FOREWORD TO TEACHERS 



A COURSE in biology given to beginners in the secondary school 

 should have certain aims. These aims must be determined to a 

 degree, first, by the capabilities of the pupils, second, by their 

 native interests, and, third, by the environment of the pupils. 



The boy or girl of average ability upon admission to the second- 

 ary school is not a thinking individual. The training given up to 

 this time, with but rare exceptions, has been in the forming of 

 simple concepts. These concepts have been reached didactically 

 and empirically. Drill and memory work have been the peda- 

 gogic vehicles. Even the elementary science work given has 

 resulted at the best in an interpretation of some of the common 

 factors in the pupil's environment, and a widening of the mean- 

 ing of some of his concepts. Therefore, the first science of the 

 secondary school, elementary biology, should be primarily the 

 vehicle by which the child is taught to solve problems and to think 

 straight in so doing. No other subject is more capable of logical 

 development. No subject is more vital because of its relation 

 to the vital things in the life of the child. A series of experiments 

 and demonstrations, discussed and applied as definite concrete 

 problems which have arisen within the child's horizon, will develop 

 power in thinking more surely than any other subject in the first 

 year of the secondary school. 



But in our eagerness to develop the power of logical thinking 

 we must not lose sight of the previous training of our pupil. Up 

 to this time the method of induction, that handmaiden of logical 

 thought, has been almost unknown. Concepts have been formed 

 deductively by a series of comparisons. All concepts have been 

 handed down by the authority of the teacher or the text; the 

 inductive search for the unkno^\Ti is as yet a closed book. It is 

 unwise, then, to directly introduce the pupil to the method of in- 

 duction with a series of printed directions which, though definite 

 in the naind of the teacher because of his wider horizon, mijan 



HOfERTY LIBURY 



