The Elementary Teaching Of Physical Science

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Title:     The Elementary Teaching Of Physical Science
Author: Josiah Parsons Cooke [More Titles by Cooke]

An Address to the Schoolmasters of Boston, delivered February 4, 1878.

I felt a great reluctance at accepting the invitation of your excellent superintendent to address you on this occasion; for, although I could claim an unusually long experience in presenting the elements of physical science to college students, I was fully conscious that I knew little of the conditions under which such subjects must be studied, if at all, in the elementary schools, and was therefore in danger of appearing in a capacity which I should most sedulously shun, that of a babbler about impracticable theories of education. It is very easy to criticize another man's labor, and such criticisms, however plausible, do the grossest injustice when, as is often the case, they leave out of view the necessary conditions and limitations under which the work must be done. While, however, I felt most keenly my incapacity to deal with many of the practical problems which you have to solve, yet, on consideration, I concluded that it was my duty under the circumstances to state as clearly and forcibly as I could the very definite opinions which I had formed on the subject you are discussing, knowing that you will only give such weight to these opinions as your mature judgment can allow. In stating the results of my experience, I can not avoid a certain personal element, which would be wholly inexcusable were it not that the facts, as I think you will admit, form the basis of my argument.

I am a Boston boy, born in this immediate neighborhood, and fitted for college at the "Latin School." It so happened that, while I was very unsuccessfully endeavoring to commit to memory, in the old school-house on School Street, Andrews and Stoddard's Latin grammar, not one word of which I could understand, the "Lowell Institute" lectures were opened at the "Odeon" on Congress Street. At those lectures I got my first taste of real knowledge, and that taste awakened an appetite which has never yet been satisfied. As a boy, I eagerly sought the small amount of popular science which the English literature of that day afforded; and I can now distinctly recall almost every page of Mrs. Marcet's "Conversations on Chemistry," which was the first book on my science that I ever read. More to the point than this, a boy's pertinacity, favored by a kind father's indulgence, found the means of repeating, in a small way, most of the experiments first seen at the Lowell Institute lecture; and thus it came to pass that, before I entered college, I had acquired a real, available knowledge of the facts of chemistry; although, with much labor and intense weariness, I had gained only a formal knowledge of those subjects which were then regarded as the only essential preparation for the college course. In college, my attention was almost exclusively devoted to other studies--for, in my day at Cambridge, chemistry was one of the lost arts. But when, the year after I graduated, I was most unexpectedly called upon to give my first course of lectures, the only laboratory in which I had worked was the shed of my father's house on Winthrop Place, and the only apparatus at my command was what this boy's laboratory contained. With these simple tools, or, as I should rather say, because they were so simple, I gained that measure of success which determined my subsequent career.

I feel that I owe you a constant apology for these personal details, and I should not be guilty of them did I not believe that they establish two points more conclusively than I could prove them in any other way. First, that it is perfectly possible for a child before fifteen years of age to acquire a real and living knowledge of the fundamental facts of nature on which physical science is based. Secondly, that this knowledge can be effectually gained by the use of the simplest tools. Let me add that this is not a question of natural endowments or special aptitudes, for every one who has studied from the love of knowledge has had the same experience; and I do not believe that, if my first taste of real knowledge had been of history, nay, I will even say, of philology, instead of chemistry, the circumstance would have materially influenced my success in life, however different the direction into which it might have turned my study. My early tastes were utterly at variance with all my surroundings and all my inheritances, and were simply determined by the accident which first satisfied that natural thirst for knowledge which every child experiences to a greater or less degree--a desire most rudely repressed in our usual methods of teaching.

My bitter experience as a pupil in the Boston Latin School and my subsequent more fortunate experience of thirty years as a teacher in Harvard College have impressed me most profoundly with the conviction that the only way to arouse and sustain a love for knowledge in children is to cultivate their perceptive faculties. To present the rudiments of knowledge to immature minds in an abstract form, whether the subject be grammar or physical science, is, in my judgment, not only culpable folly, but also downright wrong. And, if, to those who have been accustomed to the long established routine of our public school, my opinions may appear revolutionary and extreme, I am, nevertheless, sure that they would receive the universal assent of the men whom all would recognize as the foremost scientific teachers of the world. I can well remember that when, many years ago, the late Professor Agassiz declared in my hearing that he would have no text-books used in his museum, I thought his plan of pure object-teaching chimerical in the extreme, and yet experience has not only convinced me of the wisdom of his judgment in regard to the teaching of natural history, but brought me to a similar conclusion in regard to the elementary teaching both of natural philosophy and of chemistry.

Allow me then to express my firm persuasion that it is not only useless but injurious to the education of young minds to present to them at the outset any department of physical science as a body of definitions, principles, laws, or theories; and that in elementary schools only such facts should be taught as can be verified by the experience of the pupil, or by such simple experiments as the pupils can try for themselves. The usual method of committing by heart the words of a school-book, and repeating them at the dictation of a teacher, may afford a good exercise for the memory, but it is absurd to regard such a task as a lesson in physical science, and this kind of study can be spent with vastly greater profit on the spelling-book.

