Science teacher

“ The school principal who is looking for a science teacher is likely to reply that he has had teachers thoroughly acquainted with the science but utterly unsympathetic with pupils. Such teachers do not know how to get the facts to the students. ”

“ The teacher of the very little child must first know what are the fundamental facts in science. Too often the traditional school training has given an intensive acquaintance with one or two sciences, so detailed that the fundamental foundations are obscured. The teacher of the very little child needs, instead, a comprehensive knowledge of many sciences, in their broad basic outlines,—especially physics, chemistry, nature-study, biology, physical geography, geology, astronomy, industrial geography and industrial processes, the story of primitive life and industries. ”

“ Nowhere in the child’s twelve school years is a more proficient teacher needed. She need not be deeply versed in the sciences generally, in mathematics, or in history, but she must have other knowledge greater than any of the sciences. The unfolding soul of a child is God’s greatest mystery; the science that deals with developing life is the science that the primary teacher must know. The little minds of her pupils are like strangers in a strange land. The teacher is the guide. ”

“ Wilson says, 'Science should be introduced into a school, beginning at the top and going downward gradually to a point which will be indicated by experience.' Surely this is inverting a fundamental principle of education, and we may ask, Why should science be thus singled out? Why not begin at the top with Latin and arithmetic and work downward? Science, however, has its 'elements' and its 'advanced' stages, like everything else. The soundest method seems to me to select the science for each age or capacity of pupils, and for the teacher himself to adapt the branch selected to them. ”

“ The teacher is called on to supply this, and to give it as his share in the work of bringing the teaching of experimental science into our schools. when the teacher has once obtained the mastery over the experiments, he will never after be willing to teach without them; for, as an honest teacher, he will know that he cannot teach without them. Well-made experiments, the teacher's clear and simple language describing them, and a free use of the blackboard, on which are written the facts and laws which the experiments show—these make the best text-books for beginners in experimental science. ”

“ With the growing demand for scientists comes an increasing need for science teachers—good science teachers—from the elementary through the university graduate-school level. The scientist who enters the teaching profession need not feel that he turns his back on a research career. Thousands of significant investigations and discoveries are made at colleges and universities where science faculty members combine teaching with research. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Now, in a classroom, you wouldn't necessarily want to make every moment be entertaining and exciting, but I certainly hope that you have the idea when you show up as a teacher, you've got to have some material, you have something to say, you have something to show the kids, show to your students, that's interesting and exciting.
So, to me, in science education, we have a tremendous advantage over many other disciplines, with all due respect to people who for some reason didn't choose science for a profession, is that we have props. ”

“ The tendency to bookishness and slavery to word-forms, which may seem to be encouraged by the recitation method of teaching science in the Normal Schools, is opposed by a greater tendency to emphasize the concrete, to refer in all science teaching directly to the objects themselves, to use laboratory methods wherever possible. Observation and experiment are essentially the methods of many of the American science teachers, and no pains are spared to illustrate all facts and principles by an appeal to the senses. As a result, much of the science teaching is excellent. ”

“ That we seek to improve our methods of instruction in science, to introduce into our educational systems a better scientific curriculum and far more extended courses, both of pure and of applied science, and to make the position of a teacher of science, viewed from the world's standpoint, a far more desirable one than it has yet become. ”

“ How shall science lessons be given? can best be answered by keeping constantly in mind the aims of science work. Whatever helps to realize these, helps to answer the question, as the ways and means must be adapted to the end in view.
In giving observation lessons upon plants, animals, and minerals, which, here let me say, are elementary science lessons as well as those that have received this name in our prescribed courses of study, three conditions must obtain: First, the children must be provided with specimens; second, the school must be under the control of the teacher ”

“ If, besides, it has yielded some valuable useable information, the solving of the problem has been a marked success. The laboratory method has been such an emancipation from the textbook slavery that there is some tendency to elevate it to an end in itself, whereas it must serve only as a very valuable means to an end. "The ideal laboratory is only a reasonably good substitute for the out-of-doors."
So far as preparation in the methods of science teaching is concerned, much good may be accomplished in teachers courses and in practice teaching. ”

“ A few keen-sighted men, combining in themselves, happily, the student and the teacher, recognized the fact that thorough instruction in physics implied and demanded the use of laboratory methods, such as had been utilized for some years in chemistry, and were rapidly coming into prominence in every other department of natural science. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In attempting to explain the slow pace of improvement in the quality of preparation for the teaching of science, one becomes involved in a cycle. Science had its development in the college and university whence it diffused slowly into the secondary schools, and finally slightly into the elementary grades. The differences between the aims of college science and secondary school science were and still are not taken sufficiently into account. ”

