9486 in the collection
Scientific Instruction in Elementary Schools
This is a letter to editor in
Nature, Feb. 16, 1871
by Henry Ullyett
WHAT is to be brought under the new Act in our
elementary schools ? The never-ending
permutations and combinations of the three R.
's, attendant on Mr. Lowe's Revised Code of
Education, will, doubtless, soon be at an end,
or at least limited in number. What improvement
will come ? What encouragement will Government
give to Science teaching ? Under the Revised
Code it well-nigh disappeared, or, if it
lingered on in some few spots, became almost
worthless, per se, owing to its necessarily
disconnected and unsystematic nature. We say it
disappeared, which implies that it once had a
footing; it certainly had, and was to some
considerable extent followed out in very many
of our elementary schools. The Committee of
Council encouraged it, not only by simply
recognising it, which they have not done of
late years, but by making special reduced rates
to assist the teacher in experimental lessons.
Ten or twelve years ago educational periodicals
teemed with hints on the subject, and specimen
lessons were frequently inserted at full
length; books for the use of teachers were
written by scientific men; the teaching of
“common things,” though not altogether
scientific in its way, yet showed the general
opinion of competent persons in the matter. Why
has all this been allowed to die out ? We know
schools at the present time where the apparatus
liberally granted by Government, in days long
gone by, has been carefully locked up in the
cabinet for years, waiting for more enlightened
times to return. We do not say that the
Committee of Council on Education has
positively prohibited all scientific
instruction in our elementary schools; of
course, they have done no such thing directly,
but, indirectly, they have prevented it:—(1) by
not recognising it as formerly; (2) by
discontinuing grants of apparatus; (3) by
making the examination in reading, writing, and
arithmetic so rigid as virtually to confine the
attention of the master to these three
subjects. The examination of the boys in these
schools has, in fact, been proportionally much
more severe than that of candidates for the
Civil Service, and at the same time more so
than that of the pupil teacher placed over
them. Hence the teacher has hardly dared to
venture on giving time to other subjects with
the value of which he was at the same time well
acquainted.
— Henry Ullyett
Nature
-02-14
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v3/n68/abs/003305a0.html
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