2302 Journal of Applied Microscopy 



In New York city over 98 per cent, of the pupils who enter the elementary schools 

 never enter the high school at all ; only 50 per cent, of those who graduate from 

 the elementary schools enter the high schools. It looks very much like intellectual 

 robbery to continue to deprive that great number of the many valuable ideas, 

 well within their power of comprehension, which we now in a belated way teach to 

 first year high school pupils. Another consideration more important, in a sense, 

 than that, is involved in the fact that justice is not done to the sciences in further- 

 ing their usefulness in educating the people. It is time for the so-called laity to 

 cease regarding the achievements of science at a distance, " marvelling at the 

 wonders of the age," stupidly. A truly educated public, when it comes to exist, 

 will no longer be content with feeding itself chiefly on the intellectual food of its 

 own deeds in literature and politics, but will grow into larger being by the study 

 of the relations existing in the universe, and the forces which underlie all things. 

 For a long time, history, literature, and mathematics have had their foundation 

 in the curriculum of the elementary school ; none of the sciences have been 

 adequately introduced there. Until that is done some knowledge of a science 

 will continue to be regarded as an accomplishment rather than as an intellectual 

 necessity. The cry of overcrowded curricula should have no influence in the 

 matter ; it is rather a question of what we need least. It is inevitable that 

 the same " natural selection " should go on in the elementary schools that has 

 been going on in the colleges since the time of the early realists. 



While considering the developments of the future, it is urgently necessary to 

 do for the present the best that circumstances permit. I think anyone acquainted 

 with the teaching of biology in the high schools of the country will agree that a 

 very substantial advance has been made within the past ten years. Every ear- 

 nest teacher of the subject has contributed his part. Unquestionably, more has 

 been done in this time by the high schools of the West than by those of the 

 East. In New York we awaken slowly, but once awakened we move with giant, 

 if sometimes uncertain, strides, in educational as well as in other municipal 

 affairs. 



At the present time there are fifteen hundred boys studying biology and 

 other first-year subjects in the DeWitt Clinton High School. When these boys 

 come to us they are almost wholly untrained in the habit of mind essential to 

 scientific work ; when they go from the high school we can hope that the habits 

 of concentration and discrimination have begun to be developed. The evidence 

 of the useful employment of time is never more real than when found in work. 

 I trust that the drawings sent with this article will serve as tangible evidence of 

 what can be done by young boys working with a serious purpose. The content 

 of our course, the order of the topics, and the allotment of time are indicated 

 briefly as follows : 



Fall Tenn. Insects, five weeks; Crustacea, three weeks; Annelids, etc., 

 two weeks ; Mollusks, two weeks ; Echinoderms, one week ; Coelenterates, one 

 week; Protozoa, one week; A^ertebrates, five weeks. Total, twenty weeks. 

 The field covered is indeed a great one, but there must be some attempt to 

 present the entire system of facts, otherwise the pupil will miss the conception 

 of the variety of organic forms. Another reason for offering a considerable 



