a great deal more good; a remark which was received with a respectful smile, and which he could only confirm by referring to the fact that carpenters and masons in the adjoining parish found it worth while to read Euclid, and, he might have added, Shakspeare too. Well, on the day of examination, the examiner proposed to the boys this question—"Your school is 60 feet long, 20 feet wide, you may have as many planks as you want of 9 inches wide and 10 feet long to cover it; how many planks must you have?" a simple question in multiplication and division:—the juvenile land-measurers were quite at a loss. Some surprise having been expressed, an intimation was conveyed in a very courteous tone, that the right method of setting questions had not been adopted; that the rule should be named first, and then an example set. The rejoinder was not equally courteous on the examiner's part. "I thought so; and I suppose you are going to walk about with the boys through life to tell them what rule to work sums by in their business!" The hint was very frankly and kindly taken, and the following year similar questions were worked without difficulty.
But if the method of teaching above referred to, still very common even in the enlightened nineteenth century, be not education, it may be worth while to produce a sample from the schools, or rather from the open market-place of Athens, which will convey my meaning better than any words of my own:—
The Teaching of Socrates.
Appended to a Lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, by Dr. Whewell on "The Influence of the History of Science upon Education," is a specimen of teaching extracted from Plato.[1] Those who have seen the specimen will not be sorry to have it referred to; and those to whom the reference may be new will not regret having been led to examine the Lecture and note for themselves. As we have a very different object to serve to what Plato had, we need not quote verbatim; our business will be, not to show that those who do not know have still in their minds a latent knowledge, but to note how a boy may be taught as it were to discover for himself, under the guidance of a competent teacher, the length of the side of a square whose area shall be double that of a given square.
Socrates asks, Do you know that this is a square?
Boy. Yes.
Socrates. Why?
Boy. Because the four sides are equal, and the lines which are drawn across
the middle, from corner to corner, are equal.
Socrates. May there be a square twice as great as this?
Boy. Yes.
(Thus far have we elicited knowledge already possessed, and refreshed the
boy's memory.)
Socrates.—How long must one side of the new square be that its area may
be twice so great as that of the old square?
- ↑ From the 'Meno.'
