Work and Play in Girls' Schools / By Three Head Mistresses

(B) For Teachers.

MUSEUM SPECIMEN CASE.
BOTANY.
ANGIOSPERMS OR FLOWERING PLANTS.

Leaves.

The Flower.

GEOGRAPHY.

By Margery Reid, B.Sc. (Lond.).

Aim in teaching.It is a vexed question how far the study of geography should be looked upon as a training for the mind, or whether its primary function be not to supply material on which the trained mind may work.

This difficulty may be to some extent solved by dividing the geography teaching into two distinct branches—physical and general geography.

If this be not done it will be found that the general geography lesson is overloaded with a mass of explanations of physical phenomena.

Thus, in a general lesson on the climate of India, it detracts from the unity of the subject if the teacher is obliged to make a digression to explain the theory of barometric pressures, but, presupposing this scientific knowledge, references to the special application of it are within the bounds of the lesson.

Physical geography.The first course in physical geography should consist of lessons requiring only observation of phenomena with which the children are well acquainted.

Observation and experiment.In a town like Cheltenham, situated within walking distance of the source of the Thames, the subject of the watershed dividing the small streams flowing into the Severn from those flowing into the Thames, forms a much better subject for observation and reasoning than the form and movements of the earth. Simple experiments also may be performed, but artificial conditions should as far as possible be avoided. Thus in a lesson on the principles of evaporation, the children may be made to observe the gradual drying of a cloth, but if heat artificially obtained be used to hasten the operation, the object-lesson loses the greater part of its value.

Style of written work.At the beginning of this course the work should be almost entirely that of observation and simple reasoning, but it is well to insist from the very first that exercises either spoken or written should be good in form as well as in matter. The composition should be as terse as is compatible with clearness, though this applies rather to the description of experiments than observations, for in the case of an observation, if we are to minimise the danger of overlooking the true cause, all accidental circumstances must be carefully noted.

The difference between an observation and experiment should be carefully explained, and the children should be shown that whereas in an observation we have to listen to whatever Nature says, an experiment is a question so framed that Nature will answer “Yes” or “No,” and that we must only ask one question at a time. Thus we may ask the question: “Is water-vapour lighter than air?” We boil water in a kettle and the visible cloud appears above the spout showing that the invisible vapour must have risen as it left the kettle. The question asked was “Does water-vapour rise through the air?” and the answer is “Yes”. The children should then write a description of the experiment with as close attention to form as though it were a proposition of Euclid.

Experiment. To prove that water-vapour is lighter than air.

Apparatus. A kettle containing water and a spirit lamp.

Method. Place kettle on spirit lamp, light lamp and boil the water.

Result. Water-vapour issues from the spout in an invisible form and becomes visible as a cloud some little distance above the level of the spout.

Deduction. That water-vapour is lighter than air.

Subject-matter of the earliest course in Physical Geography.

This course should include lessons on the following subjects:—

Subject-matter of early course in physical geography.1. Clouds: introducing the foregoing experiment to show why they occur high up in the atmosphere and how they are produced.

2. Rain, snow, hail, etc.: the different conditions under which clouds discharge their moisture.

3. Winds, with only such simple facts about their causes as can be shown by the movements of air or draughts in a room. If tissue paper be cut into fine strips, and held at different points in a room in which is a fire, the draught towards the fire may be simply demonstrated and also the draught up the chimney.

4. The sea: its saltness, the rising and the falling of the tide and the fact that high tide is later by nearly an hour every day, also that some tides rise higher and retire lower than others. (Causes of tides should not be touched upon till later.) Waves and their causes.

Definitions.As this course proceeds the children should be exercised in the making of good definitions. It is a mistake to think that definitions must be given by the teacher. It is well to ask one child what she means by the word to be defined. Write the definition on the board, and then, by means of a series of questions to the children, criticise all those points which are superfluous in the definition given. Having eliminated all these, let the teacher take the definition as it now stands, and by giving examples of all the facts which come under it, show that it is probably a great deal too wide, and draw from the children gradually all the necessary limitations.

