PHYSIOLOGY AS A SUBJECT OF GENERAL EDUCATION 483 



Board will, in the long run, be futile unless the public understands why it 

 is important to ' drink more milk.' When the novelty wears off, ' Ballyhoo ' 

 loses its effect. But intelligent understanding is permanent. The public 

 must have some knowledge of the proper nutrition of human beings before 

 the efforts of the Milk Marketing Board can hope to reap their full reward. 

 How, then, ought the public to come by such necessary physiological 

 knowledge ? 



By means of instruction during the school years, I feel, since the adult 

 education movement reaches but a small fraction of the whole community. 

 Moreover, I am not happy about many popular books on physiology, least 

 of all books on dietetics and nutrition. So often the uninstructed reader 

 falls victim to the crank and faddist. 



So, the already overcrowded school curriculum is to be saddled with yet 

 another subject, human physiology ? 

 I doubt if it can be done. 



But, can't we discard a certain proportion of the biology already taught 

 in school and in its place put human physiology with all its implications for 

 human welfare ? After all, physiology is a biological subject. And, dare 

 I suggest it, could not some of the time devoted to chemistry and physics 

 be better employed in teaching biology with this emphasis on the human 

 organism ? During the past four years such a course in biology has been 

 elaborated for broadcasting to schools, the course given by Prof. Peacock 

 and myself. 



Not only was human physiology an integral part of the course, but 

 instruction in human physiology also preceded in time the more conventional 

 instruction in biology. For example, structure of the human body was 

 dealt with before structure of the lower forms of life was described. 

 Respiration in man, and by implication in all mammals, preceded discussion 

 of respiration in, say, fishes, insects and plants. 



At first sight, this seems to ' put the cart before the horse.' It does, if 

 one accepts unquestioningly the usual academic course in biology, the course 

 which starts with the amoeba and finishes with the elephant. To my mind, 

 such a course is justified in one curriculum only, that for the medical student 

 who receives adequate instruction in human physiology at a later stage in 

 his course. But, for all other students taking a course in biology, the 

 omission of human physiology is a most grievous fault. Such students 

 have omitted from their curriculum the organism about which most is 

 known. And, to make matters worse, these students of biology are the 

 future teachers of biology in the schools where some instruction in human 

 physiology is so essential. 



In the schools themselves, until within recent times, human physiology 

 was taboo. Science, in the form of chemistry and physics, usurped all the 

 time which could be spared. Then ' Nature Study ' appeared, a girlish 

 pursuit, or, at least, one more in favour in girls' schools than in boys'. To 

 normal boys ' Nature Study ' is an effeminate affair, and the nature study 

 class, derisively, ' Bug-hunters.' Such imponderables are not without 

 weight. 



It is here, I think, that human physiology can step in, redress the psycho- 

 logical balance, and make biology attractive to all children and thus impart 

 much needed knowledge to the citizens of the future. 



How does such a human physiology-biology course work in practice ? 

 From the pedagogic point of view it is certainly sound. It deals with the 

 familiar human body first of all ; but, can such a course teach first prin- 

 ciples ? is there scope for practical work without the need for expensive 

 apparatus ? is it free from objectionable features ? 



