Laboratory H'Oik in Schools and Colleges. 105 



LABORATORY IPOR/C IN SCHOOLS AND COL- 

 LEGES. FROM THE STANDPOINT OF 

 A ZOOLOGIST. 



'The system now in use in our high schools is all wrong.' 

 So spoke, recently, a prominent educator in Oregon. 'Parents,' 

 he continued, 'are giving up each year more and more of the 

 oversight they ought to give their child's education and putting 

 the responsibility entirely upon the public schools. As it stands 

 now, if a child leaving our schools is weak mentally, morally or 

 physically, we, the teachers, are blamed, whereas we, in our turn, 

 are obliged to put each and every student through a certain 

 course of study without consideration as to the student's ability, 

 temperament, character, or mental tendencies; they are forced 

 through this public school curriculum, willy nilly, at the expense 

 of individuality. Now, since parents are giving up home leach- 

 ing, so invaluable in bringing out the best points in a child and 

 encouraging him away from his weak points, and since this seri- 

 ous responsibility is placed upon the public schools, where nu- 

 merous scholars and lack of time prevent proper attention being 

 given to each one, what remedy is there lor this individuality- 

 destroying system which we now find in these institutions?' 



The writer, overhearing, takes this text and opportunity to try 

 to show the value of laboratory work in high schools as well as 

 in colleges, hoping, however, that some educator in this state 

 will supplement his rather brief treatment of laboratory work in 

 high schools with more complete details of possibilities. 



The value of laboratory work has been long appreciated in the 

 universities of Germany and in all the advanced institutions of 

 learning in America. This work means, in the case of zoology 

 for instance, that each student taking that course must spend a 

 large proportion of his or her time in the laboratory studying 

 the structure or the physiology, or both, of certain typical, well- 

 known animals. He must see with his own eyes, think with his 

 own brain, do his own theorizing and draw his own conclusions 

 unaided, independent of book or fellow scholar, and must show 

 that his work is correct by neat original drawings and original de- 

 scriptions. One animal finished, another from a different group 

 is given and the student encouraged to describe the differences 

 and resemblances between this animal and the previous one stud- 

 ied, and so on from the lower to the higher forms. 



No one but an enthusiastic adherent to this teaching principle 

 can appreciate the phenomena that appear in the cases of differ- 

 ent students in this work. Some, so brilliant in recitation that 

 they repeat pages, are almost complete failures; others though 

 slower in committing text, have eyes and minds alert. It is a 

 qase where, frequently, 'the last shall be first and the first last.' 



For this reason firmness is necessary on the part of the would- 