A definition so obtained will be easily remembered, and, as the children get practice in framing them, they will appreciate the meaning and neatness of a clear definition.

In the later part of this course the physical features of countries may be introduced, and the children should get clear conceptions and accurate definitions of terms commonly used in geography, such as mountains, valleys, plains, islands, capes, etc., and they should both be shown models and allowed themselves to make them.

The simpler facts concerning the work of rivers and other forces modifying the surface of the land will also find a place among these lessons.

The physical geography which should follow this preliminary work must of course be modified to suit the age and intelligence of the pupils.

Later course in physical geography.Physical and chemical experiments may now be introduced, and the mathematical side of the subject will be more insisted upon as the children begin to learn algebra and geometry.

The illustrations also need no longer be drawn from the child’s immediate surroundings, but may be the result of reading, or of description on the part of the teacher, and whereas in the lesson general laws are arrived at from special cases, in the home work the class should be encouraged to search for new cases illustrating the laws.

These later courses should be preceded by simple work on the physical and chemical properties of air and water. The form and movements of the earth should be treated of, and with the help of a tellurium most of the simple facts may be made clear, and the phenomena of the seasons and the varying length of day and night may be demonstrated. The nature of the proof of the earth’s movement round the sun is appreciated by few, and the children should be encouraged to make for themselves some of the observations on which it is based.

Thus they might be expected to keep an account of the groups of stars seen due south every evening at a given hour. The change of constellations will stimulate their curiosity, and it will not be necessary to wait for the whole year before giving them some explanation. Or they might be asked to keep a register of the varying length of the shadow of a stick at noon for three months. The fact could then easily be drawn from the children that the sun is at some times higher in the heavens than at others, but they would almost certainly have to be helped to find out the reason.

The meaning and use of the various lines ordinarily drawn on a globe may now be given.

The atmosphere: pressure and temperature.After this work on the earth as a planet, its gaseous envelope should next be studied, i.e., the atmosphere, its composition, pressure and temperature, and the instruments used for measuring them. In an earlier course the instrument and its use will be enough to deal with; in a course to older pupils the construction and correction of the instruments may be considered.

The children might keep a chart of both temperature and pressure for a month, and at the end of that time be taught to find the average temperature for the month, and to understand the methods for showing variations of the barometer used in the leading daily papers. The nature of isobars and isotherms should also be explained, and the isobars for July and January should be filled into two maps and kept for use later. A map with isotherms filled in should also be given, and the children encouraged to find reasons for the curves in any given line.

Winds.They will now be prepared to understand the laws treating of movements of the atmosphere. With younger classes only the more important winds should be taken, such as cyclones and anti-cyclones, land and sea breezes, trade and anti-trade winds and monsoons, whilst the older classes should be led to observe the local variations arising from peculiar circumstances.

When the principles are grasped, an exercise might be given to indicate with arrows the direction of the wind on the maps on which they have already marked the isobars.

Ocean depths.The water envelope of the world will next demand attention, i.e., the depth of the ocean and its deposits. This at first sight will appear to the children to be a subject about which they cannot possibly be expected to have any knowledge, but by a short recapitulation of the work of rivers treated in the preliminary course, the fact of the necessary existence of a continental shelf may be drawn from them, as also the fact that the breadth of this shelf will depend on the slope of the continent in the immediate neighbourhood of the coast, and on the amount of deposit made by rivers.

A wall map contoured to show depths in the Atlantic should be shown to the class, and the instruments should be described used in investigating depth and nature of the deposits on the ocean floor. With an older class the nature of the evidence with regard to the belief in the permanence of ocean basins may be touched upon.

Saltness of sea and causes regulating it. Various seas should be compared with regard to their salinity.

Tides.The tides. Their causes; spring and neap tides; reason for high tide being fifty-four minutes later each day. The subject of the tidal wave as experienced in England requires careful treatment, as many text-books leave the impression on the minds of children that the tidal wave in the North Sea travels from east to west, and that the shores of the Baltic are experiencing low tide when the eastern coast of England is having a high tide.

