1894.] Zoology in the Hi igh School. 1003 
ZOOLOGY IN THE HIGH SCHOOL: 
By CLARENCE M. WEED. 
I do not see how the program recommended by the Natural 
History Conference of the Committee of Ten? ean escape the 
charge of being inadequate and one-sided. According to it, 
eight years of study of at least two periods each week are to 
be devoted to plants before the high school is reached. This 
study includes not only the various parts and functions of the 
higher plants, their classification and life-histories, but the 
lower plants as well. Then in the high school five exercises a 
week for one school year are to be devoted to what can be con- 
sidered only as a systematic review of knowledge already ac- 
quired. In all the twelve years of school life no provision is 
made for the study of animals, except a brief term of physiol- 
ogy, unless the advice of the conference is ignored and zoology 
is substituted for botany in the high school course. Truly it 
would appear that the much abused term—natural history— 
is to be restricted once more and become a synonym of bot- 
any. That the Conference did not intend to restrict the nature 
study of the lower schools to plants is abundantly shown by 
their answers to the questions submitted by the Committee of 
Ten, in which they distinctly recommend the study of both 
plants and animals for these grades. 
‘The Conference “agreed that the year of study in natural 
history, recommended as a minimum for the high school, 
should be a consecutive year of daily recitations or laboratory 
work, and it is better to have the year’s work devoted to one 
subject, either botany or zoology, than to have it divided be- 
tween the two.” Two years have passed since this opinion 
was promulgated, and while it may have represented the best. 
educational ideas concerning the study of biology then, there 
! From a paper read before a High School Teachers! Institute, Concord, N. H., 
Sept. 21, 1894. 
2? Rept. of Committe on Secondary School Studies, 
of Education. 
pp. 138-158., U. S. Bereau 
