IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 23 



concentrated itself on less important details and ignored 

 broader principles. While it can not be said of many of our 

 colleges, as was recently said of a leading American univer- 

 sity, that its zoological department had all run to scales and 

 tail feathers, yet it is true that we are burying relationships 

 under a bewildering mass of details. It must be confessed that 

 some of our latest and most improved methods, notabjy of 

 those biological studies included under the term morphology, 

 have a tendency to increase rather than diminish this evil. 

 There is always the danger of mistaking the means for the end. 

 The fault of science teaching in our public schools lies in the 

 fact that the student gains little or no conception of the bear- 

 ing of scientific study on his life. The facts of science are pre- 

 sented as so jiiany isolated entities, interesting or uninteresting 

 as the case may be. The high school must not be looked at 

 and judged as a preparatory school for college training, but 

 as a finishing school for a large part of our school population. 

 The studies should be arranged not as leading to a college cur- 

 riculum, but as preparing pupils for active life, not by loadmg 

 their brains with facts, but by training their mental activities. 

 In this latter respect high school science makes a lamentable 

 failure. 



I make no tirade against public schools. The fault lies 

 largely and chiefly with the schools that prepare our teachers 

 for science teaching, i. e. , our colleges and universities. We 

 may say the public schools are behind the times in this respect, 

 and they are merely following the lead of publishers of anti- 

 quated text-books. This may be true, but nevertheless the 

 evils of science teaching in our high schools are only minia- 

 tures of those that exist so frequently in our colleges. 



What do I consider the pre eminent good to be obtained from 

 the study of the inductive sciences? To enable the mind to 

 detect the living truths; to perceive that every eifect may be 

 referred to an appropriate cause; to see that nothing is inde- 

 pendent of relationships; to see that human activities are inti- 

 mately bourd up with other activities; and that the individual 

 is but part of a whole. In other words, to adjust the mind to 

 the sum total of its environment. When we can once establish 

 our scientific training on such a basis, empiricism, charlatanism, 

 and all the frauds that prey on human credulity must bea^t a 

 retreat. 