Currents.Currents. Causes of currents should be sought in the movements of the atmosphere. The class should be asked to indicate on the map showing winds, which they drew to illustrate a previous lesson, the effects of the trade and anti-trade winds in the production of currents. Attention must then be drawn to the way in which the position of the land modifies the currents so produced, and thus the class may gradually evolve a chart of the currents of the Atlantic. For an exercise they may be given a chart of the currents of the Pacific and asked for the causes of the direction of the currents.

Land.The teacher must then proceed to the more complex subject of the physical features of the land.

Mountains produced by folding; their position with regard to the ocean. Volcanoes and their distribution.

Hills produced by denudation.

Plains and valleys.

Rivers; their work and the various causes determining their volume, velocity and course.

Springs.

Islands.

Climate. Temperature and rainfall.

Distribution of plants and animals.

General geography.The order of treatment of the general geography of various countries does not vary, and consequently, notes of a first term’s course will sufficiently indicate the lines of later work. Opinions differ as to whether it is better to begin with the study of a continent or a smaller division of land.

Lesson I. Before the actual course begins, the children should have a preliminary lesson on the making of plans and the use of scales. A plan of the schoolroom and of the immediate surroundings has now-a-days generally been made by children whilst still in the Kindergarten, but if so, a little recapitulation will do no harm before a first lesson on the nature and meaning of a map.

The teacher’s preparation should be done several weeks in advance, so that no point essential to a later lesson may be omitted in its proper place.

Position of places on earth’s surface.Lesson II. For the second lesson an outline map of the continent or country to be studied is given to the children with the lines of latitude and longitude. If the work has not already been done in a physical course, the meaning of latitude and longitude should be clearly explained. After having shown that the distance between the equator and either of the poles is divided into 90 degrees, a sphere may now be taken, and by rough measurement the two parallels corresponding to those through the top and bottom of the given map may be drawn upon it. After a short description of what we mean by longitude, the longitude of the given country is then indicated on the sphere, and the use of the two sets of lines to show exact position on the earth will be appreciated. If it be not a first course, the position of the given country may be compared with others equidistant from the equator, or on the same meridian.

In this lesson may also be introduced a few words about the temperature of the given country so far as it is dependent on latitude.

Lesson III. Height above sea level.

Contouring.For this lesson the teacher should have drawn and painted for the class a map of the continent being studied, with contour lines marked in two different colours or with two different kinds of lines. (Too great detail only tends to confuse the children.)

The first contour line should be drawn joining all places 500 feet above the sea level, and the second joining all those places 1500 feet above sea level. Each child should then be provided with one of these maps, and a wall map similarly contoured and also coloured should be hung on the wall.

The teacher then explains the nature of contour lines, and shows that if that part of the map between the 500 contour line and the sea be coloured green, the coloured part will represent all that part of the land which is less than 500 feet high, that is, generally speaking, the plains. That part between the 500 and 1500 contour lines is then coloured light brown, and all those areas enclosed within the 1500 contour line a darker brown. When the maps are coloured, and each child has her own, they may then be taught how to read a map so coloured. The teacher will draw from the class that if the contour lines come close together the ground slopes very rapidly, but that the slope is more gradual when the contour lines are more widely separated—that the greatest height of the land lies near the greater ocean, and that the more gradual slope is towards the smaller ocean, and that this allows of the development of larger but slower rivers than those flowing down the steeper slope.

A raised model may then be shown to the class, and this may be coloured in the same way as the maps, but the children must clearly understand the disadvantages of a model, and be shown that the vertical heights are always enormously exaggerated in proportion to the horizontal distances.

In recapitulating, the children might be asked what they consider a common slope for the sides of mountains. Their notions will always be found to be extravagant, many of them thinking they have seen and even climbed slopes of 60 degrees and upwards. By placing a piece of india-rubber on the cover of a book, and gradually opening the book and sloping the cover till the india-rubber rolls off, the children may be shown how very small is the angle at which it is perfectly impossible for anything to rest on a slope, and that therefore if we find stones on the side of a hill, we know that the slope cannot be greater than 30 degrees. Examples may be drawn from any hill in the neighbourhood of the school.

