Sir John Lubbock made an interesting speech last week at
Bromley, in distributing the prizes and certificates to the Science and Art Classes held in connection with the South Kensington Department, maintaining that it:was only these Science and Art Classes which had saved the Revised Code from the danger of substituting a merely mechanical instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, for that attempt to interest and develope the intel- ligence which is of the essence of all true education. The study of Science and Art could not be got up mechanically, or by rote. 'These studies imply independent observation and judgment, not a mere exercise of memory, and so they have to some extent counteracted the tendency of the "payment by results" to con- centrate the attention of children on the mere acquisition of the instruments of knowledge,—which does not in itself give any guarantee that these instruments when acquired will be put to use, or will be put to good use. Makea child wish for knowledge, and you do more than when you give him the key to it without the wish to use it. The Art and Science Classes do the former, and it is satisfactory to know that those who avail themselves of -them have increased from 500 in all in the first year of their insti- tution to 49,000 in 1873,—that is, have multiplied by a hundred in twelve years. May they multiply themselves by another hundred in twelve years more !
Previous page
