INSTRUCTION IN BIOLOGY

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24902, 15 June 1946, Page 2

INSTRUCTION IN BIOLOGY

ADDRESS TO SCIENCE TEACHERS

“All round we observe a growing recognition of the value of some knowledge of the living thing and of the fact that whatever we may think about the ultimate cause or purpose of life, to understand our place in nature we must recognise our physical and functional kinship with our surroundings. Biology is that part of scientific endeavour which concerns itself with life,” said Professor E. Percival, in a presidential address to the recently-formed Canterbury Science Teachers’ Association last evening. “Biology is essentially functional and dynamic: animals and plants do things in situations- they have histories, both .of the individual and of the group. The concept of the unity of organism and environment is essential in biology; and there is no separation, or the terms lose their meaning. The subject is enlivened by curiosity and observation and close association with the living thing. “As I see the purpose of biology in schools, it is not the learning of the parts of the butterfly and frog, the floral formulae’ of flowering plants, or the names of parts of transverse sections of stems so that they may be, repeated exactly • on examination. Rather, it is to draw attention to the diversity of form, function, life-his-tory, and behaviour of organisms so as to enable people to discover a richer, more interesting environment than they previously conceived, at the same time learning something about themselves in relation to the external world, including their fellow men,” said Professor Percival.

“Some people may pass their lives utterly unaware of themselves as related to other things. They look on the world at large, often regarding it without curiosity or feeling. It is the utterly utilitarian attitude which has been and is responsible for so much disturbance of environment and of people in the building of empires and the so-called conquest of nature. “It is this attitude that the teacher of biology can alter by bringing about an awareness of the interrelation of organism and environment and the interdependence of the two. Free the subject from curse of examinations, provide teachers who have a feeling for it, and who recognise its implications, and it can become (in its way) a potent civilising factor.” After outlining simple experiments in biology for the classroom, Professor Percival made a plea for more field work. Much effort was spent in the lecture room, laboratory, and museum, but good as these exhibitions were they were synthetic. Far better would be expeditions to the country, to the seashore, to the riverbank, to the bush, and to the mountains to see, if possible, the real thing, to have the excitement of the search and the satisj faction of the find, and the gentle injection of propaganda about care of the country.