14 . FOK.WORD TO TEACHERS 



thought, needs emphasis placed on method above all else. And 

 the method of science is best found in the laboratory. 



Dr. H. E. Walter has well summed up the real use of laboratory 

 work in the following words : 



" The laboratory method was such an emancipation from the 

 old-time bookish slavery of pre-laboratory 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 hap- 

 pens 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 instance, 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 usually are so planned as to anticipate any ideas that 

 might naturally crop up in the pupil's mind during the drawing 

 exercise. 



" Such an abuse of the laboratory idea is all wrong and should 

 be avoided. The ideal laboratory ought to be a retreat for rainy 

 days ; a substitute for out of doors ; a clearing house of ideas 

 brought in from the outside. Any course in biology which can 

 be confined within four walls, even if these walls be of a modern, 

 well-equipped laboratory, is in some measure a failure. Living 

 things, to be appreciated and correctly interpreted, must be seen 

 and studied in the open where they will be encountered through- 