There is one department of physical science which has been taught in this absurd way in our schools from time immemorial. I refer, of course, to the study of geography, and I leave for you to judge whether the result is worth the one hundredth part of the toil and drudgery spent in obtaining it. Let us suppose that your child is able to give you the names of all the rivers, bays, and capes from Greenland to Patagonia, how much more does that child know of the structure and social relations of this globe on which its lot has been cast than it did before this senseless feat was attempted, a feat, moreover, to which only a child's memory would be equal? And, when you turn to your own experience, what is the outcome of all the time and labor spent on geography? Is it not solely just that portion of your knowledge which, in spite of the system, was direct object-teaching--the images you insensibly acquired from the maps and pictures in the school-books?

But there is a very different way of teaching geography, by which the study may be made a pleasure, not a task. The teacher does not begin with abstract definitions of rivers, and bays, and oceans, which convey no definite meaning to a child, but with Charles River, Boston Harbor, and the Atlantic Ocean, which are to him real things, however imperfect his conceptions of their extent. The child is first shown, not a map of the globe, which he can not by any possibility understand, but a map of a very limited region around his own home. He is taught how to find the north and south, the east and west directions. He is encouraged to make excursions to verify the map, or to add to its details, and such excursions may be made to have for him all the zest of voyages of discovery; and when thus the rudiments of geographical science have been mastered, not in technical terms, but in substance, then the teacher may begin to expand the horizon of the pupil's knowledge, judiciously omitting details in proportion as distance increases, until at length the general survey embraces the globe. Of course, such teaching as this can only be given orally with the help of proper apparatus, such as wall maps, and globes, and photographs. It must take the interrogative form, and the questions should be directed to bring out the child's already acquired knowledge, and to lead him to observe facts which had hitherto escaped his notice. What a child reads in a book, or even what you tell him, is never one half learnt, unless his interest is aroused. But what a child observes for himself he never forgets, and when you have thus aroused his interest you can associate a large number of facts with one observation, and these all crystallize in his memory around this nucleus.

This is no mere theory, no untried method which I am advocating. So far from it, I am describing the precise method which has been used for many years in Germany, where the science of education is far better understood than with us, and where economy both of time and labor in teaching is most carefully studied. If our school committees could attend and understand a single exercise in geography, such as are daily given in the elementary schools of Prussia, I am sure that at least one form of child torture would soon disappear from the primary schools of this country. Indeed, I already see evidence of a growing public opinion on this subject, an effect which I trace in no small measure to the influence of the Department of Education of the Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876.

That which is true of geography applies with still greater force to such subjects as physics and chemistry, since the abstract conceptions which these sciences involve are more abstruse, and the language by which the conceptions are expressed or defined far less plain than is the case with the older and more descriptive branch of knowledge. Hence, as sciences, properly so called, that is, as philosophical systems, they have no place whatever in elementary education. But, underlying these systems, there is a great multitude of phenomena which a child can be led to observe and apprehend as readily as the facts of geography. Take that subject--mechanics--which our ordinary school-books very philosophically but most unpractically place at the beginning of what they call "Natural" Philosophy. How many of the fundamental facts of this difficult subject can be made familiar to a child? Select, as an example, Newton's "First Law of Motion." Suppose you make a boy memorize the ordinary rule, "Every body continues in a state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line until acted upon by some external force," how much will he know about it? Suppose you make him do a lot of problems involving distances, velocities, and times, will he know any more about it? But ask him, "Can you pitch a ball as well as your playmate?" and he answers at once, "No; John is stronger than I am." And then, if again you ask, "Can you catch John's ball?" he will probably reply, "Of course, not! It requires a boy as strong as John to catch his balls." And thus, by a few well-directed questions, you would bring that boy to learn a lesson which he would never forget, and which he would recall every time he played base-ball; namely, that John's swift balls could not be set in motion without an expenditure of a definite amount of muscular effort, and could not be stopped without the exertion of an equal amount of what, after a while, you could get him to call force. From the ball you would naturally pass to the railroad train or the steamboat, and I should not wonder if, with a little patience, you could bring even a boy to understand that motion can not be maintained against a resistance, in other words, that work can not be done without a constant expenditure of muscular effort, or of some other source of power; and it is a fond hope of mine that by the time these boys grow into men our intelligent New England community might become so far educated in the elementary principles of mechanics that no self-sustained motors, nor other mechanical nostrums which claim to have superseded the primeval curse--if that law was a curse, which compels man to earn his bread with the sweat of his brow--will receive the sanction of our respectable journals; and then--if they have not previously learned the lesson by dire experience--we may hope to persuade our people of the parallel and equally elementary principle of political economy, that value can not be legislated into rags.

