The University of Cambridge appears to be full of the
con- viction that a great deal of help, at least, can be given to teachers in enabling them to teach, besides that most essential help of all, which makes them masters of the subject-matter they are to impart. Mr. J. Cl. Fitch is now delivering lectures at Cambridge on the science and art of teaching, which are attended by at least a hundred attentive and even eager hearers, about forty of whom are women and sixty men. And the first examination, in the theory, history, and practice of teaching, is now fixed for the 22nd and 23rd of June, an examination which is to be held at once in Cambridge and in London. The subjects of examination are to be :—The best methods of teaching and the reasons advanced for one method rather than another ; the best modes of training the memory; the use and abuse of emulation as a stimulus to learn- ing; the sanitary conditions of school-life ; the visual and tangible apparatus for illustrating such subjects, for in- stance, as arithmetic and geometry, and other kindred matters. Doubtless, after everything is said, it will remain true that many a man is an excellent teacher who knows little of the theory of teaching, and that many who know the whole history of their subject remain bad teachers ; but that is equally true of medical men, and yet no one has ever advanced it as a reason for not testing the theoretical knowledge of medical men.
Previous page
