thing can be overdone, and that the pupil has other studies besides out-door science.

THE MANAGEMENT OF SCHOOL EXCURSIONS.

The conduct of the excursion must be understood to be in your own hands, and that you are master, and you must be obeyed without question; otherwise, parents may have a perfect right to refuse their sons and daughters to your care. Of course there will always be one or two silly persons. There will be that excruciatingly facetious chap who wears a girl's hat, and doesn't think you meant what you said when you forbade any one to cross the high railway trestle. But he finds out, and is combed down to the queen's taste in short order. On the whole, it is singular how orderly and earnest an excursion party can be.

An excursion would lose much of its value unless observations were noted, drawings made, and specimens collected and exhibited in the class-room. The pupil should handle the specimens himself, and be made to describe what he sees. Here, again, is the great danger that the teacher will tell too much. It is amazing to find how much one can draw out of pupils by simply keeping at it. Make them tell why this piece of sandstone is gray and that red; why the stream was so winding, and what formed the bar and the sand spit at its mouth.

Now, all this field work can be gotten out of secondary pupils, and as far as we are concerned in Buffalo, no one has ever questioned our right to demand it.

THE QUESTION OF EXPENSE.

Of its value, there is not a shadow of a doubt, in my mind; the results are eminently satisfactory. I believe it is practicable for any class in secondary schools to make at least six field. excursions. They need not always occupy the whole day, and they can be made for less than $2.50 all told. In country schools this would be far less, and even without spending a cent.

It is surprising to find the entire absence of complaint on account of expense. The parents, no doubt, are satisfied and pleased with the account given of the trips. And should there be a pupil who cannot afford the expense, a little tact on the part of the teacher will soon arrange something satisfactory.

I believe it is satisfactory, then, to make at least six excursions

as a class each term; out-door work and observation need and must not be limited simply to spring and autumn. Individual excursions should be encouraged and collateral reading recommended for all, of which due credit should be given. There is always something to be observed at all times which has an important bearing on geography, geology, botany and zoölogy, and there is much side reading, and many beautiful tales and myths in prose and poetry, all connected with these subjects.

I cannot believe that so important a branch of science work as field study is neglected. If it is neglected, the person having the class in charge is either ignorant of the pleasure and the great profit derived from such work, or else not in sympathy with the work. For who can look about him, see all the phenomena and facts of nature, all their deep meaning, feel all the profound · emotion which stirs the deepest and purest sensations in the human breast and not rejoice in the fact that it his great privilege to be a teacher, and to lead young minds to a fuller realization of the works of God.-The School Journal.

SOME

EDUCATIONAL REASONS

REASONS FOR OBSERVA

TIONAL TEACHING IN ELEMENTARY

ASTRONOMY.

BY GEORGE W. MYERS.

Most teachers who have seriously attempted to define for themselves the aims of education admit that knowledge, as commonly understood, is at best but a subsidiary aim. This relegates the text-book to a secondary place in teaching. But when the truth of the first statement begins to dawn upon the teacher he is in danger of underestimating knowledge as a means of education. The text, therefore, has a legitimate place, even though. secondary. No one needs to bear these two facts more clearly and continually in mind than does the high school science teacher. Knowledge as means is sound pedagogy, knowledge as end is. quite another proposition.

It is indeed well for the science teacher both in the secondary

and in the higher schools at times to restate the aims of teaching in terms of his own science. Too frequently the teacher of the physical sciences is so engrossed with the beauties and revelations of his subject as to fail almost, if not altogether, in this important duty. Even teachers who become text-book writers are guilty, it would seem, of gross delinquency in this respect, when they make their books mere compendiums of their special sciences, or outline-courses for popular reading in these subjects. Prefatory statements of writers of texts in the mathematical sciences to the effect that the purpose of the writer has been to eliminate all demands for the mathematics would seem to argue the author into this same category of delinquents, if indeed it does not impugn his motive as a man of science. It is doubtful whether any physical science can roll up a larger percentage of teachers who fail-unintentionally, of course, but none the less fail-practically to recognize the importance of inquiring into the relative value of various possible methods of presenting truth to beginners than can astronomy. It is believed that this deplorable state of things astronomical, perhaps nowhere so conspicuously and perniciously present as in our high schools, is both a cause and an effect of the general apathy, now happily passing, felt toward the educative value of this noble science.