Lesson IV. A second lesson will be necessary on the contour of the given continent, when the names of the mountain ranges and of the plains may be given, short descriptions of them read, and exercise given in filling them into a blank map from memory.

Position of rivers.Lesson V. The teacher fills into a wall map, blank and uncontoured, the principal rivers, and asks the class to put them in their contoured maps. Many of the children will be found not to have appreciated the meaning of contour lines, but will have drawn a river flowing from the part coloured green to that part coloured brown. One such map will form a good object-lesson, and the children can be brought to see the absurdity of what they have done in representing a river as flowing up a hill.

The properly contoured wall map may then be hung up, and the actual position of the rivers followed. The meaning of watershed will now be apparent, and the fact should be noted that it does not necessarily or even generally correspond with the highest land.

The varying velocity of the river should be drawn from the children from the nature and position of the contour lines, and from that, which parts of its course are being sculptured and in which parts deposition is taking place.

Lesson VI. If a physical course is given, the work of rivers will already have been treated, but certain rivers in the continent should be chosen for special description. From the contour line the children will be able to say for how great a distance the rivers are probably navigable, and the uses of the given rivers as a means of communication and the position of towns on their banks may be discussed.

Coast line.Lesson VII. Coast line. Sufficient knowledge will now have been gained to render possible the appreciation of some of the causes affecting coast line.

When rocks are hard and folded, producing mountains, then they will also give rise to rocky promontories. Clays and sands, which inland allow themselves to be worn into plains and valleys, will here produce bays. Rivers, if still capable of erosion, will produce valleys, which a slight subsidence will convert into narrow gulfs. Finally the accessibility of various points on the coast may be considered, and the position of the chief harbours and ports.

Climate.Lesson VIII. Climate. This lesson may be treated deductively, as the class is already familiar with those phenomena upon which both temperature and rainfall are mainly dependent. The rainfall might be given as an exercise, allowing the use of contoured maps, and the chart of the prevailing winds.

Lesson IX. Distribution of vegetation, pastoral and agricultural districts.

Lesson X. Distribution of minerals, centres of population.

At the end of this course a physical map of some country not already studied by the children should be hung before them, and they should all be asked to write an essay about the country from the facts that they find in the map.

If they can do this, they will have learnt to read a map intelligently, and one of the great ends of a course in geography will have been attained, since they will not only have acquired many new facts, but have also gained the power of searching for and assimilating facts for themselves.

When England is the country being studied, this course must be supplemented by more detailed work on the causes that have determined the positions of cities and towns, and how these causes have operated during the last 2000 years. The children should be shown that British camps were generally on escarpments overlooking the surrounding country. The district round was cultivated, and the inhabitants sought safety in the camp in time of danger. After having been told that the position of some of these “duns” or hill forts is still indicated by such place-names as London, Dunstable and Dundee, the children might be encouraged to suggest other places themselves. The number of camps was greatly increased by the Romans, many of the sites being marked by corruptions of the Latin word castra, as Chester, Colchester and Winchester, and these camps were joined by well-made roads.

Later immigrants formed their centres either in the neighbourhood of these roads, as the Saxons, who often formed villages at a point where the road crossed a stream, as Hertford and Stamford on the Ermine Street, or on sheltered bays and navigable streams, like the Norse and Danes, whose towns and villages, ending in “ley,” “thorpe,” “wic,” are never found except where there is a spring or other natural water supply.

As the various races inhabiting England became amalgamated, and the land was cleared, there was a tendency for towns and villages to spring up over such districts as the Weald, the eastern counties, the central plain and broad river valleys. But there was no great concentration of population save in the south-east, where the neighbourhood of the continent called into existence the Cinque Ports, and where iron smelting was carried on by using the wood of the Wealden forests.

As the Cinque Ports declined, the growth of the navy and the increase of fisheries and trade with the continent increased the size of other ports, and the growing importance of the woollen trade called into existence the large Norfolk towns, which flourished until vexatious guild regulations induced many workers to leave the towns, and form industrial villages as Manchester, Birmingham and Sheffield. Settlements of foreigners, as the French silk weavers at Spitalfields, also formed a nucleus for other industries.

