HODGE] TRAINING OF TEACHERS 305 



view which at once reHeves us of college domination. It says: 

 admit no topic into the high school course that is not clearly de- 

 manded by the best life of the community, and with this criterion 

 any teacher of sense and resource can organize his own course to 

 fit the needs of his community. 



It will not be difficult to choose two or three typical subjects 

 which will illustrate this spirit and method for both nature-study 

 and civic biology. Any one of a hundred different insects — which 

 will continue to cost the country more than a million dollars a year, 

 until we study them and learn to combine both home and civic 

 effort to control them; any one of a dozen common microbes — 

 which impose our insufferable burdens of preventable sickness; 

 any one of two score garden, home, orchard or farm fungi, moulds, 

 blights, mildews, smuts, or rusts; the study of birds or gardens, 

 trees, flowers, fruits, nuts; or anything vital to home and com- 

 munity life might serve as well as those selected. Outlines must be 

 the briefest possible but any teacher can fill in between the lines. 



MOSQUITOES 



PURPOSE. — To study the problem with the view of relieving the homes, 

 public parks, streets and school premises — the entire town, city or neighbor- 

 hood — of the pests. 



METHOD. — Begin by finding out what the pupils know about : a. What 

 mosquitoes do — bite, annoy, inoculate with malaria, chills and fever, or with 

 yellow fever, lower value of land where they are numerous. 



h. Different kinds of mosquitoes. Common rain-barrel or Culex, malarial 

 Anopheles, or yellow fever mosquitoes. 



c. Life history: the eggs and wrigglers, Jarvae and pupae, of different kinds 

 in neighborhood, habits, and places where they are found. 



d. Hunt for breeding places about school premises and, by each boy or girl, 

 around the home, (if in a high-school class, in all parks, public dumps, streets, 

 in gutters and catch basins, public reservoirs and the like). Maps show extent 

 and distribution of breeding places. 



e. Methods of dealing with the breeding places — screening and oiling of 

 rain barrels and cisterns, keeping clean, desirable waters stocked with fishes 

 and keeping the shores clear of weeds and pockets of stagnant water, draining 

 or filling undesirable water, or, if this is not possible, covering it with oil, when- 

 ever the wrigglers appear in it. 



A little timely, well-organized instruction in all the grades and 

 high schools, with appropriate aid of the local papers, which al- 

 ways gladly cooperate, and we gain an advance in home and com- 

 munity life. Special attention to the sewers and catch basins 

 is apt to be the last move on the enemy, and that can be taken by 

 the local board of health or by the sewer department. 



THE HOUSE FLY 

 PURPOSE. — To promote health and cleanly Hving and relieve home and 

 community life of this time-old plague. 



METHOD. — Bring out by question and answer imi)ortance of the subject: 



