Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/598

580 not enough, for there can be no doubt that many teachers take the very books which emphatically urge the necessity of observation, and use them just as they would a grammar, or a school history, so that the observation, in this case, may be said to consist in observing what is said on a certain page of a certain book, and not in watching any plant or animal.

Supposing that I am correct in believing that about three fourths of a class ask the question, "What do you wish me to observe?" there still remain one fourth who do not ask the question. Among these are some who are by nature good observers, or who have been well trained, but the number of these is very small. The remainder consists of those who have already studied biology according to the very latest method with all the modern improvements. They do not ask what I wish them to observe, but, on the contrary, begin to lecture to me about the object under consideration and things in general. If I give them some yeast to examine, they tell me at once all about its history, and show me the spores which it seems necessary that the yeast should have to make it agree with the books. It makes no difference if I substitute a quantity of starch for the yeast. If I only call it yeast, it will have all the book-marks of yeast. This over-educated class of young men is very entertaining, but very hard to teach. Everything is grist to their mill. For them the ubiquitous air-bubble makes a simple but sufficient nucleus, if it is necessary to have a nucleus, or it will serve equally well as a spore if spores are desired. Nothing is so insignificant that they can not apply to it a big name, and no theory is so complex that it can not be dragged in to explain the most self-evident cases.

I have said enough to show that, unless my experience is an exceptional one, in spite of all the talk on the subject, boys at school are not taught to observe as they should be, and that even those teachers who use good text-books frequently use them as means of imparting facts easily and quickly by the old method, rather than as an aid in the scientific training of the faculties which must form the basis of any serious study of biology. One fact has surprised me. Some of the best observers among my students have been persons who fitted at the classical schools, where the training is exclusively linguistic and mathematical. To be sure, they have been considered a bad lot by some of their instructors, and I presume that they paid little attention to their studies at school. Perhaps it is in consequence of this very neglect that their natural powers of observation have been less impaired than those of their fellows who have learned more and seen less.

It seems a great pity that students should come to college so ill fitted, as are the majority, to undertake biological work. But we must accept things as they are, and there is no use in attempting to take the second step before the first has been taken. If the school can