At this point the children might be shown a geological map of England, and also a map in which all those districts with a population of more than 500 to the square mile are coloured red; they would notice that almost all these red patches correspond with coal fields, and be told that the period of beginning to work many of these coal fields, corresponded with that at which America was being opened up; that consequently such ports as Liverpool and Bristol on the west coast became identified with the importing of cotton and sugar, and that towns engaged in these industries sprang up in the neighbourhood of these ports.

The use of steam power in various manufactures still further attracted the cotton and woollen industries to the towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and the working of iron, found in the neighbourhood of coal, accounts for many other centres of population.

Another map may now be shown with the various manufacturing towns marked, and attention called to the physical features which have caused the location of the industry at that spot, as the presence of water power, the possibility of water carriage, the neighbourhood of a port, the presence of hard water used in beer-making, as at Burton.

When the internal growth of England has been considered, a lesson should be given on her commercial supremacy, and the factors which have determined it. England’s position in the centre of the great land hemisphere, the climate, the indented character of the coast, and the mineral wealth, should all be touched upon; nor in doing this should points not geographical be omitted, as the needs of a continually increasing population, the founding of colonies by a part of this surplus population, and, above all, the character of the people, upon which alone the greatness of an empire can rest.

PHYSICS.

By Agatha Leonard, B.Sc. (Lond.).

Position of “physics” in scheme of science teaching.As a preliminary to any remarks on the teaching of physics, it will be well to consider the place which the subject should hold in a general scheme of science teaching. It is not the most suitable subject for junior classes; for young children the sciences of botany and zoology which cultivate the observing faculty, while making less demand upon the reasoning powers, are preferable, but for children of thirteen or fourteen a course of elementary physics affords valuable training and arouses great interest. The subject must, of course, be treated on purely experimental and non-mathematical lines, indeed the chief value of physics at this stage is to teach the children the true use and nature of experiment. They will probably begin with the idea that the use of experiments in a lecture is somewhat the same as that of illustrations in a story-book, to render it more entertaining, though they might be dispensed with, and it takes time to make clear to them that experiment is the very groundwork of all science, the careful “questioning of nature” as to what effects follow upon certain causes. These lessons on physics will lay an excellent foundation for a course on physical geography, which may be taken for the next year’s work.

With girls of fifteen or sixteen either a second course of physics, involving a knowledge of elementary mathematics, may be taken, or chemistry may be begun; while with older classes the choice of a subject will greatly depend on the nature of their previous work, and on the facilities for laboratory work in chemistry or physics. Physiology should not be taken with girls below sixteen; it is of less educational value than either of the subjects above-mentioned, the possibility of personal observation being less, and the whole as taught in schools too often a matter of memory rather than of observation or reasoning; if taught to elder girls it is rather for the practical advantage of the information imparted than for scientific training. Some such scheme of science teaching throughout a school as the following might therefore be suggested:—

The first course of physics (see end of chapter) may deal with some of the chief forces of nature (gravity, cohesion, friction); the three states of matter and their properties, under which head would come lessons on atmospheric pressure; elementary ideas of work and energy; and the simple phenomena of sound and heat. The subject of light is better omitted until sufficient knowledge of geometry has been acquired to allow of the laws of reflection and refraction, and the effect of prisms and lenses being rather more adequately dealt with than is possible at this stage. Magnetism and electricity also are better postponed until a later course.

Home-work.No text-book should be given to the children, as their home-work in science should never take the form of learning from a book. Some teachers, to avoid this, let the children take notes, and attempt to reproduce the lesson, others give, either on the blackboard or by dictation, a clear summary which the pupils take down verbatim, but neither plan is satisfactory; the first leads to confusion and inaccuracy, as the children are not old enough to take good notes, while under the second all the work is done by the teacher. I have found it best to end each lesson by setting some questions, framed so as to bring out the chief points of the lesson, to be answered by the children in their own words. The answers must be carefully looked over and criticised at the next lesson, and a methodical account of experiments insisted on, specifying in order the object of the experiment, the apparatus employed, the method adopted, and the results obtained and conclusion drawn. Specially good passages may be read to the class, both as an encouragement to the writer, and as an example to the rest of what can be done by one of themselves; and special censure should be given to careless work, but great care must be taken to avoid confusing mere mistakes with “bad work”; the children should be made to feel that more value is attached to even faulty explanations or descriptions, which show that their minds have worked on the subject, than to the most perfect reproduction of the teacher’s exact words.

