: they wish to learn something of Science. They cannot learn it at school, and they cannot get all they want from books; so that they must look to a great extent for what they require to evening lectures. Now in these there are two things which they dread. The first is that they should only hear a string of technical terms, which they cannot understand; and the second is that they should have what ordinarily go by the name of “Popular Lectures on Science,” lectures which are often illustrated by inconsequent “experiments.” We have not to go far to find the reason of their dislike to such lectures: the fact is, they distrust them. The English workman is a clear-headed, shrewd man, and he has a good intuition of what is worth having. That is the reason he cares for scientific knowledge. He knows very well that science is “one of the best things going;” and he has also a very thorough appreciation of everything of the nature of humbug in any line whatsoever. Perhaps there is no audience in the world who, on the one hand, recognises readily the existence of humbug, and, on the other, recognises what is genuine, so well as an audience of intelligent English working men. I have often conversed with such men, and while I have heard them express the greatest desire for scientific information, I have heard them also speak most, disrespectfully of that which is too often presented to them instead of it; and I have, over and over again, heard this said, “What is the use of our going to lectures, when we are to hear no more of the subject again?” Such sentiments as these find practical expression in the fact that I have found courses of a few consecutive and carefully digested lectures to workmen always well attended by a persistent audience. It is nothing desultory that these men want, but something solid—something which will give them real information. What they want is not a single lecture, or bits of the thing shown to them in a random sort of way, but a piece of real teaching, something which helps them to see their way a little through some subject, and gives them a better grasp of the thing which they are seeking for, namely, the method and facts of science. To be told only a number of the facts and results of science without the method is what workmen do not want; they are greedy for the facts of science, but they want something more. On the other hand, to try to impart to them the method of science without doing so by some particular instance, is to engage them in a kind of vague philosophising, suitable perhaps for the learned, but not for the ignorant. Ignorant people do not want, and cannot profit by, abstractions.