V. DISCUSSIONS. THE USE OF TEXT-BOOKS IN TEACHING ELEMENTARY SCIENCE. The student who desires to learn the properties of a substance or the facts concerning a phenomenon, will derive material benefit from obedience to the precept "Study things themselves, not statements about things." He who would learn a process had best "Learn to do by doing," and thus obtain both intellectual and manual training in his art. His knowledge will in each case be better than if he had simply memorized the facts and processes, and he will have acquired it by the "natural method." These are points in which the laboratory method of teaching elementary science is superior to any other, and if the subject is pursued because of the utility of the facts, it is by far the best method; but the acquiring of facts and the mastery of processes are not the chief ends of education; they are rather the tools which the teacher uses in his work. Admitting the great value of all objective teaching as an adjunct, it may justly be claimed that that mental exercise which compares and classifies the facts and processes, and without which they do not constitute a science so far as the individual pupil is concerned, is far more valuable. This subsequent work educates the pupil, the laboratory work without it, merely informs him, and the laboratory method will have culture value only in so far as it compels or induces this comparison and classification of phenomena. In all elemen tary instruction it is essential that the teacher hold the pupil to his work, and that he require of him evidence that it has been done, and that he has given to the subject a sufficient amount of thought to make the words which he uses his own. If the teacher does not do this, it is likely that much of the thinking will never be done, and that the laboratory practice will result only in the amusement of the pupil. A certain amount of didactic work in connection with laboratory practice will enable the teacher to test the amount of mental activity which the experiments have induced, and to satisfy himself that the facts are gradually becoming a science, but this method involves great loss of time. The student prepares a lesson one day and recites it the next, and the rate of progress is controlled by the number of experiments that the pupil can perform in one period. Furthermore, if the instruction is limited to laboratory work and recitations about the experiments performed, it will necessarily be fragmentary, not only because of the increased amount of time required, but because many important topics cannot be illustrated by elementary experimentation; in physics, for example, the law of gravitation must be omitted, if the pupil be required to discover everything for himself. The text-book, then, is necessary to the symmetrical treatment of a science, and an elementary treatment should be symmetrical, whether the subject be pursued as a stepping-stone to subsequent special work, or on account of its disciplinary and utilitarian value. It is claimed by those who would discard the text-book that the imperfect definition framed by the student himself is of more value than the perfect definition learned from a book. Experience shows that the student's attempts are generally misleading and valueless, except as they furnish excellent opportunities to illustrate the time-killing Socratic method of teaching, and the vague knowledge obtained does not compare favorably with the exact knowledge obtained by the pupil who learns the perfect definition, and, after illustrating it in the laboratory, is asked to justify each word. The knowledge obtained by medical students through their work in the dissecting room, which is so frequently contrasted with knowledge of anatomy obtained through the study of text-books, is valuable because it is guided and rendered complete by a text-book. Could the medical student afford to dispense with his text-book on anatomy? Whatever objections may be urged against the text-book, it has not yet outlived its usefulness, for the results yielded by the laboratory method cannot equal those obtained from a combination of the text-book and laboratory methods. The text-book gives the pupil a broad view of the subject, looking through the author's eyes, and he thus obtains what is unquestionably desirable in elementary instruction, namely, a view of the subject in perspective. There is no part of the pupil's work which leads him to see the exact relationship between one topic and another as clearly as a thorough review at the close. Unfortunately our elementary text-books are not without their faults. Few authors give enough attention to the logic of the subject, few show the student why scientific men have reached a given conclusion or have adopted a given theory; and many authors, wishing to compel the student to think, sacrifice their clearness of thought and definiteness of statement on the altar of this principle of pedagogics, and in endeavoring to "leave a little for the pupil to think," set a task which he cannot perform. ROCHESTER ACADEMY, ROCHESTER, N. Y. ALBERT L. AREY. Any discussion of the relative value of different methods of instruction must be based upon an agreement as to the aim to be accomplished. Education has been aptly defined by Joseph Payne as "The training carried on consciously and continuously by the educator, and its object is to convert desultory and accidental force into organized action." It is a generally accepted principle that the work of the educator consists only in bringing the pupil into such conditions and surrounding him with such influences as will call forth the kind of activity which