Besides the advantage of securing that the pupils and not the teacher shall do the main part of the home-work, the teacher may gain most valuable hints from the errors of the children; they will be found often to arise from some misconception, the removal of which will suggest a quite fresh method of explanation; indeed a teacher will be unlikely to succeed in imparting clear scientific ideas to her pupils who is not on the watch for any indications of what ideas, right or wrong, they really have formed, and able therefore to see their difficulties from their point of view.

Definitions.The only case in which knowledge may perhaps with advantage be cast into words not by the pupil alone but by the teacher, is that of a definition, the construction of a concise and accurate definition being in most cases beyond the child’s unaided powers. Even here, however, the child should do as much as possible of the work herself, only it should be done in class with the teacher’s help instead of at home alone. Thus, suppose the lesson to be on the three states of matter, it is better not to give a definition of each as the starting-point, and then go on to illustrate and explain the same, but to start from the undefined idea which every child possesses of a solid, a liquid, and a gas, and develop from it by degrees the precise definition. Suppose the class to suggest as definitions that substances in the solid state are “hard,” in the liquid state “wet,” and in the gaseous state “invisible,” they will be much interested in having the imperfection of these definitions brought home to them by the help of the liquid metal mercury, which does not “wet” glass or porcelain, and of the visible gas chlorine, and in being led to find out the true distinctions by observing the different behaviour of solids, liquids, and gases respectively when placed in vessels of differing shapes and sizes.

Science teaching not “authoritative”.It must indeed be a fundamental principle throughout these lessons to tell as little as possible; not only should the children produce unaided reports of their work, but the reports should be of what they have themselves observed, not of what they have received on authority. The worthlessness of authoritative science teaching is very generally felt in these days, and some modern teachers are disposed to deny any value at all to science lectures for young children, asserting that only by experimental work carried out by themselves, with as little interference from the teacher as possible, can any really scientific ideas be communicated to them. The value of personal practical work I, of course, fully admit, but I am sure that really “scientific” training may also be given in a “lecture” lesson, by a teacher who knows her subject, and is skilful in the art of questioning, and in making her children tell her what they really do see in an experiment, instead of telling them what they ought to be seeing.

That observation may thus be trained, it is of importance to secure that all experiments shown to young classes should “go”. With older classes the occasional failure of an experiment may be no great matter, they are capable of understanding that the conditions of the experiment were not fulfilled and hence the failure, but with beginners in science it is very undesirable to produce the impression that when Nature is “questioned” she sometimes gives one answer and sometimes another. Experiments that cannot be shown to the children should as a general rule not be described, though when any principle is thoroughly grasped and driven home by experiments performed before the class, there is no harm in mentioning as additional illustrations such phenomena as the falling of the mercury in a barometer tube on being carried up a mountain, or the impossibility of making good tea at high altitudes owing to the lowering of the boiling-point of water; but should the want of apparatus prevent an experiment otherwise suitable for a lecture from being performed it is generally better with beginners to omit all mention of it.

Apparatus for elementary course.For carrying out such a course as that now being considered very simple and inexpensive apparatus is for the most part needed. The only expensive piece really necessary is an air-pump; for the rest, an ordinary pair of scales, a few glass beakers, flasks and funnels, some glass tubing and rods, a little mercury, some wire gauze, some sheet india-rubber, thermometers, a Bunsen burner, and a retort stand or two, are all that is needed, though the addition of such pieces of apparatus as the Magdeburg hemispheres will enable interesting experiments to be shown.