But, my friends, our subject gives no occasion for banter, and presents aspects too serious to be treated lightly or in jests. As inhabitants of a not over-fruitful land, and, therefore, members of a community which must excel, if at all, solely by its enterprise and intelligence, we have a duty to our children which we can not avoid, if we would, and for which we shall be held responsible by our posterity. These children are entering life surrounded not only by all the wonders and glories of nature, but, also, by giant conditions, which, whether stationed on their path as a blessing or a curse, will inevitably strike if their behests are not obeyed. So far as science has been able to define these giant forms, it is our duty, as it is our privilege, to point them out to those we are bound to protect and guide; and in many cases it is in our power to change the curse into a blessing, and to transform the destructive demon into a guardian angel. After that command of language which the necessities of civilized life imperatively require, there is no acquisition which we can give our children that will exert so important an influence on their material welfare as a knowledge of the laws of nature, under which they must live and to which they must conform; and throughout whose universal dominion the only question is whether men shall grovel as ignorant slaves or shall rule as intelligent servants. Yes; rule by obeying. "Ich Dien"; for only under that motto, which, five hundred years ago, the great Black Prince bore so victoriously through the fields of Cressy and Poitiers, can man ever rule in Nature's kingdom.

I regard it, therefore, as the highest duty and the most enlightened self-interest of a community like this to provide the best means for the instruction of its children in the elements of physical science; and I was, therefore, most anxious to do all in my power to second the enlightened efforts of your eminent Superintendent in this direction. You must remember, however, that the best tools are worthless in themselves, and can secure no valuable results unless judiciously used. Indeed, there is danger in too many tools, and I have a great horror of that array of brass-work which is usually miscalled "philosophical" apparatus. The greater part of this is, in my opinion, a mere hindrance to the teacher, because it at once erects a barrier between the scholar and the simple facts of nature, and the child inevitably associates with the phenomenon illustrated some legerdemain, and looks on your experiments very much as he would on the exhibition of a Houdin or a Signor Blitz. The secret of success in teaching physical science is to use the simplest and most familiar means to illustrate your point.

When a very young man I was favored with an introduction to Michael Faraday, and had the privilege of attending a portion of a course of lectures which this noble man was then in the habit of giving every Christmas season to a juvenile auditory at the Royal Institution of London. As a boy, I had become familiar with lectures on chemistry at the Lowell Institute, where they did not lack the pomp of circumstance or the display of apparatus, and I had come to associate these elements with the conditions of success in lectures of this kind. What, then, was my surprise to find Faraday, the acknowledged leader of the world in his science, and who had every means of illustration at his command, using the plainest language and the simplest tools. When, in my youthful admiration at the result, I expressed, after one of the lectures, my surprise at the simplicity of the means employed, the great master replied: "That is the whole secret of interesting these young people. I always use the simplest means, but I never leave a point not illustrated. If I mention the force of gravitation I take up a stone and let it drop." At this distance of time, I can not be sure that I quote his exact language, but the lesson and the illustration I could not forget; and to this lesson, more than to any other one thing, I owe whatever success I have had as a teacher of physical science.

I repeat, therefore, it is not only useless but injurious in the education of young minds to present any department of physical science as a body of definitions, principles, laws, or theories; and that in elementary schools such facts only should be taught as can be verified either by the experience of the pupils or by the simplest experiments, which the pupils can repeat by themselves; and now, after this discussion, I add, that the teacher must depend on his own ingenuity for his experiments, and on his intercourse with his pupils for his instruction.

But you will tell me all this involves grave difficulties, and conditions incompatible with our ordinary school life. I freely admit the difficulties, but I am none the less sure that, unless science can be taught on the principles I have endeavored to illustrate, it had better not be taught at all. I know very well that the proper teaching of physical science is wholly incompatible with our usual school methods. But this only proves to me that these methods ought to be changed, and I am persuaded that the changes required will benefit the literary and classical as well as the scientific courses of study. For do not the same general principles apply to the acquisition of knowledge in all subjects? And when a child's perceptive faculties have been duly stimulated, and his intelligence fully awakened, he will find interest in grammar, in literature, or in history, as well as in science.

In repelling the reproach of narrowness, to which our elective system at Cambridge undoubtedly frequently leads, how often have I urged the self-evident proposition that to arouse a love of study in any subject, I care not how subordinate its importance or how limited its scope, is to take the first step toward making your man a scholar; while to fail to gain his interest in any study is to lose the whole end of education--and what is true of the man is still more true of the child. Classical culture on the one hand and scientific culture on the other are excellent things, but, if your boy can not be made to take an interest either in classics or in science, how plain it is that such treasures are not for him, and, in the absence of the one condition which can give value to any study, how idle and inconsequent all questions in regard to the relative merits of these studies appear! On the other hand, a love of study once gained, all studies are alike good.

And as with the pupil, so with the teacher. No teaching is of any real value that does not come directly from the intelligence, and heart of the teacher, and thus appeals to the intelligence and heart of the pupil. It, of course, implies more acquisition, and it requires far more energy to teach from one's own knowledge than to teach from a book, but then, just in proportion to the difficulties overcome, does the teacher raise his profession and ennoble himself. There is no nobler service than the life of a true teacher; but the mere task-master has no right to the teacher's name, and can never attain the teacher's reward.

[The end]
Josiah Parsons Cooke's essay: Elementary Teaching Of Physical Science

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