“ Now the interesting thing is that in this country, where the mass of the teachers would probably reject the theory and where supreme emphasis is being laid on the acquisition of information as the goal of educational effort, the teachers of natural science are doing the very thing the theory demands, namely, teaching methods or processes by which one can get at the truth or test what is supposed to be the truth in natural science, and giving along with the knowledge of these processes but a modicum of information. ”

“ In the next place, no good reason, except the want of capable teachers, can be assigned why elementary notions of science should not be an element in general instruction. In this case, again, no experience or elaborate apparatus is necessary. The commonest thing—a candle, a boy's squirt, a piece of chalk—in the hands of a teacher who knows his business may be made the starting-points whence children may be led into the regions of science as far as their capacity permits, with efficient exercise of their observational and reasoning faculties on the road. ”

“ You see, science starts with observation and then it goes through something we often call the scientific method and so on. But it starts with an interest, with being inspired. And so we have to change this. We have to make it easier for science teachers to do their job. ”

“ 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. ”

“ However simple and crude the apparatus, the skillful and enthusiastic teacher has at his command a wide series of materials which can be profitably utilized for experimental instruction. As every experienced teacher knows, pupils gain a far better knowledge, and keep up a livelier interest in any branch of science, if they see with their own eyes and do with their own hands that which serves to illuminate and illustrate the subject-matter. ”

“ The enthusiasm for the method is as impressive as its youth. It would be impossible to turn the present generation of science teachers away from the laboratory method of teaching. In spite of its cumbersomeness of234 administration, its demand for expensive equipment, and the deliberation which it compels in teaching the results of science, the laboratory method is everywhere accepted as the true method. ”

“ If botany is to be studied, it must be partly in the field and partly with the microscope; if zoology, then the scalpel must be used; if chemistry or physics, the student must learn to perform his own experiments. Without practice of this sort the instruction will be largely thrown away. It is to science what the exercise of translation is to the study of language, or what the solution of problems is to mathematics. The student must be trained to observe for himself; then to generalize upon his observations. In no other manner can the natural and physical sciences be taught. ”

“ Zoologists maintain that the embryonic development of an animal recapitulates in brief the whole history of its ancestors throughout geologic time. It seems it is the same in the development of minds. The teacher should make the child go over the path his fathers trod; more rapidly, but without skipping stations. For this reason, the history of science should be our first guide. ”

“ We refuse to accept this imposition wherever it would force us to sacrifice understanding to professional rote and rule of thumb. In place of these we emphasize basic concepts, basic techniques of measurement and experimentation, and general skills of the laboratory, in short those starting-points which make the rapid acquisition and revision of scientific knowledge a matter of habit and second nature. In terms of this fundamental training, our work in natural science more than meets the genuine requirements of pre-professional education. ”

“ If, for practice, a student is taking specific gravities, let him work upon substances for which that constant has never been determined. So also with such other physical measurements as naturally come up in a college laboratory. The student would be getting his instruction at the same time that he felt himself interested in aiding science, and both he and science would be gainers. ”

“ YOU have come together this morning to begin various elementary courses of instruction in chemistry and mineralogy. As I have been informed, most of you are teachers by profession, and your chief object is to become acquainted with the experimental methods of teaching physical science, and to gain the advantages in your study which the large apparatus of this university is capable of affording. In all this I hope you will not be disappointed. You, as teachers, know perfectly well that success must depend, first of all, on your own efforts ”

“ I think that a student during his college course should have [p58] a year’s work in a chemical laboratory or else, if his taste inclines him to botany, geology, or zoölogy, a year’s training of his observing powers in some one of these studies. For he ought to get, while at an impressible age, a superficial knowledge of the methods of scientific men, as a basis for his future reading. We all know that science is moving the world and to keep abreast with the movement is a necessity for every educated man. Happily, there are scientific men who popularize their knowledge. ”

“ It is most likely to be the "green" [Pg 28] 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. ”

“ But if scientific training is to yield its most eminent results, it must, I repeat, be made practical. That is to say, in explaining to a child the general phaenomena of Nature, you must, as far as possible, give reality to your teaching by object-lessons; in teaching him botany, he must handle the plants and dissect the flowers for himself; in teaching him physics and chemistry, you must not be solicitous to fill him with information, but you must be careful that what he learns he knows of his own knowledge. Don't be satisfied with telling him that a magnet attracts iron. ”