February, '11] OSBORN: TEACHING METHODS 67 



dent loses no time, and can make his advanced work more satisfactory 

 and more profitable than would otherwise be the case. 



President Sanderson: Professor Osborn will present the next 

 paper. 



THE PRESENT METHODS OF TEACHING ENTOMOLOGY 



By Herbert Osborn, Ohio Slate University 



In a discussion of the methods of teaching entomology, it is almost 

 necessary to take a hasty view of the growth of the subject and of the 

 different methods of imparting knowledge in it during the past half 

 century. We need scarcely go back- of this, because for the United 

 States, at least, the growth of the teaching of entomology as a subject 

 included in a college curriculum has had its growth within that time. 

 In fact, practically all of the development of the teaching outside of 

 two or three localities has been -udthin the last twenty-five years. 

 Naturally the methods in vogue in the early teaching of the subject 

 were derived from the teaching of related subjects such as Botany 

 and Geology, but even for thefee the different programs of instruction 

 were in a very crude form up to thirty or forty years ago. The growth 

 of the methods of teaching has necessarily followed the growth of the 

 subject as an application for economic purposes as well as for the 

 impartation of knowledge as a science. Naturally, then, for the teach- 

 ing of Economic Entomology the development of methods must have 

 been within very recent time. 



The early plan of teaching was quite naturally that of the lecture 

 system, partly because of the scattered concUtion of the material and 

 lack of definite texts in the science, and partly because of the prevalent 

 idea that the lecture system was the most satisfactory and, perhaps, 

 the least troublesome to the teacher. Later, however, this was com- 

 bined with more or less of field work, and then with some laboratory 

 courses, and at the present time the method which I suspect is the most 

 general is a combination of these various methods; that is, more or 

 less of the lecture system including illustrations by chart or lantern, 

 or collection incorporated in class work, along -^dth text references 

 and quizzes. These associated Avith de^nite laboratory courses, wdth 

 dissections of typical forms, and a definite allotment of field work 

 involving the collection of material in its natural habitat, its prepara- 

 tion for preservation, and more or less of identification for the practice 

 in systematic work. These methods, of course, vary with regard to 



