A School Chemistry

Abstract

AMONG the minor compensating advantages of the War period was the check given to the ever-rolling stream of text-books on elementary science, but now that paper and printing are less costly, the tide appears to be rising again; let us hope it will not overwhelm us. The young and aspiring teacher may be commended for his zeal in writing a text-book for his own use-authorship invariably impresses a literary headmaster and a governing body-but it is a question whether his time would not be better spent experimenting in the laboratory and in keeping well abreast of modern developments. It is another matter if he has something really novel to say, or some new method of arrangement or presentation. Unfortunately, however, originality seems to be somewhat elusive since the salad days of Ostwald, Alexander Smith, and Armstrong, and the present little work, like scores of others, does not excel in this respect. The book has its merits; it is well written and particularly well spaced; the explanations are clear, and there is very little to criticise on the score of choice of experiments or of accuracy (but any chloride would not do instead of salt for making hydrogen chloride, p. 94). The main defect is a too strict adherence to the old-fashioned, cookery-book style; the pupil who believes all he is told in this book, and performs religiously the rites prescribed, will certainly learn much that is useful and interesting, but they will not help him to acquire or develop the scientific habit of mind, a possession of far greater value than a passive knowledge of the minutice of chemical change.

A School Chemistry.

O. J.

Flecker

By. Pp. viii + 238. (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1924.) 3s. 6d. net.