Lessons in Apples 



Ralph C. Benedict 



If stones may contain sermons, certainly apples may be 

 expected to harbor at least a few lessons. Actually, they are 

 regularly used in scores of thousands of classrooms in biology, 

 botany, and general science and are admirable objects for class 

 study for a variety of lessons. 



Their use is desirable, not only because of their abundance 

 and cheapness, and the intrinsic interest of their structure and 

 functioning, but even more because of the pedagogic importance 

 of leading beginners in science to realize that the most familiar 

 objects may present intellectually stimulating mysteries. The 

 all-too-frequent bromide, "How can you bear to pull a flower to 

 pieces? I just love to enjoy them for their beauty," represents a 

 common adult attitude of mind which constitutes a difficult bar 

 to the advancement of science. It is one of the science teacher's 

 privileges to interfere with the habituation of children into that 

 fatuous attitude, and to show by the use of flower and fruit 

 material in the classroom that the study of the internal struct- 

 ures reveals intellectual beauties and harmonies of the highest 

 type without detracting one whit from the emotional stimula- 

 tion aroused by external beauties of form and color. 



Out of a variety of lessons in which apples may be usefully 

 employed in elementary instruction, three, which are thought to 

 have special application in high school teaching, are considered 

 in the pages which follow. The purpose of this paper is not to 

 present necessarily any new facts about apples, but rather to 

 assemble a series of observations relating to the use of apples as 

 teaching material. It is worthy of emphasis, however, that 

 there are many undiscovered details regarding the commonest 

 biological material and that this constitutes one of the chief 

 challenges to interest of this subject, both for the teacher and, 

 as a point of view for classes. 



What is an Apple? 



To define the apple in terms of the usual definition of a fruit, we 

 find that the full, triply phrased statement is required: An 

 apple is (1) "a ripened ovulary (2) with its contents, the seeds, 

 and (3) with any closely adhering floral parts." Actually, thus, 



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