Practical work.As regards the children’s own practical work it is not always possible to arrange in schools for laboratory work for beginners; the time at disposal is often insufficient, and the class too large for a single teacher to give the supervision needed by children so young; but where the class can be taken in sections of not more than ten or twelve pupils for an extra lesson, nothing so greatly rouses the children’s interest and gives so real a grasp of principles as a course of simple experimental work carried out by themselves. Accuracy must be insisted upon from the very beginning; each experiment must have a definite object, and a description of the experiment with the results obtained must always be written out by the child. It is a good plan to give as many experiments as possible in which the result aimed at is quantitative, it is a great satisfaction to a child to obtain a result whose correctness can be gauged, but it is not necessary that the work should be exclusively of this type. The course may begin with the careful measurement of lengths, employing different methods, such as the direct application of the rule to the object, the transference of distances by means of compasses, and obtaining the lengths of curves by means of a string laid along them and afterwards measured; and the children should be taught to make measurements on the metrical system as well as in feet and inches, especially if they already possess any knowledge of decimals. When they can measure as accurately as their scales will allow, the vernier may be introduced, its principle explained by the aid of a large-sized model, and practice given in reading the verniers on barometer scales, etc. Then may follow measurement of the area of rectangles, and, if the children’s mathematical knowledge allow of it, of triangles and other rectilineal figures, then the determination of the volume of rectangular solids from their linear dimensions. The determination of mass may next be taken up, and the pupils taught how to use a balance properly, the C.G.S. unit being again employed as well as the pound; then they may learn how to weigh in water, and how to prove experimentally that the loss of weight of a body weighed in water is equal to the weight of the displaced water; then the volume of a body may be determined by finding the mass and hence the volume of the water it displaces; from this they pass readily to the determination of specific gravities. Experiments on air pressure may follow; the children may learn to read the height of the barometer, and to make for themselves barometric charts showing the variation of the height from day to day; this affords a good opportunity of teaching them to use squared paper. There are also many simple experiments in mechanics, such as the experimental determination of the principle of the lever, the finding of the position of the centre of gravity of a lamina, the finding of the resultant of two parallel forces, etc., very suitable for such a class. Then may come easy experiments and measurements in heat, the reading of various thermometer scales, the filling of a thermometer and its rough graduation, and experiments proving the fact of expansion and of the force exerted by expanding or contracting bodies; measurements of the amount of expansion are too difficult for this stage. Much supervision is required; special care should be taken that children are not left with unoccupied intervals during which they get listless and bored; this requires careful previous planning out of sufficient experiments for the whole class. It will stimulate interest if several children in succession are allowed to make the same measurement, and then to compare their results.

Even where no laboratory class is taken, the teacher can still take opportunities of convincing the children that experiments can be performed by themselves as well as by their class-teacher; they enjoy being called up to perform an experiment in class, and will, if they have any taste for the subject, take an interest in repeating any possible ones at home; they can convince themselves of air-pressure by private experiment with syringes, siphons, and inverted tumblers, or can find centres of gravity, or experiment with sounding strings of various lengths, but of course such desultory experiments, followed by no careful writing out of results, do not give very valuable training in scientific accuracy.

Diagrams.I would insist also on the importance of requiring children from the first to illustrate their work by diagrams; a little time is well spent in criticising these, and in showing how they might be improved. Very neat and serviceable diagrams may be produced even by children with no natural taste for drawing, but they need to be shown how to work, and perhaps to have the lines of a diagram suggested to them at first by a rough blackboard sketch, or it may not occur to them that a few simple lines will show all that is necessary better than a would-be realistic sketch of apparatus, with impossible perspective and smudgy shading.

