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:—

Classes ofaverageage10to12 Botany or Zoology.
„„„13„14Elementary Physics.
„„„14„15Physical Geography.
„„„15„16- Chemistry or Physics (Magnetism and Electricity or Heat and Light).
Senior Classes- Chemistry or Physics or Botany; Physiology and Hygiene (in addition to one of the above).

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.