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                 A CIVIC BIOLOGY

              Presented in Problems

                        BY

            GEORGE WILLIAM HUNTER, A.M.

  HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY, DE WITT CLINTON
          HIGH SCHOOL, CITY OF NEW YORK.

    AUTHOR OF "ELEMENTS OF BIOLOGY," "ESSENTIALS OF
                 BIOLOGY," ETC.


         [Illustration:  Printer's Logo]


              AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY

  NEW YORK         CINCINNATI           CHICAGO




               COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
              GEORGE WILLIAM HUNTER.
        COPYRIGHT, 1914, IN GREAT BRITAIN.

            *     *     *     *     *

              HUNTER, CIVIC BIOLOGY.
                      W. P. 3



                    Dedicated
                      TO MY
                 FELLOW TEACHERS
          OF THE DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY
       IN THE DE WITT CLINTON HIGH SCHOOL
        WHOSE CAPABLE, EARNEST, UNSELFISH
           AND INSPIRING AID HAS MADE
               THIS BOOK POSSIBLE




            FOREWORD TO TEACHERS


A course in biology given to beginners in the secondary school should have
certain aims. These aims must be determined to a degree, first, by the
capabilities of the pupils, second, by their native interests, and, third,
by the environment of the pupils.

The boy or girl of average ability upon admission to the secondary school
is not a thinking individual. The training given up to this time, with but
rare exceptions, has been in the forming of simple concepts. These concepts
have been reached didactically and empirically. Drill and memory work have
been the pedagogic vehicles. Even the elementary science work given has
resulted at the best in an interpretation of some of the common factors in
the pupil's environment, and a widening of the meaning of some of his
concepts. Therefore, the first science of the secondary school, elementary
biology, should be primarily the vehicle by which the child is taught to
solve problems and to think straight in so doing. No other subject is more
capable of logical development. No subject is more vital because of its
relation to the vital things in the life of the child. A series of
experiments and demonstrations, discussed and applied as definite concrete
problems which have arisen within the child's horizon, will develop power
in thinking more surely than any other subject in the first year of the
secondary school.

But in our eagerness to develop the power of logical thinking we must not
lose sight of the previous training of our pupil. Up to this time the
method of induction, that handmaiden of logical thought, has been almost
unknown. Concepts have been formed deductively by a series of comparisons.
All concepts have been handed down by the authority of the teacher or the
text; the inductive search for the unknown is as yet a closed book. It is
unwise, then, to directly introduce the pupil to the method of induction
with a series of printed directions which, though definite in the mind of
the teacher because of his wider horizon, mean little or nothing as a
definite problem to the pupil. The child must be brought to the
appreciation of the problem through the deductive method, by a comparison
of the future problem with some definite concrete experience within his own
field of vision. Then by the inductive experiment, still led by a series of
oral questions, he comes to the real end of the experiment, the conclusion,
with the true spirit of the investigator. The result is tested in the light
of past experiment and a generalization is formed which means something to
the pupil.

For the above reason the laboratory problems, which naturally precede the
textbook work, should be separated from the subject matter of the text. A
textbook in biology should serve to verify the student's observations made
in the laboratory, it should round out his concept or generalization by
adding such material as he cannot readily observe and it should give the
student directly such information as he cannot be expected to gain directly
or indirectly through his laboratory experience. For these reasons the
laboratory manual has been separated from the text.

     "The laboratory method was such an emancipation from the
     old-time bookish slavery of pre-laboratory days that we may
     have been inclined to overdo it and to subject ourselves to
     a new slavery. It should never be forgotten that the
     laboratory is simply a means to the end; that the dominant
     thing should be a consistent chain of ideas which the
     laboratory may serve to elucidate. When, however, the
     laboratory assumes the first place and other phases of the
     course are made explanatory to it, we have taken, in my
     mind, an attitude fundamentally wrong. The question is, not
     what _types_ may be taken up in the laboratory to be fitted
     into the general scheme afterwards, but what _ideas_ are
     most worth while to be worked out and developed in the
     laboratory, if that happens to be the best way of doing it,
     or if not, some other way to be adopted with perfect
     freedom. Too often our course of study of an animal or plant
     takes the easiest rather than the most illuminating path.
     What is easier, for instance, particularly with large
     classes of restless pupils who apparently need to be kept in
     a condition of uniform occupation, than to kill a supply of
     animals, preferably as near alike as possible, and set the
     pupils to work drawing the dead remains? This method is
     usually supplemented by a series of questions concerning the
     remains which are sure to keep the pupils busy a while
     longer, perhaps until the bell strikes, and which usually
     are so planned as to anticipate any ideas that might
     naturally crop up in the pupil's mind during the drawing
     exercise.

     "Such