101 
reason or other. I believe it is because most of the teachers of 
biology have been largely interested in original research, and they 
have dissected dog, fish, or what not, for the best part of the 
year, so that they come to school with a greater tendency than 
other teachers to teach as if they were teaching college students. 
This must be most carefully guarded against. Again, I think it 
is important where you place the emphasis in teaching biology. 
Biology is the science of life—of living things, and you ought, 
therefore, to restrict the study of structure to what is absolutely 
necessary in order to understand function, placing the emphasis 
on function. You ought not to have your students drawing things. 
that take them hours and hours to draw. You ought not to have 
them peering through the high-powered microscope. I remember 
hearing a man from Charleston speak about this course. He 
heard two students talking together. ‘How many times a week 
do you have biology?” “Well, we have biology three times a 
week and laboratory twice.’ Now that description makes exactly 
clear what I mean. If the laboratory work has become a drawing 
lesson, more than a biology lesson, then its purpose is lost. So 
that I say it is the interpretation that is important. It is where 
you place the emphasis. I think that elementary biology should 
be taught so that it gives a student a chance to understand the 
most familiar phenomena in the group of plants. I think it should 
lead on to an understanding of the most familiar functions of 
animal life, with a slightly more intensive understanding of two 
or three type-forms of animals, all with the purpose of leading 
up to some very practical, useful work in physiology and hygiene. 
And then I think you should teach the subject so as to give all 
possible elementary scientific training. The power of observation 
should be cultivated, and what is just as important, the power of 
interpretation, and the power of expression, both oral and written. 
If there is one subject more than another that will tend to exact 
descriptions, surely that subject must be science. If there is one 
subject in which a description should be clear, surely that sub- 
ject is science. If thought is clear, description will be clear, and 
if description is not clear, it is almost certain that the thought is 
not clear. But why elementary biology? I should say because it 
gives us vitally important information, combined with what is 
