lyo TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



by details in the lesson. Many of the questions are unanswerable in the 

 form given, or in the present stage of our knowledge, or in the present 

 state of the teacher's knowledge. How many teachers say frankly and 

 unequivocally "I don't know"? I have failed to observe that science 

 teachers are less given to that pedantic way of saying " I don't know " 

 which the unsophisticated can not always interpret to mean just that. 

 Here are a few of the questions that I have heard pupils ask of their 

 science teachers without getting a direct answer, or the information 

 that the teacher could not supply the answer, or a reference to some 

 other source of information: Why does magnetism act only on certain 

 kinds of metals? "What makes roots and shoots respond to gravity in 

 opposite senses? Why does not a grape-seed germinate inside the 

 grape, where there is plenty of water? Why do sodium and potassium 

 produce different colored flames? Any one can extend the list indef- 

 initely. Many teachers have a favorite way of deferring these trouble- 

 some questions to " the next time " in the hope of gaining time for in- 

 forming themselves — let us hope; or in the expectation that the ques- 

 tion will be lost in the shuffle before next time. But the children are 

 either clever enough to see through the trick, or unconsciously absorb 

 the method of indirection to reenforce the lessons they have already 

 learned from the iceman and the grocer. 



Where science teachers come in contact with administrative activ- 

 ities, I have found them just as ready to accept the conventional eva- 

 sions of the strict letter of the law for the purpose of achieving desired 

 ends, as other teachers. And, on the other hand, I have found them 

 just as ready to resort to the strict letter of the law for the purpose of 

 evading the responsibility of making decisions or of taking initiative, 

 as teachers of other subjects. 



Teachers of biology — a subject that is supposed to be particularly 

 saturated with the concepts of evolution, which postulate the principle 

 of constant change — are among the most reactionary of my acquaint- 

 ances. I know personally, more or less intimately, over three hundred 

 teachers in high schools ; about a third of these are science teachers. Of 

 these science teachers only about a dozen have ever expressed any ideas 

 that would indicate radically progressive notions in matters social, 

 political, ethical, theological or educational; and more than that num- 

 ber have expressed attitudes that would be considered not merely " con- 

 eervative," but positively regressive in each realm of thought. 



The progressive teachers of my acquaintance are predominantly 

 teachers of English and of mathematics. Even in matters purely tech- 

 nical, the majority of the science teachers that I know are either igno- 

 rant of the newer ideas about evolution, or extremely suspicious of any- 

 thing that threatens to undermine the safe and sane doctrines that they 

 acquired as students in college. They are temperamentally static and 



