The Library of Work and Play: Electricity and Its Everyday Uses

Drawing by J. Hodson Redman
The Library of Work and Play
ELECTRICITY AND ITS EVERYDAY USES
BY JOHN F. WOODHULL, PH.D.
McGOWEN-MAIER & CO.
Chicago, Ill.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

Why do we pursue one method when instructing an individual boy out of school, and a very different method when teaching a class of boys in school?
The school method of teaching the dynamo is to begin with the bar magnet and, through a series of thirty or forty lessons on fundamental principles, lead up to the dynamo, which is then presented, with considerable attention to detail, as a composite application of principles. This might be styled the synthetic method. He who teaches a boy out of school is pretty likely to reverse this order and pursue the analytic method. The class in school has very little influence in determining the order of procedure. The lone pupil with his questions almost wholly determines the order of procedure. Out of school no one has the courage to deny information to a hungry boy; in school we profess to put a ban upon information giving, and we do quite effectually deaden his sense of hunger. The school method rarely yields fruit which lasts beyond the examination period; on the other hand, a considerable number of boys have become electrical experts without the aid of a school. This book is the story of how my boy and I studied electricity together. We have had no other method than to attack our problems directly, and principles have come in only when they were needed.