In the March number of SCHOOL SCIENCE the writer briefly and somewhat crudely presented the reasons for the prevalence of this feeling. In this paper he will briefly state some of the educational principles which have wrought significant changes in school curricula by the introduction into them of physics, chemistry, zoölogy, etc., and which seem to demand a restudy, if not a reconstruction, of the relations of astronomy to the educational series.

Most teachers will agree that education results from selfeffort made in accordance with law, and from this alone. The pupil makes an effort to remember, and in some mysterious way his memory becomes more vigorous; he makes an effort to determine and his will is thereby strengthened; he puts forth an effort to think, and his power to think is enhanced. This means we can train a pupil to do a thing only through his own efforts to do it. No pupil can attain to the ends of scientific study save

through his own efforts to do so. The teacher can be of service in the way of removing obstacles which dissipate his energies and of indicating guiding principles.

This, however, implies a knowledge, at least on the teacher's part, of the purpose of scientific study. It would be easy to prove, though space cannot be taken for it, that the end of such study is to train the student's mind into the mental habits of the investigator. This requires the teaching of enough knowledge for the student's mind to work upon; but makes mental activity toward a definite goal the important consideration to the teacher. It does not demand a bookful of facts unrelated to the pupil. This cultivates the verbal memory only, and that is the one faculty which does not need cultivating. In the next place, let us seek to ascertain what this definite goal must be.

This necessitates the inquiry as to how the trained scientist Ideals with his materials in the progress of investigation. This is true because so far as the beginnings are concerned the aim of the prospective scientist and of the general student are identical. In other words, let us ask, how does the investigator proceed in the collation and elaboration of his materials and in his reasoning upon them? This is substantially the same as to ask, what is the method of science? This question has been answered so recently and so well by one of the most eminent scientists of our country that the writer ventures to quote the answer here:

"The accumulation of pertinent observations, the classification and generalization of them, the framing of hypotheses from the materials thus obtained, deduction from these hypotheses and comparison of the products of these deductions in every way possible with new facts until substantial certainty is reached— these are the general steps of the method of physical science.”*

A little further on the writer from whom the above is quoted, states that a flash of insight may permit an expert to see quickly whither an investigation is tending and thereby enable him to abridge one or more of the steps mentioned, but adds that if an inquirer omit or obscure a sure starting point and a rigid verification he thereby proves that he is not even a scientific man at all.

*S. A. Forbes, "The Method of Science," Public School Publishing Co.

Without observation and classification there can be no science at all.

If, then, we grant that the study of any physical science should predispose the student's mind to this inductive-deductive method of truth-seeking, how can we teachers of astronomy fail to recognize that when we are eliminating entirely, or even subordinating, observational and experimental work with our classes and depending entirely upon the text-book that we are doing just about as good as no teaching at all?

The series of experimental exercises which the writer promised in the March number, and which are intended to bring within easy access of all readers of SCHOOL SCIENCE, who are desirous of putting high school astronomy on a modern basis, the means of doing so, will be begun in the first issue in the fall.

INFLUENCE OF EXPECTATION IN QUANTITATIVE WORK.

BY N. A. HARVEY.

Department of Natural Science, Chicago Normal School.

In the March number of SCHOOL SCIENCE is an article upon "Quantitative Experiments in Chemistry for High Schools,' which contains an excellent estimate of the advantages to be gained from quantitative work in chemistry. In illustrating the possibilities of quantitative work, the writer gives some examples of accurate results obtained by large classes. The examples are certainly very remarkable, and the difference between the extreme results reported is very small. Certainly such work must be productive of the greatest benefit to students.

But one circumstance was omitted upon which will depend, in a very great measure, our estimate of the benefit the student derives from such work. Did the students know before completing their work how much they ought to get, or just about what the answer should be? Any one who has studied the influence of expectation upon judgment knows how much it modifies a conclusion. If, in a quantitative determination, a student knows what result he ought to get, he will get that result almost in spite of himself. It is not necessarily something dishonest, but it is