ABSTRACT
When one comes to look at ways in which better courses might be constructed, the biggest difficulty arises right at the start, because there is no simple criterion to apply. When taxed on the question of the relevance of their courses to prospective careers, university teachers commonly expostulate with some indignation that they are educating their students, not training them for jobs. There is a good deal of righteousness in this indignation. The things that are so often wrong about the style of science teaching are mostly connected with the idea that science is tantamount to nature-story. Those who frame syllabuses should apply some modern educationist’s version of Occam’s razor, to the effect that ‘items must not be unnecessarily multiplied’; which might be paraphrased, ‘if in doubt, leave it out’. Practical work would not be the unique ideal method in any case, because other skills, notably skills in acquiring and processing information from reading matter, also have to be developed.
