Report of the President 47 



by Principal William McAndrew, and through the cooperation 

 of Miss Lillian Belle Sage of the same school, the elementary 

 schools of the neighborhood were informed that three lectures 

 would be given at this center by members of the Museum 

 staff. The same lectures were repeated in the assembly hall 

 of Public School No. 64, in East Tenth Street, for the schools 

 of that neighborhood. From 800 to 1,500 pupils were present 

 at each of these lectures, and the results were sufficient to 

 demonstrate the practicability and desirability of establishing 

 local lecture centers. As a result of these experiments, the 

 Curator submitted to President Osborn a plan for the exten- 

 sion of the Museum's educational work by the inauguration of 

 ten of these local lecture centers. 



At the same time the Curator presented a plan that would 

 enable the teachers of the city to borrow lantern slides from 



„ the Museum to illustrate class-room lectures. 



Loan System 



--,-.- The Museum possesses some ^0,000 slides, 



of Slides . , , . , , ° ' 



more than 12,000 or which have been care- 

 fully catalogued, thus making a loan system practicable. 



The Curator further pointed out that the effectiveness of 



nature study in the public schools of the city is largely depend- 



_ . ent upon the enthusiasm of the individual teacher 



Branch J \ „._. , , . , TT 



_ , . and the accessibility or nature study material. He 



Teaching . , . , . 



therefore recommended, as an experiment, the 

 Museums . , , , . 



opening of a branch teaching museum in the 



Washington Irving High School. In this way it would be pos- 

 sible to make available for teachers a much larger and more 

 comprehensive teaching collection of natural history objects 

 than is now possible through our regular circulating collections. 

 It was expected that if the teaching museum at the Washington 

 Irving High School facilitated the work of the teachers, the 

 plan could be extended to other schools. 



These plans were ultimately submitted to the Board of 

 Education and appropriations requested for carrying them 

 out. The Board of Education approved the plans and recom- 

 mended the appropriations, but the Board of Estimate and 

 Apportionment provided only for the system of loaning 

 slides. 



