Progress in Sciénce Teaching

Abstract

A MAN who remembers clearly the first Great International Exhibition in 1851, and was at school through the period of the Crimean War, can no longer claim to be ranked among j young men or even the middle-aged. But, with all the disadvantages of age, there is something to be said for the satisfaction and practical use of personal reminiscence. The days of school life which I can recall were practically pre-scientific, for, though one or two schools, such as the Quaker School at Ackworth, included elementary science in their programme, the utmost attempted, as a rule, was a visit from a peripatetic teacher, who came, like the dancing-master and the drawing-master, once a week or a fortnight. This was the practice at a school in Norfolk at which I was a1 pupil in 1856. It was kept by a kindly old clergyman, who would, in the occasional absence of the lecturer, quack a bit himself and sometimes show experiments, not always well chosen. I remember seeing the cruel operation of putting a mouse under the receiver of the air-pump and extracting the air. And though Stock-hardt's “Experimental Chemistry” was the textbook, the boys made no experiments for themselves, but were required to commit to memory passages from the book, such as “iodine has a violet vapour.” There were no school laboratories in those days, even in the great public schools, neither was natural science so much as mentioned in the great majority of the schools in the country.