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importance of foods that are pure and medicines that are safe. | 
Pure food laws on our statute books will have no value unless 
they are backed by public opinion. This can be brought about 
best through the schools. Propaganda for cleanliness of homes 
and city is best promulgated through the medium of our school 
children. If Biology taught nothing else than physiology, it would 
amply justify itself. 
The Chairman: It begins to look almost as though some ex- 
planation were necessary from the Chairman of the meeting. It 
looks as though the cards were stacked. I wish to state that these 
gentlemen on the program were asked to speak, without the 
slightest knowledge of whether they were for, or against, biology. 
The next speaker will be Principal Low, of Erasmus Hall High 
School, Brooklyn. 
Principal Low: Mr. Chairman: Like some of the gentlemen 
who have spoken before me, I claim to know nothing of biology. 
I could continue that confession of ignorance beyond where they 
did, but it is sufficient to limit it to biology. However, I feel in 
Erasmus Hall that I know what subject is being taught in the 
class that I go into. I did not come down here to-night to give 
my own personal view of biology. It seemed to me that it was 
wiser to present to you the results of similar conferences I have 
attended, and perhaps to discuss some of the points I have learned 
from others. I considered that if I asked the students of the first 
year whether they liked biology or not I would get genuine an- 
swers, but, in many cases, the liking would depend on the teacher 
more than on the subject, and more than that, a popular teacher 
might not be the best teacher. I asked it of the senior class, four 
years beyond the time where they had taken biology, and this 
answer is, I think, rather interesting: Out of 170 students, there 
were 61 boys and 109 girls. Now of the boys, looking back over 
their four years to find out whether they thought biology of value, 
I got this result ; 52 said yes and 9 said no. Of the girls, 80 said 
yes and 29 no. A very much larger proportion of girls than of 
boys disapproved of the subject, either in the first year, or in the 
curriculum at all, and when I spoke to one of the biology teach- 
ers about it, she said, “ Yes, I have always noticed that.” The net 
result of the vote is this: 132, all told, declared for biology, and 
