8 FOREWORD TO TEACHERS 



little or nothing as a definite problem to the pupil. The child 

 must be brought to the appreciation of the problem through the 

 deductive method, by a comparison of the future problem with 

 some definite concrete experience within his own field of vision. 

 Then by the inductive experiment, still led by a series of oral 

 questions, he comes to the real end of the experiment, the conclu 

 sion, with the true spirit of the investigator. The result is tested 

 in the light of past experiment and a generalization is formed which 

 means something to the pupil. 



For the above reason the laboratory problems, which naturally 

 precede the textbook work, should be separated from the subject 

 matter of the text. A textbook in biology should serve to verify 

 the student's observations made in the laboratory, it should round 

 out his concept or generalization by adding such material as he 

 cannot readily observe and it should give the student directly 

 such information as he cannot be expected to gain directly or 

 indirectly through his laboratory experience. For these reasons 

 the laboratory manual has been separated from the text. 



" The laboratory method was such an emancipation from the old-time 

 bookish slavery of pre-lab oratory days that we may have been inclined 

 to -overdo it and to subject ourselves to a new slavery. It should never 

 be forgotten that the laboratory is simply a means to the end ; that the 

 dominant thing should be a consistent chain of ideas which the laboratory 

 may serve to elucidate. When, however, the laboratory assumes the first 

 place and other phases of the course are made explanatory to it, we have 

 taken, in my mind, an attitude fundamentally wrong. The question is, 

 not what types may be taken up in the laboratory to be fitted into the 

 general scheme afterwards, but what ideas are most worth while to be 

 worked out and developed in the laboratory, if that happens to be the 

 best way of doing it, or if not, some other way to be adopted with perfect 

 freedom. Too often our course of study of an animal or plant takes the 

 easiest rather than the most illuminating path. What is easier, for in 

 stance, particularly with large classes of restless pupils who apparently 

 need to be kept in a condition of uniform occupation, than to kill a supply 

 of animals, preferably as near alike as possible, and set the pupils to work 

 drawing the dead remains ? This method is usually supplemented by a 

 series of questions concerning the remains which are sure to keep the 

 pupils busy a while longer, perhaps until the bell strikes, and which usu 

 ally are so planned as to anticipate any ideas that might naturally crop 

 up in the pupil's mind during the drawing exercise. 



