418 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LV, No. 1425 



were more eoneentrated. Furthermore, better 

 teaching would result if courses were designed 

 for the purpose of real mental training rather 

 than for the purpose of giving out a lot of half 

 digested facts, some good, many bad, for ab- 

 sorption by the student to be handed back often 

 in the same undigested form at examinations. 

 Granting that the primary object of the agri- 

 cultural college is the training of men and 

 women for farm life, I wonder if we would not 

 be doing that better were we to give in our 

 courses of instruction less consideration to the 

 presentation of information and more to the 

 development of the habit and desire for real 

 thinking. We may well leave the acquisition of 

 some of this information to the student himself 

 if we will acquaint him with the literature of 

 the subject and train him properly to appraise 

 the value of such information as is available 

 and how to use it after he has obtained it. 



The teaching of genetics in the agricultural 

 college affords an excellent opportunity for 

 the accomplishment of these auns. If the 

 course is properly organized and presented no 

 student can successfully grasp and assimilate 

 such a body of knowledge without some real 

 mental effort on his part. 



I would, therefore, define the objective of 

 the elementary course in genetics as primarilj- 

 cultural and secondarily informational. If 

 proper consideration be given to its cultural 

 value, it should be of like interest to the stu- 

 dent of general biology who expects to go no 

 farther into this field of human knowledge but 

 who desires a general understanding of the 

 phenomena of inheritance, to the student of 

 eugenics and sociology who wants a genetic 

 background for further studies in those fields, 

 to the student who is beginning his special or 

 professional training in genetics or to the stu- 

 dent who is specializing in any of the plant or 

 animal industry departments and who desires 

 a genetic training as a basis for plant and 

 animal improvement. 



From the informational point of view the 

 general student is not at all interested in a 

 genetic analysis of aleurone color in maize or 

 eye color in Drosophila. The same is probably 

 true of the agronomist or animal husbandman. 

 But an understanding of the phenomena 



involved in the inheritance of such characters 

 and a knowledge of the mode of attack that 

 has been used in the solution of such problems 

 will be helpful and useful to all and will give 

 to students of applied genetics a better appre- 

 ciation of the complexity of the inode of inher- 

 itance of other characters that are of economic 

 importance and with which as plant and animal 

 breeders they are vitally concerned. 



PREREQUISITES 



In order to deal with the subject of genetics 

 even in the elementary course in an adequate 

 and satisfactory manner, it is essential that the 

 student have the proper biological background. 

 For the advanced student in genetics a thor- 

 ough training in either botany or zoology and 

 an elementary training in the other of these 

 sciences is essential but this seems hardly neces- 

 sary in the beginning course. A sufficient 

 biological training as prerequisite for ele- 

 mentally genetics would seem to be had in a 

 general course in botany or zoology and one in 

 physiology. An elementary knowledge of 

 cytology is, of course, important but the 

 genetics instructor should be able to supple- 

 ment by lecture or reference without difficulty 

 or without much expense of time such instruc- 

 tion as the student ordinarily gets in cytology 

 in the beginning courses in botany and zoology 

 as may be necessarj' to an elementary knowl- 

 edge of the mechanism of heredity. 



Certain courses in mathematics are also ad- 

 visable for the advanced student of genetics 

 but are perhaps not essential for the beginner. 

 The one thing that is essential in my judgment 

 is that the student shall not have forgotten his 

 high school mathematics nor have forgotten 

 how to think and reason in mathematical terms 

 — a condition which too often prevails among 

 stiulents in the agricultural college. 



OP WHOJI REQUIRED 



Of what students in the agricultural college 

 should genetics be required? When I think of 

 my own course I am tempted to answer, of 

 none. I am sure that we would all agree that 

 it is much more satisfactory to work with a 

 class of students all of whom are registered 

 tecause they want that particular course than 

 because the faculty has ruled that they must 



