350 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 715 



But not so mucli can be said of every lesson. 

 For ttese the teacher frames for himself many 

 excuses. Perhaps it was an " ofi day." But 

 as the years pass by and his experience and 

 frankness with himself increase, he is some 

 day to realize that as a matter of fact the 

 hours when actual independent work is being 

 done are few and precious, and that the 

 greater part of the laboratory time is spent in 

 merely performing assigned tasks. 



No doubt there are teachers who lift their 

 classes above this level, but no doubt also they 

 are few. And if such is the case, then 

 some hard things remain to be said, viz., that 

 for the majority of students the time given to 

 biological courses must be justiiied by the in- 

 formation acquired, or else by the disciplinary 

 value of doing required routine work, or else 

 that it is not justified at all. 



If conditions are as pictured, the question is 

 pressing — " What is to be done about it ? " 

 In looking for a solution my point of de- 

 parture would be the fact that certain of the 

 lessons actually do call out a real interested 

 and independent effort on the part of the 

 student. That ounce of fact is worth tons of 

 theorizing. Then if it is time that the greatest 

 good which can come to the student out of 

 such courses is the development of his own 

 powers of obtaining knowledge, it would not 

 seem far to this principle. The laboratory 

 course should he composed mainly of those 

 lessons which the instructor can so present as 

 to arouse independent effort on the part of the 

 student. 



Then the question will at once arise " what 

 about the lessons of which this is not true; 

 what about the many and important topics in 

 which the student can at best scarcely do 

 more than to perform faithfully the task as- 

 signed ? " My answer would be to remove 

 most of them frankly to the domain of lecture 

 and demonstration. A good demonstration, 

 where the student feels the spark of inspira- 

 tion from the teacher's performance and 

 example, is far better for both teacher and 

 student than a time-serving laboratory exer- 

 cise. In our haste to emphasize the laboratory 

 method we have swung too far the other way 



and made too little of what must ever be one 

 of the prime factors of good teaching — the 

 inspiring example of the teacher. 



No doubt a certain proportion of labora- 

 tory lessons which are mere verification exer- 

 cises are desirable, but on the whole it stiU 

 remains true that for culture students the 

 laboratory hours are too precious to be used 

 in anything but independence begetting work. 

 In the lecture room is the place to see that the 

 course is rounded out, kept coherent and the 

 ground covered. 



It may be permissible to add here a point 

 which in the writer's experience has been 

 worked out as a sort of corollary to the above 

 principle. In blindly attempting to keep the 

 students interested and working on their own 

 initiative, I have found the laboratory work 

 to grow more and more physiological in char- 

 actei. 



In studying life histories, for example, 

 I have found my classes to maintain a rather 

 high degree of interest from the algae up to 

 about the ferns, and then the interest to wane 

 as the homologies with the seed plants are 

 taken up. After some time I perceived that 

 that which held their interest was in the 

 processes rather than in the organs of repro- 

 duction; that though they learned something 

 about the homologies of endosperm, prothal- 

 lus, etc., they did so under some pressure and 

 forgot it with alacrity; and that in their 

 hearts they did not care whether it was so 

 or not. Slowly and with regret I came to 

 the conclusion that in my classes at any rate 

 the " deeper morphology " could not compete 

 with other topics for a place in an ele- 

 mentary course. 



Far otherwise was it with subjects which 

 at first I had not had the students really 

 work at all — respiration, photosynthesis, 

 irritability. Here the interest and willing- 

 ness to work was instantaneous and sustained. 

 Wben it is considered furthermore that the 

 teacher can give more just and stimulating 

 criticism of the setting up of an experiment 

 than he can of the performance of a dissec- 

 tion; that that which ia permanently remem- 

 bered by the student is after all very little. 



