Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/255

Rh experience may not prove valueless or uninteresting to teachers and others.

The summer of 1878 was spent at Salem, at the Summer School of Biology connected with the Peabody Academy of Science, and, while there, the ideas on teaching gathered from Huxley, Mill, Bain, and Spencer, took a tangible shape; and I determined that classes in physiology that came under my charge should have the benefit of practical work so far as lay in my power to give it. In September of that year I organized a class in physiology, made up of young ladies and gentlemen between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. With this material I went to work. My plan was briefly this: Teach as many facts in this study and those connected with it as possible; then for direct use have the pupils get some idea, if but slight, of the progress of science, and develop mental discipline by pursuing the work according to the scientific method, so far as time and material will permit. To accomplish these results seemed to be worth striving for; and, without making any pretensions to exhaustive work, I followed a programme substantially as follows: A suitable text was provided, and, with this in hand and a human skeleton, we considered the location, use, form, structure, articulation, etc., of the bones; the same was done with many of the muscles, being aided in this by an excellent series of plates; the skin next claimed attention, and in succession followed the circulatory, respiratory, and digestive systems. During this time there were no regular recitations, but each scholar was free to ask any question on the preceding lesson to any member of the class he saw fit; in this way we took a cursory view of the human frame outside of the nervous and reproductive systems. After we had seen something of the mechanism in its entirety, and had a general idea of it, I chloroformed a cat and dissected it before the class; this was not performed in my regular school-room, but in a small room off, which had been used for recitations by one of my teachers. During the operation the class asked questions, and were at perfect liberty to discuss any topic connected with the subject, or to ask explanations concerning the structure or use of any part examined. The dissection did not aim to be exhaustive, the idea being more to clinch the facts which had before been given, and to present in a clearer light the form of the body interiorly. After this dissection the class recited from the text, and were aided with plates, specimens, and informal talks, through the whole course. After finishing the work another animal was procured, and several members of the class took turns in dissecting, sometimes several working at once and sometimes one only; here I endeavored to give the pupils their own way, the object being not to make skilled dissections, but to teach them to study nature at first hand. In this work they followed Foster and Langley as closely as possible. We then made a thorough review of the whole text, this work being supplemented by bringing