Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - New Chemistry Building [PAGE 22]

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mained unclear, and the time is spent on the latter. Also, the recollection of past topics, when the need of applying them arises, can be tested, misunderstandings can be recognized and removed, and lapses of memory can be remedied. The method finds out infallibly what is needed, and how much in each case is needed, and permits the doing of precisely what is necessary. The process involves continual measurement of the existing results. A lecturer can only guess at what is needed, and how much of it, and must necessarily be more or less in error on every occasion. The method advocated has for the chemist the attraction of being quantitative and, with practice, the experimental error becomes negligible. Still again, since the lectures are systematic and orderly, while the laboratory work is necessarily more or less topical, the pupil thinks the lectures are the kernel of the course. Yet, in point of fact, the real contact with the subject takes place in the .laboratory, and it is better therefore to make the student feel t h a t the laboratory work is the principal feature of the course, and t h a t the classroom work is simply a discussion and adjustment of what has been learned in the laboratory and at home. Individual observation, and reasoning from observation, can thus receive t h a t strong emphasis which they deserve, but in a lecture pan never receive. Naturally, every week each student must begin with the experiments for t h a t week, since he cannot otherwise prepare himself for the class meetings. Finally, many chemists admit t h a t they learned little chemistry from the first lecture course, b u t insist t h a t the personality and point of view of the lecturer—not only in matters chemical, but in respects quite remote from t h a t science—exercised a profound influence upon their own point of view and their subsequent attitude towards life. In reply, it need only be pointed out that, in the free interchange of thought which is a necessary part of the method suggested, the opportunity for the personality of the instructor to assert itself is even freer than it ever can be in a lecture, and t h a t the digressions, if they are such, since they will usually be suggested by reactions shown by the students themselves, will be much more likely to strike some target effectively and forcefully than will the random shots of a lecturer, who knows only what is in his own mind, and nothing of what is in the mind of the listener.

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