eight are required to be answered, specially when 15 questions. cover quite a range of matter. If the student has done the work it is a very easy matter to sit down and write out answers to eight of them.

Dr Grout I want to say for myself that I never personally suffered from that tyranny-that those questions in that science are not tyrannic, but can not questions be devised to test the students' power to do the work? Of course most of the questions have to be, under the present system, a test knowledge of the facts. I want to see questions which test the students' ability to do the work, and where a school is equipped with a laboratory, it is practicable.

Inspector Clement-I must insist that the questions are all right. When we ask the student to write out an account of an excursion he has made with the class, dwelling on the observations he has made pertaining to geology or physical geography it is certainly a fair question and gives a chance for a person to tell what he knows. This is simply an illustration.

Prof. Franklin N. Jewett-I am in sympathy with the writer of the paper. I have asked pupils, which they preferred in doing experimental work, to know the result in advance or to discover it, and I have been surprised, not quite dismayed, but surprised and interested at finding that a great majority preferred to know the result in advance. They said that then they liked to work better. I simply know that students are capable of doing fine work under that plan. They are greatly interested and do extra work in the laboratory, and come in after school and work till dark on a process which usually tells what to expect, striving to find the answer as we did in arithmetic when the answer was under the problem and not in the back of the book.

This has not convinced me, however, that the report is to be taken at par. I am not convinced that the sense or experience on which these pupils based their reply was entirely normal or best, but I present the matter and want to know if anyone can tell me how general this impression may be among the pupils; how it takes and how it works. I can not get the con

viction out of my mind that the proper way is the way of discovery, and I have always wished in later years that I might have had more opportunities for such discovery when younger.

I have also thought-I presume there is no question about it as everybody knows it-that the scientific world is getting its information by reading more than by the laboratory. If I am wrong I would like to be corrected. No people more than scientific people get together and hear each others papers read. That is literary work, textbook work. A man goes through a process, a series of experiments, and his reports are printed and become common property of the scientific world. This feature has its place, as marking humanity and distinguishing it from the lower animals. Where has it a place, in the beginning of school life? When should it come in in large measure? These, to me, practical questions, I do not mention with the expectation of having them entirely settled. There are two sides to the matter and I do not wish to limit either side unduly. I hope to make more observations on this subject.

The question arises how far shall we push conclusions beyond experiments. I must confess I would like to see the experiment tried of teaching some of the sciences to persons who should have no textbooks and no access to textbooks. If any have had such experience, I would be glad to hear from them.

Prof. George M. Turner-I like Prof. Saunders's use of the term "research work". I confess that it has never appealed to me quite as it has this morning. I have always felt that a teacher in a high school was not quite in the position where he could do original work, as a professor in college could. I am willing to grant that I have experienced, and no doubt many others in this room have experienced, such feelings as described, that one might have on finding something new to themselves, not to the world, but to themselves.

The use of the term is a good one. From this standpoint, why do not the boys and the girls do research work every time they go into the laboratory? The work and results are in most cases discoveries from their standpoint. The previous gentle

man remarks that he thinks his pupils are more inclined to have the answer given before the work than afterward. In many cases I think that is all right. Why not? The pupil does not go into the laboratory, as I understand it, for the purpose of discovering the laws. He is not there for that purpose. He goes there to win the power to use his hands, to train his mind and to draw proper conclusions from what he has done. Why should not the pupil, knowing beforehand what to look for, use his hands just as well? Knowing where and how to look, why should he not have this same satisfaction when he has gotten something new to himself, that the research man has when he finds something new to the world as a whole?

From a personal standpoint, I never shall forget the first time. I went into a dark room to develop a plate and brought out an image produced by an x-ray. I had read about the thing. It was not new to the world, but it was decidedly new to me. It was some three or four months after the discovery was announced that I had an opportunity of trying the experiment. A boy had a bullet in his hand which the doctor asked me to locate. I had no faith that I could help the man, but I exposed for that bullet something like one and one half hours. When I took the plate into the dark room it was with a strange kind of a feeling, and when I saw the outline of the hand, and afterward that of the bullet, I can not put it into words how I felt. I just felt a certain degree of enthusiasm, gladness and joy beyond expression. Why should not our boys and girls, even if they have an idea what to expect, enjoy the work and get out of it the same degree of satisfaction that I had, or those have who do entirely original work?

Prof. N. A. Harvey-I have been very much interested in the discussion and very much pleased with the paper itself. There is one idea in the paper that leads me in a direction that I am very glad to go-the use of the term research to mean not the extension of knowledge that the world already possesses, but the extension of the pupil's own knowledge after the manner that research workers employ. Generally we think

of research as being that kind of work which extends the limits of knowledge possessed by the world. I do not know that this use of the term research is above criticism. After all, it carries with it an implication that is very good. It seems to me the only true method. Perhaps it has to come to high school work through that word so common and familiar to us, as applied to workers in universities and great original investigators.

It seems to me it is the only way in which we can do the best work for our pupils in the teaching of science. It is not sufficient for a pupil to work for a known result, as that will not afford the greatest advantage to the pupil.

You know how great the influence of expectation is on an anticipated result. When a person is working with a chemical balance, and the operations are not very delicate and he knows he ought to get a certain number of grams and milligrams for a particular amount of substance he has been working with, it is almost impossible to keep that balance from working out the known amount. It shows that result every time. So in operations for measuring falling bodies, if a person knows he ought to get about a specified amount, he can not prevent it coming right to that point. It will come in spite of himself, and he may be as honest as he pleases. It is that influence which is so disastrous to good work. I have no doubt that a great majority of pupils would prefer to know what they would get. I think if the teacher should put it to a vote, “Now, shall we read this Latin lesson with a pony, or read it without?" I think I know how that class would decide. It would be a very remarkable pupil who would take the other stand conscientiously. There are pupils who, in geometry, will work out demonstrations in an original way and not get help, but most will not do so. They are not remarkable. They are common, everyday people like the rest of us. Not many of us will work out a problem at firsthand. We wish to economize time and effort.

I will say this in answer to a gentleman over there. I have had some experience in doing this in work with classes in physics and in chemistry and in zoology particularly, and I

might say in botany, where my effort was to an extent that I thought necessary, directed to keeping reference books, textbooks and answers out of the hands of the pupils. The results were eminently satisfactory to me, and I think, to the pupils. I do not know that they enjoyed it more than they would the other way, but they just took it as a matter of course because it had to be that way. There was a very great difference in the kind of work done from that done where a textbook was put into the hands of the pupils. I have in another place presented this instance as an example of a general principle. It is the clearest evidence I know of. For three successive years I taught two classes a day in physics in a normal school, in which the students had had different experiences before enter ing the school. One was a class of high school graduates, all the members of which had studied Avery's Physics and had various experience in laboratories. Laboratories had not been of the same kind. Some were good and some bad, and perhaps some had not done laboratory work. The other class had never studied physics. The two classes were taught in the same studies, with the same experiments in laboratory, and the same teacher. There was the best possible opportunity for comparison, where every other variation was eliminated, it seemed to me, except the one of previous different experience. In a part of the work the experiments and exercises were just as new to those who had studied physics as to those who had never studied it, but this seemed to make no difference whatever. I very soon found that those who had not studied physics before had a better result than those who had studied, and in seven cases out of 10, the class who had never studied physics obtained more nearly accurate results on the average, than those who had studied it. The textbooks were kept away from the students who had studied physics before, yet they certainly had a knowledge of what some of the answers should be. The only interpretation I could make was that the teaching of physics to those pupils with a textbook in hand had detracted from their ability to obtain correct results by their