OPPORTUNITY FOR ADEQUATE PREPARATION.
What possibilities of making adequate preparation, are to be found in colleges and universities? And how much preparation is required by the Teacher's Recommendation or other standards of fitness? In search of the answers to our questions, we may study conditions at the University of California, for there is as good opportunity and standards are as high in this school as anywhere in the country. The quantity of preparation is fairly assured by the five-year requirement for the Teacher's Recommendation, but the quality of the preparation is not so certainly assured. With the possible exception of the Education Department, no department considers the training of teachers even nearly equal in importance to the production of specialists in the subject who shall devote their lives to research. The subject is regarded as an end in itself.
If a person were directed to make preparation for the teaching of biology, he would be at a loss in searching for the Biology Department, or even a department that gave a good comprehensive course in biology. The subject as best taught in the secondary schools is subdivided into various components, each with its special aim. The prospective teacher has no carefully prepared course of study for his pursuit, as has the prospective doctor, engineer, or farmer. The state provides a specially adapted course of training for its veterinarians, those who care for its livestock. Why not a special course of high standard for those who plan to devote their lives to the direction of the formative years of its children? It is probably explained in large part by the failure to recognize teaching as a profession. The Schools of Education throughout the country have been insisting upon real professional training for teachers but other departments are deplorably slow in cooperating.
In order to avoid becoming entangled in abstractions, we may choose a specific instance to show the difficulties in the way of securing the correct kind of preparation, even though the quantity is guaranteed. The Zoology Department (I choose this department neither because it is worse nor better than any other, but because I am better acquainted with the content of its courses) makes the following requirements for the Teacher's Recommendation:
General Zoology
Invertebrate Zoology—
an advanced course which omits all consideration of insects, and all discussion of parasitic forms.
Vertebrate Zoology—
mainly a course in comparative morphology, which gives no field knowledge of California vertebrates, the most essential thing for the high school teacher.
and one subject from each of the following groups,
Group I
Comparative Anatomy.
Cytology—
basic principles must be understood by the teacher but he should not have to spend one whole half year to acquire them.
Embryology.—
the above is also true for this course.
Group II.
Biology of Water Supplies—
this course is primarily for sanitary engineers.
Protozoology—
All that is necessary of this could be incorporated in a general course.
Parasitology—
essential for health instruction and for illustration of certain biological principles.
Group III.
Experimental Zoology } combination of these valuable.
Animal Behavior }
Heredity, Evolution, and Eugenics—
this course is very essential for any teacher.
(Required in the fifth year, the Teachers' Course, some work in research, and practice teaching.)
Taken as a whole, the chief criticism to be made is that the subject has been so subdivided to insure no overlapping of courses, that it becomes necessary to take every course in order to obtain a well rounded preparation in the field. This requires more time than any individual can devote to it, for he must also have preparation in Botany, Physiology, and Bacteriology and Hygiene, and in these departments the arrangement of courses is essentially the same. The general course in Zoology is inadequate, for it is planned for an introduction to the more advanced courses and is careful not to steal too much from their fund of interesting information. The aim is to lay a thorough foundation rather than to discuss the more interesting facts and general principles of biology, though I am glad to believe that the present trend is decidedly in this latter direction.
Here we find adequate preparation for a teacher of Zoology, but in no secondary school of the state will a teacher be employed for Zoology alone. In high schools the biological science curriculum the first course must be Biology, and it must be all-inclusive, for it is all of the biological science that the majority of the pupils will take. It would be a great step in advance if every school required even that much for graduation.
Of the courses in Invertebrate Zoology and Vertebrate Zoology, it can be safely said that they overlook the importance of field work. Boys and girls sometimes have a surprisingly large superficial knowledge of the plants and animals of their vicinity, and this knowledge is of the sort obtained through observation of their ways in nature, that is, it is a field knowledge. The teacher must be prepared to use this to the greatest possible extent, but how can this be expected if the teacher knows little if any more than the children about the habits of plants and animals. Such training would have to be obtained through some of the field work of the Museum of Vertebrate zoology. But no work in that department is required for the Teachers Recommendation. A knowledge, though not an intensive knowledge, of each of the subjects that make up the three groups included in the requirements is quite necessary but it is out of the question for a person to take them all unless he specialize in Zoology. Not all can be expected to major in Zoology, and those that do will find it necessary to omit much that is essential in the other departments of biological science. Each department should have a general course covering fully its field of work so that those majoring in some other department may in minimum time gain a fair knowledge of its field. It is very doubtful if such a course is given in any department at present.
At present only a meagre view is had of the history of Biology, until the fifth year when it is given as seminar work. And at no time, in any course, are the aims and relations of biology presented in such a way as to be helpful to one attempting to plan the most valuable type of high school course. Graduate research has been sufficiently considered previously, and the teachers' course will be considered last.
It will be conceded generally in thinking of the solution of the problem that the ideal arrangement would be a real teachers' course, at least five years in length. This could be comparatively easily accomplished by a slight modification of the departments concerned and their hearty cooperation with the Department of Education. The disregard for method on the part of the former and the failure to realize the importance of a thorough knowledge of subject matter by the latter, can are obstacles that can be easily overcome I am sure. The student would enter upon this course with the intention of becoming a teacher, just as does any student enter upon his professional course with the intention of becoming the professional man for which his training is preparing him. Few freshmen now come to the University of California with the intention of becoming teachers in the secondary schools, that I admit, but the reasons and the remedy for that are not for discussion here. Suffice it to say that when reward is adequate, then the profession will grow and come to be made up of the highest type of men and women.
