CHAPTER XVII 



SUGGESTIONS FOR A SCIENCE COURSE* 



IF it be desired that the plants and animals which have been intro- 

 duced into the course should be made the means of enabling the 

 pupil to gain a rather more technical knowledge of the structure and 

 function of living things, it is quite within the power of the teacher 

 to make use of them. Such an extension of the lessons will involve 

 some additional apparatus, if each pupil is to conduct his own 

 experiments, which is no doubt the most satisfactory method. If 

 circumstances should prevent this however, the teacher can perform 

 some of them himself, as much as possible at the direction of the class. 

 This direction, of course, only holds good in the case of physiological 

 work. It is useless to attempt to investigate structure unless 

 each pupil has the object in front of him to examine. It should not, 

 however, be forgotten that any such course must succeed the pre- 

 ceding lessons and should not in any way be substituted for them. 

 As practical teachers, the authors are convinced that a general 

 course of nature-study should invariably precede anything like the 

 acquisition of systematised knowledge, whether it deals with 

 theoretical classification, or is limited to the investigation of one or 

 two forms of life. They have found that such work is far less likely, 

 in the case of young students, to produce that habit of mind, 



* This chapter is intended rather for the use of the teacher than of the pupil. 



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