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THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
cation Association on the Reorganization of Secondary 
Education: 
1. Health —The offerings of the life sciences in the 
lield of health should he organized and presented to all 
high school pupils as a constant and essential element in 
the curriculum. No aim is more worthy. Health habit 
instruction of the grades should be continued in the high 
school and the reasons for the instruction should be made 
plain through civics and biology. 
The elimination of much poor health depends on the 
proper understanding of the fundamental principles of 
nature and nurture, of eugenics and hygiene. But more 
important than the elimination of ill health are prevent¬ 
ive measures. Biology offers an opportunity to view the 
health problem from both the corrective and the prevent¬ 
ive side. The physical basis for normal bodily activitis, 
personal hygiene, industrial hygiene, community hygiene, 
challenges the attention of the biologist. Sanitary rules 
and regulations in and out of school should be clearly 
appreciated and the reasons for them clearly explained, 
both the hygienic and sanitary phases of biology are an 
inviting field for human welfare. 
According to the best data one-third of all the children 
born die before the age of five, and one-half before the 
age of twenty-three. About 3,000,000 persons in the 
United States are constantly ill. Perhaps fifty per cent, 
of the 100.000 school children who die each year might 
have lived longer if the laws of nature and nurture had 
been more vitally taught and more conscientiously prac¬ 
ticed. Biology should stimulate the work of all health 
agencies not so much by pointing out the needs of better 
health and by explaining the methods by which it can be 
secured, but by seeing that health principles are being 
put into practice at least among the school pupils. 
2. Worthy-home membership —Biology, when properly 
humanized, enters the home; it sets up standards of care 
and purity for meat and milk; it organizes crusades 
against vermin and household insects; it explains molds, 
mildews and bacteria to the housewife and assigns reas¬ 
ons for common domestic practices; it warns against 
dangers in dust and darkness and brings in sunlight and 
fresh air. 
Outside the home biology stimulates ornamental plant¬ 
ings and throws light on the nature and work of garden 
plants, the principles of horticulture, the value of toads 
and birds. 
Worthy-home membership depends on many factors 
for happiness and private pleasure. Not the least, how¬ 
ever, is what biology can do. A real home is not a house 
where the family eats and sleeps, but an environment 
composed of elements that create joy and delight; and 
one of these elements is an appreciation and control of 
nature. 
Farm folks must obtain their buoyancy of spirit from 
the forces with which they work. Toil ceases to be 
drudgery when directed by vision. The farmer who has 
been taught to see the interesting processes at work in 
the myriad forms of life about him, in clod, in leaf, in 
seed, will be a better farmer and a better member of the 
family. 
3. Vocation —Biology should seek to interpret life in 
terms of service. It is a supreme duty of the school to 
provide a wide range of subjects to enable pupils to 
choose their life’s work wisely. It is undemocratic to 
assume that a banker’s son must necessarily be a banker 
also. The biology course might help the boy to discover 
his real aptitudes. To those who delight in working 
with plant and animal forces—and will ultimately reach 
the farm—the interpretation of the fundamental prin¬ 
ciples of life forms the natural ground-work for scien¬ 
tific agriculture. 
The art of farming goes back to the dawn of history, 
but the science of farming dates from the time when 
careful observations were first made with plants and 
animals. Farmers, gardeners, dairymen, fruit growers, 
foresters, who wish to know why as well as how to do 
things will find that the offerings of biology are indispen¬ 
sable. 
In most cases farming is a generalized occupation. 
Out of it has developed all other vocations. It is peda- 
gogically wrong to deny a high school student, whether 
from the city or the country, the opportunity of vital con¬ 
tact with the fundamental life processes of the farm and 
garden. 
4. Civic education —A boy who grows a box of berries, 
the best box in the neighborhood, in co-operation with 
the home, the school, and the state, is receiving an ac¬ 
ceptable type of training in civic education. The berry 
project is a constructive piece of work. It requires intel¬ 
ligence, a sense of responsibility, and a sustained inter¬ 
est. The boy accepted a definite program of concrete ser¬ 
vice. He might have met with the chagrin of failure, in¬ 
stead of the reward of achievement. 
Community enterprises are needed, perhaps more in 
rural than in urban life. Many of these enterprises can 
be based on biological material. An enterprise may take 
the form of beautifying the school grounds and roadways 
with appropriate plantings. Civic improvement leagues, 
started in school, may organize fly crusades, health ac¬ 
tivities, vacant lot gardening. 
Few opportunities are more available for developing 
the sense of private ownership, and straight thinking, 
which is ever needed in a democracy, than the organiza¬ 
tion and the successful completion of a productive effort 
such as the materials and the processes of biology offer 
boys and girls in well directed tomato clubs, corn clubs, 
pig clubs, etc. 
5. Worthy use of leisure —In the worthy use of leisure 
aim of education, biological science should aid in secur¬ 
ing recreation of body, mind and spirit, and the enrich¬ 
ment and enlargement of personality. Biology shares 
responsibility with music, art. literature and social inter¬ 
course in diversifying avocational interests. Genuine ap¬ 
preciation of nature provides refining influences in place 
of sordid pleasures. Nature strews her charms with a 
prodigal hand. If the wonders of biology are thought¬ 
fully and sympathetically studied in school, the spell of 
these wonders will grow with the pupils. The worker in 
the mill or the worker in the store, whose hours are 
shorter than formerly, too often resort to wasteful prac¬ 
tices in the recreative periods. If the school teaches the 
joys of the open sky, the pleasure of bird songs, the 
beauty and endless variety of flowers, and develops ap¬ 
preciation day by day for such things, the problem of the 
