PUBLIC EDUCATION 



THE Department of Public Instruction, although not formally 

 established until 1884, began its work in 1881. Its first 

 Curator, Professor Albert S. Bickmore, was one of those in- 

 strumental in the foundation of the Museum, and it was he who con- 

 ceived and planned the system to make the Museum a factor of large 

 usefulness by taking an active part in the education of the pupils of 

 our public schools. 



In 1880 the Trustees addressed a letter to the Commissioner of 

 the Department of Education, offering a course of lectures, delivered Lectures 



r ° on Zoology. 



by Professor Bickmore, in the Museum and at the Museum's expense, 

 to the principals and teachers of natural history in the Primary 

 Schools. The idea met with the hearty approval of the Department 

 of Education, and in January, 1881, Professor Bickmore was authorized 

 to prepare a course of lectures on zoology. A small work room on 

 the "attic floor" — number 11, now used by the Department of Orni- 

 thology — was fitted up as a lecture hall. In 1881 the first lecture in 

 the teachers' course was delivered by Professor Bickmore before a 

 class of thirty— all that could be accommodated. This system of 

 visual instruction, as it was called, proved so successful that the 

 Museum was requested to provide room for more teachers. The 

 partition separating an adjoining work room was removed, which 

 allowed the class to be increased to 150. 



A law passed in 1884 placed the work under the State Department 

 of Public Instruction, with an appropriation of $18,000, "to establish J^ 

 and maintain a course of free lectures to the teachers of the common the state, 

 schools of New York City and to the teachers of the common schools 

 and normal schools throughout the State, who wish to avail themselves 

 of this training." The Department of Public Instruction was at this 



[113] 