Course of electricity and magnetism.I pass on now to somewhat higher classes. With pupils whose average age is about fifteen, some one or two of the branches of physics may be taken more in detail. Suppose electricity and magnetism to be chosen, the aim throughout the course should be so to impart elementary ideas that they may be a real help and not a hindrance to any future effort to take in modern views of electricity. To this end attention should from the very first be directed to the electric or magnetic “field” about any charged or magnetised body and not exclusively concentrated upon that body itself, and the pupils should be accustomed to attribute the motions in such fields not to the “action at a distance” of a charge, a pole, or a wire carrying a current, but to the special condition of the medium immediately around the moving body. The idea of a magnetic field is more readily grasped by beginners than the corresponding idea in electrostatics, owing to the ease with which the field may be mapped to the eye by means of iron filings, or by marking down successive positions of a tiny magnetic needle; it seems to me, therefore, well to begin with the study of magnetism, rather than, as is common in text-books, with that of statical electricity. From magnetism the more natural transition is to current electricity, and it will be found a good plan to take the subjects in this order, passing from the magnetic fields which surround permanent steel magnets to those which are found to exist in the neighbourhood of a wire whose ends have been joined to plates of zinc and copper immersed in a vessel of dilute acid. The existence of such fields will be proved by the magnetisation of iron round which the wire is coiled, and by the motion of permanent magnets near which it is held, and the direction of the lines of force will be inferred from the direction of such motion. The existence of the magnetic field established, the term “current of electricity” may be introduced; the children will readily understand that it arose from the idea that it was something flowing through the wire which gave it such strange properties, and that whether this is the case or not, there is a practical convenience in retaining the old terms.

Some of the practical applications of the magnetic effects of currents may now be explained, e.g., the electric telegraph and electric bells, and the use of a galvanometer as a current indicator. Simple experiments on the induction of currents by motion of magnets, or starting and stopping of currents may follow, it being carefully pointed out that the one essential for such induction in a coil is some change in the magnetic field in which it lies. The principle of dynamos readily follows. The heating and decomposing effects of electric currents may next be considered with their practical applications to electric lighting, and electro-plating respectively, and the attention of the children should be directed to the energy appearing as heat or as chemical separation in the two cases. If they have gone through the preliminary course they will know enough of the conservation of energy to look for the disappearance of energy in some other form, and the chemical action in the battery may now be pointed out. Some explanation of “polarisation” and of the need for more complicated forms of battery than the simple voltaic cell may be given.

Lessons on statical electricity will end the course; they may be connected with the preceding lessons by first speaking of the discharge of a Leyden jar, and that between the knobs of an induction machine as instantaneous “currents,” and going on to the state of affairs in the medium between the knobs or coatings when they are not sufficiently near for the discharge to take place; this will be made clear by going back to earliest facts known about electricity and following the ordinary course of electrostatic experiments.

Heat and light.Should “heat and light” be chosen instead of electricity for this year’s course, the mode of treating the subject must depend very much on the mathematical advancement of the pupils. It is probable that their knowledge will not exceed the first two books of Euclid, and algebra to simple equations, and it will therefore not carry them very far in the treatment of geometrical optics; it will enable the laws of reflection to be intelligibly explained, and the position of the image in a plane mirror to be determined (the law of refraction may also be made clear, as the children can easily be made to understand the meaning of the term “sine”), but formulæ connected with mirrors and lenses should be left to a later stage, the changes in size and position of the image formed by a curved mirror or a lens being determined experimentally and not by calculation. A general explanation of the action of optical instruments, telescope, microscope, spectacles, etc., can be given, without exact calculations, and illustrated either by carefully drawn diagrams, or by models with lenses of cardboard and rays represented by strings. The interest of lectures on dispersion and the spectrum is greatly increased if they can be illustrated by lantern experiments. The subject of heat lends itself better to non-mathematical treatment, and is specially good for practical work by the pupils themselves.

Work of senior classes.The work of senior classes, i.e., girls of seventeen or over, depends so much upon circumstances, such as their previous training, their mathematical knowledge, etc., that it is difficult to say much to the point about it, but a word may be added on a very common fault of such classes, a tendency to rely too much on their teacher and their notes of lectures, and to read and think too little for themselves. Independent reading.The practical work, which is an essential for such classes, does much to encourage self-reliance, but besides this they should from time to time be given some reading to do on points which have not been previously made clear in lectures; difficulties met with in the reading should be brought up at the next lesson, when the teacher will either solve them or put the pupil in the way of doing so for herself. This kind of work takes time, and is therefore apt to be crowded out from a full time-table, but it is worth an effort to find a place for it.

LIST OF SOME BOOKS USEFUL FOR TEACHERS.

I. Practical Physics.