Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1899: Volume LIV, No. 3, January 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1899: Volume LIV, No. 3, January 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
After this the myriapods, the earthworm, and peripatus are studied,
because of their resemblance to the probable ancestors of insects. In
the meantime they have had a dozen or more fully illustrated lectures
on evolution, so that at the close of this series of lessons they are
expected to have gained a knowledge of the methods of studying
insects, whether living or otherwise, a working hypothesis for the
interpretation of facts so obtained, and a knowledge of one order,
which will serve admirably as a basis for comparison in much of their
future work.
They then take up, more briefly, the relatives of the insects, the
spiders and crustaceans, following these with the higher
invertebrates, reaching the fish in April. This, for obvious reasons,
is their last dissection. But with living material, and the beautiful
preparations and stuffed specimens with which the laboratory is
filled, they get a very general idea of the reptiles, birds, and
mammals. This work is of necessity largely done by the students out of
school hours. For example, on a stand on one of the tables are placed
the various birds in season, with accompanying nests containing the
proper quota of eggs. Books and pamphlets relating to the subject are
placed near. Each student is given a syllabus which will enable her to
study these birds intelligently indoors and out, if she wishes to do
so.
In the spring are taken up the orders of animals below the insect, and
for the last lesson a general survey of all the types studied gives
them the relationships of each to the other.
THE COURSE OF STUDY PURSUED IN THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICE.--In addition to
the plants and animals about them, the children study the weather,
keeping a daily record of their observations, and summarizing their
results at the end of the month. In connection with the weather and
plants they study somewhat carefully the soil and, in this connection,
the common rocks and minerals of Philadelphia--gneiss, mica schist,
granite, sandstone, limestones, quartz, mica, and feldspar.
As in the laboratories, so here the effort is made to teach the
children to reason, to read the story told by the individual plant, or
animal, or stone, or wind, or cloud. A special effort is made to teach
them to interpret everyday Nature as it lies around them. For this
reason frequent short excursions into the city streets are made. Those
who smile and think that there is not much of Nature to be found in a
city street are those who have never looked for it. Enough material
for study has been gathered in these excursions to make them a feature
of this work, even more than the longer ones which they take twice a
year into the country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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