The time of the Teachers Course is not far distant and it might be worth while to see what could be done without radical modifications in the curricula of the departments as they now are. For a working basis I would like to present the following skeleton programme, which seems practicable. In this schedule all preparation except that in subject matter and method is understood to be included in "electives". A major in Zoology is assumed. Each biological science department would have a course of similar plan built about its major as a core.
First year,
Geography or Geology
Aims of science and its human values.
Chemistry
Electives
Second year,
Zoology,
Physics,
Electives
Third year,
Zoology—advanced courses
Botany,
Physiology
Electives
Fourth year,
Zoology—advanced courses
Bacteriology, and Public Health
Electives
Fifth year,
Zoology—research
History of Science
Teachers' Course, correlated with and supplementary to practice teaching.
Electives
The reasons for selection and sequence of subjects in this schedule are fairly evident from what has gone before, but a few points will bear additional explanation.
A course in the aims and values of science should be introductory, for in the absence of general knowledge concerning values, such as has grown up with other professions, the student must be given early in his work an enthusiasm for it and a sort of guide for future choice of subjects for study. The difference in aim between university and secondary school science must be clearly understood at the start. Too often, university courses accept science as an end in itself and it is taught from that point of view, whereas the prospective teacher must hold to his point of view, that to humanity generally science is only a very effective means to an end; it is just a faithful servant.
The schedule just submitted may seem to be overbalanced with science courses, but it must be somewhat so, especially if courses are not to be completely reorganized. Science would not need to consume quite so large a part of the time if special courses were given for teachers—another argument for a high grade, strictly professional course.
Duplication of teachers' courses in special methods would be eliminated for a single course for all of the departments of biological science would be sufficient. Biology is the hub, and not the separate biological sciences, in the courses in this field in the secondary schools. The methods concerned are biological methods, and therefore a single course for all prospective teachers of biological science regardless of the nature of their major work, is a logical procedure. Whether such a course is a success or a failure is largely dependent on the professor in charge. In the past there have been many failures, mainly because the person conducting it has never had secondary school experience, knows little or nothing of the problems, and has no sincere enthusiasm for the teaching of science to boys and girls below the university age.
The course suggested would cover an entire year. At least that much time is required to give any direction or instruction that is worth while. The first half of the year might well be devoted to a digestion and correlation of all previous work, organizing it into a form easily useable in the work to follow. Questions of method, recitation, laboratory and field work, textbooks and reference books purchase and use of equipment, must be given consideration in some part of the course. An outline course, with the separate lessons that make it up should be worked out in detail, for some particular locality, preferably the one where practice teaching is to be done. This should then be carefully tested by the criteria of a good biology course, as pointed out by the best authorities, and by common sense. But why make this skeleton outline beforehand? Why be prepared in anything? It will be too late to prepare at the moment the problem has to be met. Few new teachers will find a well planned course awaiting their arrival in a new field, and without previous experience a new teacher is likely to build up a course without due respect to relative values which comes only with a perspective of a course in its entirety. To illustrate, in the course given by an inexperienced teacher there is too much chance of six weeks time being spent on the study of the grasshopper, with only four weeks left at the end of the school year to be devoted to the biology of the human. The mapping of a course, by way of practice, gives the prospective teacher practice in the exercise of judgment, with helpful constructive criticism.
Practice teaching now becomes only the trying out of the course and accompanying methods. As, one practice teacher remarked when this plan was suggested "But, I might have to make my course all over." Such would often be the case. Any wide-awake teacher will change his course more or less from year to year. Even if the first plan were entirely discarded the energy and thought prompted by its making would not be lost. And now let us change the name given to those in charge of practice teachers. Advisor would be more fitting than supervisor, for they should remain in the background except for rendering helpful service, and making constructive criticism in excess of destructive.
In order for practice teaching to be effective there must be nothing of an artificial sort enter in. Conditions must be of the regular sort met every day in the teaching game. This statement seems superfluous, but a visit to some of the classes where practice teaching is being done will justify its insertion here. The practice teacher should not be handed over a laboratory properly equipped. Of course, the equipment should be available. The course should not be "ready-cut". The practice teacher must meet all of the problems and this is cheating him out of a part of his fun. Through his solution of these problems there will be a two-fold benefit, for the advisor too may profit by the ingenuity of the newcomer. Resignation should be requested of any advisor who has outgrown the ability to learn. It is most likely to be the "green" person, who will develop really new methods, or evolve a more fitting experiment, or turn a bit of apparatus to a new use. Above all, the practice teacher should be required to scout for living material—there will usually be an abundance all about him, and much that is of interest should find its way into the laboratory. Training in the use of living material can not be over emphasized.
The course which I have outlined in the previous pages, is not satisfactory, but I firmly believe that it would be an improvement over the present situation. When tried out it would show many shortcomings, but by trial and improvement has our entire educational system evolved. Even an ideal professional course in use today would be obsolete tomorrow. It would be unfortunate were it not so, for growth involves ecdysis, and growth is the law of nature.