PAPERS ON HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE 409 



HOW CAN WE HUMANIZE HIGH SCHOOL 

 SCIENCE 



Clarence Bonxell, Harrisburg Township High School 



Biology 



Biology in many of onr high schools has more or less 

 the reputation of being one of the useless subjects. The 

 popular characterization of the biology instructor with 

 his eye-glasses, miscroscope, and butterfly net is often 

 the counterpart of what parents and practical people in 

 general think of a biologist. He is often considered a 

 heretic religiously, especially in these days of funda- 

 mentalism and Bryanism. The writer has been the sub- 

 ject of prayers and warnings from the pulpit of a devout 

 Southern Baptist pastor in a nearby village, from which 

 some of his pupils have come; and a good Methodist 

 brother in the home city has warned his Sunday school 

 class against ever taking this damnable course in high 

 school. 



But for the fact that biology has gotten a "toe hold" 

 in our high school course during twenty years of tactful 

 handling of delicate questions, it would possibly be omit- 

 ted now. I am glad to say that the classes are crowded 

 and some have to be turned away each year. We think 

 this is because the subject matter is made to connect so 

 closely with the very life activities of those who take it, 

 that they pass the word along to others the next year, for 

 the course is an optional one. 



Except for those who have actually had the course, or 

 learn of it from their friends, it is considered a fad, — ■ 

 an impractical thing with no useful qualities such as are 

 always associated with commercial courses, the manual 

 and domestic arts, mathematics, physics, chemistry, or 

 even dead languages, literature, or history. This mental 

 attitude has resulted in turning biological subjects to- 

 ward so called practical ends, such as agriculture and 

 domestic science, so that true biology courses which give 

 an organized account of the life processes of plants and 

 animals have been quietly and gradually dropped from 

 many high schools. 



Such an attitude of opposition and indifference re- 

 sults largely from the sort of biology teaching had in the 



