Work and Play in Girls' Schools / By Three Head Mistresses

by Dorothea Beale; J. F. Dove; Lucy Helen Muriel Soulsby

Then, as regards the observation of vital phenomena, it is possible to show that plants, like animals, take in oxygen. The details of “Garreau’s experiment” can be contrived even in schools where there is no physiological laboratory; with a water plant such as Anacharis, the evolution of oxygen in the making of starch can be demonstrated; and with such a simple thing as yeast growing in sugar and water, it is easy to show that carbonic acid gas is given off by fungi; more elaborate experiments are necessary to demonstrate the evolution of this gas by green plants. The teacher should always point out any similarity of process in plants and animals; transpiration of plants should be compared with the perspiration of animals, so that after a few lessons on the physiology of plants, it is possible to indicate the essential differences between plants and animals as far as they are known.

In zoology, as in botany, the teacher should aim at developing the power of observation, but zoology is a much more difficult subject to teach well; for it is not always possible to get animals for observation, consequently lessons in zoology are often dry; they are wanting in that living interest which comes not from book study, but from watching the animal itself. Where, however, this has been done, keen interest is aroused. A teacher who has spent hours off the coasts of Devonshire, pulling sea-anemones out of the crevices of the rocks, or watching them expand their tentacles and draw them in, will give a very different lesson from one who has merely read about a sea-anemone.

A class, having lessons in zoology, should have access to an aquarium, which can be kept in the class-room, and in planning a course on this subject, especially for young children, it is most important to choose those types which can be observed. In a first year’s course for children of ten or eleven, preference should be given to the habits of the animals, and structure introduced only so far as is necessary to explain habit. Living specimens for lessons may be obtained from aquaria in Jersey, Birmingham and elsewhere.

(b) By means of field work.It is not possible, however, to do all that ought to be done in developing observation within the limits of an hour a week in a schoolroom. The teacher of botany or zoology should be willing to organise expeditions into the country for botanising or pond grubbing. Here we have a Field Club, consisting of three or four sections: botanical, geological, zoological, archæological. The teacher of each subject is naturally the leader of the section, and is thus able to arouse a keener interest than is possible in the class-room alone. A yearly conversazione, when collections are exhibited, gives zest to the working of the sections, brings all the members of the club together, and affords an opportunity for obtaining a lecture from some original worker. It is found that if 200 belong to a school society of this kind, each member subscribing one shilling a year, a conversazione can be held, and prizes for collections given out of the funds of the society; each member bears in addition her share of the expense of an expedition; but the less expensive and the nearer home these are, the better.

(c) Through a museum.An excellent means of arousing a real interest in science lessons, and of developing the observation, is to have a school museum. That part of the museum devoted to natural history should combine two functions; it should have perfect specimens of the chief types of animal life arranged morphologically; for instance, the covering organs, such as scales of fishes, feathers of birds, hair of animals, should be grouped together, so that the homology of these organs can be seen at a glance; secondly, the museum should have surplus specimens specially intended for teaching purposes. One specimen will not serve these two purposes; for the only way of preserving any specimen in its perfection is to keep it under lock and key in a glass case, which must be air- and dust-tight. As soon as a specimen is taken out and passed about from teacher to teacher and from class to class, it will inevitably get damaged, as the curator of many a school museum can testify.

What share can the pupils take in the museum work? They may furnish specimens, but here the difficulty is to get them perfect enough; children require to be trained to aim at a standard of perfection, and in this particular the school museum may do valuable work; at the same time if the curator demands too much, the ardour of the children becomes damped; so it is sometimes well to accept an imperfect specimen, and put it in the museum until a more perfect one is forthcoming. Pupils can also do much useful work in making diagrams and drawings; every specimen in the science portion of the museum should be drawn, and parts explained by means of an accompanying diagram. Reference may here be made to the [scheme] at the end of this paper for a specimen museum case, illustrating the flowering plant. It has been drawn up on the lines of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, where, as is well known, great attention is paid by Sir William Flower to the homology of organs. This scheme has been carried out in our museum; almost every specimen has been illustrated with a drawing done by pupils, the scientific explanation being written by the teacher. In the first instance, as the case was being arranged, specimens and diagrams were merely pinned, not gummed, so that as the work progressed it was possible to alter and improve upon the first arrangement.

(d) Use of microscopes.In connection with the development of observation, a word may be said about the use of the microscope in schools. Every school should have at least one microscope, if even it has only one or two powers; a great deal can be done with a 1-inch and 2-inch objectives. At present many girls take the course required by the University of Oxford for the Senior Local without having seen a single structure under the microscope. This ought not to be, especially now that microscopes are so inexpensive (a microscope with 1-inch and ¹⁄₄-inch objectives can be obtained for £3 6s.).

There is considerable difficulty in managing microscope work with large classes; not more than two pupils, or at the most three, can work at a microscope at the same time, and where there are only one or two microscopes in a school, the simplest plan is for the teacher of botany to have pupils out singly, whilst the rest of the class are doing paper work at their desks. Lantern slides are an immense help in class work, but they cannot altogether take the place of the microscope, and it is very important that elder pupils likely to do anything at science should learn to manipulate the microscope.

Order of lessons.In no subject is it more necessary to plan lessons carefully than in science, for not only does the development of the observing faculty depend on a right sequence, but the scope of science is ever widening.

Biology alone includes at the present time subdivisions which hardly existed thirty years ago. Teachers of botany now have to find time for vegetable morphology, histology and physiology, for the life-histories of plants as well as for the descriptions necessary to classification. At the same time there are other considerations, besides a right sequence, which must be borne in mind in planning a course. Theoretically, it would be best in botany to begin with a description of the plant as a whole; root, stem, leaf, flower, branch, and the relation of these parts to each other, should be the subject of the first lessons. But children of ten or eleven could hardly be expected to be interested in learning that a leaf is a lateral appendage of a stem, and a branch an axillary outgrowth, whereas they are fascinated by flowers, and enjoy lessons about the visits of insects to flowers, etc. Undoubtedly with young children it would be wiser to begin with the flower and gradually lead up to the plant as a whole. The teacher, too, must be guided to some extent at any rate by his own individuality. In a subject as wide as botany some minds are attracted by one part, some by another; one teacher can be so luminous in his account of structure and its adaptation to function that the children are in their turn interested, especially if minute structure is seen through the microscope, and the delight of drawing forms part of the lesson. Another teacher revels in classification, and loves to point out the resemblances between plants of one order and those of another.