ON SCIENCE IN SCHOOL CERTIFICATE EXAMINATIONS. 461 



6. ON BIOLOGICAL TEACHING IN SCHOOLS. 



[Extracted, by permission, from the Report of the Committee' of the Meeting 

 of Britisli Zoologists, appointed January 1927, ' To consider the position of Animal 

 Biology in the School Curriculum and matters relating thereto.'] 



It is scarcely necessary at this time to labour the point that biological teaching 

 should have some place in the education of our children ; the principle is now very 

 generally admitted, even though there remain a number of schools in which such 

 teaching is limited to a little desultory ' nature-study ' in the lower forms. The 

 question of the amount and scope of biological study to be recommended, however, 

 requires careful attention and iiivolves^ some serious consideration of the already 

 much-worn topic of the aims and limits of school education. It would be tedious to 

 repeat even a few of the many definitions in vogue — suffice it to remark that human 

 education may be considered under two aspects, the vocational and the cultural, and 

 that of these we hold that the latter is by far the most important in our schools, since 

 (in training pupils of under sixteen years of age at least) the aim should be, first and 

 foremost, to ensure even and healthy development of the pupil's powers, and second, 

 to lay the foundation of a wide range of intellectual interests which may ' increase the 

 capacity for imaginative experience.' But this should not be taken to exclude a 

 ' realistic ' or ' pre- vocational ' element, which may be introduced with great advantage 

 to the cultural aspect of the work, stimulating interest by linking the school life to life 

 in the larger world for which it is a preparation. 



The growing plant or animal in favourable natural surroundings is ' educated ' to 

 even and healthy development by the stimulating action of the various factors in its 

 environment ; it is one of the great difficulties in human education to select from the 

 overwhelming complexities of the social and physical environment of civilised man 

 such factors as may best afford a balanced stimulation. The guiding principle in 

 selection should be the appeal to nature ; the main endeavour, to encourage the 

 development of the natural interests of the pupil in the order in which they naturally 

 show themselves. 



From first to last the growing child is fundamentally interested in the natural 

 world of living creatures about him and in his own physical relations to the general 

 life — a second interest, a concern for his own relation to the social scheme of human 

 life in particular, grows steadily in force especially throughout the period of adolescence. 

 Each of these two interests can best be served and utilised by the inclusion of 

 biological studies in the scheme of education — the second interest no less than the 

 first, since the social and economic development of the human community is con- 

 ditioned ultimately by biological laws, as an unbiassed consideration of any given 

 political or economic problem will show. 



To ensure some degree of appreciation of the inter-relationships of all living things 

 and of their ultimate dependence upon physiological and physico-chemical factors is 

 the surest way to extend the consciousness of the pupil beyond the narrow sphere 

 of individual entity, and to lay the foundations of a genuine and enlightened philosophy 

 of life — ' to see life steadily and see it whole ' ; education in its cultural aspect can 

 have no higher aim. 



But if its aim be such, biological education must be ' biological ' in the fullest 

 sense — must take as field the whole range of life, plant and animal kingdom alike^ 

 and man in his own place — but must not, however elementary the instruction, ever 

 sacrifice its breadth of view. A casual lesson-series now on the butterfly, now on the 

 buttercup, now on the kangaroo, now on the much-martyred bean-seed, dealing in no 

 sort of sequence with such topics as the names of the parts of a flower and the number 

 of toes on pussy's foot, will serve no purpose in the general scheme, and scarcely more 



' Members of Committee : — Prof. R. Douglas Laurie, Department of Zoology, 

 University College of Wales, Aberystwyth (Chairman and Secretary) ; Howard W. 

 Ballance, Biology Master, King Edward's School, Birmingham ; Kathleen E. 

 Carpenter, Department of Zoology, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth ; 

 William J. Dakin, Department of Zoology, LTniversity of Liverpool ; Oswald H. Latter, 

 Senior Science Master, Charterhouse ; Prof. E. W. MacBride, Imperial College of 

 Science and Technology, London ; Mary McNicol, Biology Mistress, Manchester High 

 School for Girls ; Alice J. Prothero, Biology Mistress, Aberdare Girls' County School. 



' This has been recognised in other countries more than here. 



