Education; Priestley, Joseph, 1733-1804; Science -- Study and teaching
Another very important point in this connection is the question of the
supply of teachers. I should say that is one of the greatest
difficulties which beset the whole problem before us. I do not wish in
the slightest degree to criticise the existing system of preparing
teachers for ordinary school work. I have nothing to say about it. But
what I do wish to say, and what I trust I may impress on your minds
firmly is this, that for the purpose of obtaining persons competent to
teach science or to act as technical teachers, a different system must
be adopted. For this purpose a man must know what he is about
thoroughly, and be able to deal with his subject as if it were the
business of his ordinary life. For this purpose, for the obtaining of
teachers of science and of technical classes, the system of catching a
boy or girl young, making a pupil teacher of him, compelling the poor
little mortal to pour from his little bucket, into a still smaller
bucket, that which has just been poured into it out of a big bucket;
and passing him afterwards through the training college, where his life
is devoted to filling the bucket from the pump from morning till night,
without time for thought or reflection, is a system which should not
continue. Let me assure you that it will not do for us, that you had
better give the attempt up than try that system. I remember somewhere
reading of an interview between the poet Southey and a good Quaker.
Southey was a man of marvellous powers of work. He had a habit of
dividing his time into little parts each of which was filled up, and he
told the Quaker what he did in this hour and that, and so on through
the day until far into the night. The Quaker listened, and at the close
said, "Well, but, friend Southey, when dost thee think?" The system
which I am now adverting to is arraigned and condemned by putting that
question to it. When does the unhappy pupil teacher, or over-drilled
student of a training college, find any time to think? I am sure if I
were in their place I could not. I repeat, that kind of thing will not
do for science teachers. For science teachers must have knowledge, and
knowledge is not to be acquired on these terms. The power of repetition
is, but that is not knowledge. The knowledge which is absolutely
requisite in dealing with young children is the knowledge you possess,
as you would know your own business, and which you can just turn about
as if you were explaining to a boy a matter of everyday life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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