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Show Book Teaching of Science. I once visited a large high school, one of the best in the country, with a science teacher whoso studies have won him the respect of his follow workers. But for some reason, on that day at least, he failed to bring his own knowledge into the class room. I heard him quizzing a class of boys and girls on animals not on the animals of tho woods and fields, not on the animals, before them, for there were none, but on the edentates of South America. Amer-ica. An especial point was to find out whether it is the nine banded armadillo (novemoinctus) or the three banded armadillo ar-madillo (tricinctus) which does not dig a hole in the ground for its nest. The book, written by a man who did not know an armadillo from a mud turtle, gives this piece of information. It was in the lesson, les-son, and the students must get it. And on this and like subjects these boys and girls were wasting their precious time precious because, if they do not learn to observe in their youth, they will never learn, and tho horizon of their lives will be always narrower aud darker than it should have been. Already the work of that day is a blank. They have forgotten the nine banded armadillo and the three banded, and so has their teacher, and so have I. All that remains with them is a mild hatred of the armadillo and of the edentates in general, and a feeling of relief nt being no longer uuder their baleful influence. But with this usually goes the determination determina-tion never to study zoology again. Aud when these students later come to tho college, they know no more of science and its methods than they did when at the age of 1 year they first cried for the moon. David Starr Jordan in Popular Science Monthly. |