Biology 1 should be prerequisite for botany 1 and zoölogy 1, and for the special biology courses in group three.
Botany 1 and zoölogy 1 should be made prerequisite for the higher courses in their respective fields; but aside from this almost any sequence would be allowable.
A major in biology should provide at least for biology 1 and 2, botany 1, zoölogy 1, botany 2 and 3, or zoölogy, 2 and 3. Chemistry is desirable as a preparation for the second group of courses.
Methods of Teaching as Conditioned by the Aims Outlined Above
Acceptance of biology retarded by poor pedagogy
Since the laboratory method came into use among biologists, there has been a disposition, growing out of its very excellences, to make a fetich of it, to refuse to recognize the necessity of other methods, to be intolerant of any science courses not employing the laboratory, and to affect a lofty disdain of any pedagogical discussion of the question whatsoever. The tone in which all this is done suggests a boast; but to the discriminating it amounts to a confession! The result of it has been to retard the development of biology to its rightful place as one of the most foundational and catholic of all educational fields. The great variety of aim and of matter not merely allow, but make imperative, the use of all possible methods; and there is no method found fruitful in education which does not lend itself to use in biology. The lecture method, the textbook, the recitation, the quiz and the inverted quiz, the method of assigned readings and reports, the method of conference and seminar, the laboratory method, and the field method are all applicable and needed in every course, even the most elementary.
Prostitution of the laboratory
Our method has thus crystallized about the laboratory as the one essential thing; but worse, we have used the very shortcomings of the laboratory as an excuse for extending its sway. The laboratory method is the method of research in biology. It is our only way to discover unknown facts. Is it, therefore, the best way to rediscover facts? This does not necessarily follow, though we have assumed it. Self-discovered facts are no better nor more true than communicated facts, and it takes more time to get them. The laboratory is the slowest possible way of getting facts. We have tried to correct this quantitative difficulty by extending the laboratory time, by speeding up, by confining ourselves to static types of facts like those of structure, and by using detailed laboratory guides for matter and method, all of which tends to make the laboratory exercise one of routine and the mere observation and recording of facts or a verification of the statements in manuals. The correction of these well-known limitations of the laboratory must come, in my opinion, by a frank recognition of, and breaking away from, certain of our misapprehensions about the function of the laboratory. Some of these are:
Real purpose and possibility of laboratory work
1. That the chief facts of a science should be rediscovered by the student in the laboratory. This is not true. Life is too short. The great mass of the student's facts must come from the instructor and from books. The laboratory has as its function in respect to facts, some very vital things: as, making clear certain classes of facts which the student cannot visualize without concrete demonstration; giving vividness to facts in general; gaining of enough facts at first hand to enable him to hold in solution the great mass of facts which he must take second hand; to give him skill and accuracy in observation and in recording discoveries; to give appreciation of the way in which all the second-hand facts have been reached; to give taste and enthusiasm for asking questions and confidence and persistence in finding answers for them. Anything more than this is waste of time. These results are not gained by mere quantity of work, but only through constant and intelligent guidance of the student's attitude in the process of dealing with facts.