difficulty.

But if scientific training is to yield its most eminent results, it
must, I repeat, be made practical. That is to say, in explaining to a
child the general phenomena of Nature, you must, as far as possible,
give reality to your teaching by object-lessons; in teaching him botany,
he must handle the plants and dissect the flowers for himself; in
teaching him physics and chemistry, you must not be solicitous to fill
him with information, but you must be careful that what he learns he
knows of his own knowledge. Don't be satisfied with telling him that a
magnet attracts iron. Let him see that it does; let him feel the pull of
the one upon the other for himself. And, especially, tell him that it is
his duty to doubt until he is compelled, by the absolute authority of
Nature, to believe that which is written in books. Pursue this
discipline carefully and conscientiously, and you may make sure that,
however scanty may be the measure of information which you have poured
into the boy's mind, you have created an intellectual habit of priceless
value in practical life.

One is constantly asked, When should this scientific education be
commenced? I should say with the dawn of intelligence. As I have already
said, a child seeks for information about matters of physical science as
soon as it begins to talk. The first teaching it wants is an
object-lesson of one sort or another; and as soon as it is fit for
systematic instruction of any kind, it is fit for a modicum of science.

People talk of the difficulty of teaching young children such matters,
and in the same breath insist upon their learning their Catechism,
which contains propositions far harder to comprehend than anything in
the educational course I have proposed. Again, I am incessantly told
that we, who advocate the introduction of science into schools, make no
allowance for the stupidity of the average boy or girl; but, in my
belief, that stupidity, in nine cases out of ten, "_fit, non nascitur_,"
and is developed by a long process of parental and pedagogic repression
of the natural intellectual appetites, accompanied by a persistent
attempt to create artificial ones for food which is not only tasteless,
but essentially indigestible.

Those who urge the difficulty of instructing young people in science are
apt to forget another very important condition of success--important in
all kinds of teaching, but most essential, I am disposed to think, when
the schol