the teacher is seeking to develop, and that it is only what the pupil does for himself that gives him strength and independence of thought. Acting upon this principle, teachers of mathematics have given their pupils problems to solve, and teachers of classics have not encouraged their pupils to study Latin and Greek from texts with interlinear translations. The best teachers of history and literature no longer require their classes to memorize readymade generalizations and to read only for the purpose of finding illustrations of these laws, nor to recite approved criticisms of literary masterpieces which the pupils have never read. These studies have, accordingly, long taken high rank for their disciplinary value; and, because of the way in which they have been taught, and not on account of any inherent superiority in their material, they have taken the leading place in most educational schemes. Many teachers of science believe, however, that the consid eration of natural objects and phenomena with the purpose of determining their causal relations to one another may also furnish a valuable mental discipline, and one which cannot be so well acquired from any literary or mathematical study. Some of the advantages of this method are: (1) The facts whose relations are to be considered are parts of the individual experience of the pupil, instead of the imperfectly comprehended statements of the experience of some one else; (2) the determination of the relations which constitute the general principles of science may furnish the best possible field for training in the inductive process; (3) the application of these general principles to special cases which were not considered in making the induction, may furnish material for valuable training in the logical process, because the relation of the individual cases. already studied to the general principle, must have been clearly seen before the induction could be made, and because the conclusion arrived at by the deductive process can usually be subjected to the rigid test of experiment, and its validity definitely determined. It seems plain, however, that if this training is to be acquired from the study of science, the student must pursue it in the order named, i. e., he must first observe, then generalize, then test the accuracy of his generalizations by drawing logical conclusions from them and observing or experimenting to verify his conclusions. The text-book of science, not including laboratory-guides. and observation-outlines, which leave the pupil to draw his own conclusions, is a treatise prepared on the logical method, and gives training, at the best, only in the logical process. The so-called inductive text-books arrange their descriptions of experiments more or less in the order of induction, but they require no real observation and experimentation on the part of the pupil, and by stating for him the generalization which is supposed to follow from the experiments which they describe, they remove all necessity for inductive reasoning on his part. Indeed, so strongly has this method taken hold of our teachers of science, that in our leading colleges the experimental work is generally preceded by a text-book or lecture course on the subject, and in the laboratory manual which is most commended by teachers of the writer's acquaintance, the author recommends that no problem be assigned to be worked in the laboratory until the pupil has learned from the text-book ex actly how the experiment should result. To my mind, this is equivalent to saying that a pupil should never be allowed to undertake the solution of an algebraic equation until he knows the correct values of x and y, nor to read a Latin sentence until he has learned and recited the English translation. In short, if we are to use the material of the sciences as a means of calling forth the mental activity of our pupils, we can do it only by allowing some opportunity for independent thought on their part, and the intervention of a text-book between them and the material which we wish them to study must always be a hindrance rather than an aid. Without taking time to discuss the argument which is always advanced for the use of text-books, viz., that the time allowed for scientific study in school is too short to acquire the amount of knowledge of this subject which every pupil should have, unless he crams the knowledge from a text-book, it may be said that the quality of the knowledge which one possesses is of more importance than its quantity, and that one does not need to be a specialist in science to enable him to distinguish between the knowledge acquired by direct contact with natural objects and phenomena, and the "vast and varied misinformation" acquired by the literary method of science study. LAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY, FERNANDO SANFORD. TEACHERS' SALARIES. Were it possible to pay each teacher just what his or her ser vices are worth-to make the remuneration proportionate to the quality of the service-an ideal system would be the result. There are public school teachers in every large city for whom no reasonable compensation would be too high. There are those for whom the lowest wages now paid would be beyond their deserts. Could the merit system of payment for public school teachers be introduced, many of the difficulties that now disturb boards of education would be at once eliminated. To get rid of a lazy or inefficient principal or teacher, it would be necessary only to make his salary sufficiently low. To reward merit, and to obtain the services of the most skillful teacher, it would be necessary only to make the salary suffi |