144 THE PLANT WORLD. 



OF INTEREST TO TEACHERS. 



Edited by Dr. C. Stuart G.\ger. 



The St.\tus of Biological Science in the Secondary 



Schools of Prl^ssia. 



Apropos of the cliscus^sion by three of the hig-h school ])riiici- 

 pals of Greater New York, on the vahie and scope of high school 

 biology, printed in the last issue of the Plant World, is the 

 following extract from an account by Professor J. \\' . A. Young, 

 in Science, of May i8. of the feeling on the same subject among 

 educators in the secondary schools* of Prussia. 



For over a decade a vigorous agitation has been taking place 

 relative to the teaching of the natural sciences. At the annual 

 session of the Association of (icrman Natural Scientists and 

 Phvsicians held in Hamburg in 1901, a joint meeting of the 

 sections for botany, zoology, mineralogy and geology, and anat- 

 omy and physiology, unanimously adopted a set of nine proposi- 

 tions relative to instruction in biology. The first five of these 

 propositions, which soon became generall}- known as the " Ham- 

 burg Theses," read as follows: 



1. Biology is an experimental science which indeed goes as far 

 as well-grounded knowledge of nature will at the time allow, but 

 no further. {Die Biologic ist eine PLrfahriDigswissenscJiaft die 

 ^.i^'cir his ziir jez^'eiligeii Grenze des sicliereji A\ifiirerkemieiis gelit, 

 aher dieselbe iiiclit iiberschreifet.) For metaphysical speculations, 

 biology as such has no responsibility, and the school no use. 



2. Foniially, instruction in the natural sciences is the necessary 

 complement of the abstract subjects. In particular, biology 

 teaches the art, elsewhere so neglected, of observation of con- 

 crete objects subject to continual change in consequence of the 

 processes of life, and, like physics and chemistr\-, proceeds in- 

 ductively from observation of properties and processes, to the 

 logical formation of concepts. 



* In Germany called " higher schools." Pupils are admitted at the age 

 of nine, the course of instruction covers nine years, and tlie normal age of 

 gra(hiation is nineteen or twenty. 



