The present tendency in secondary education is away from the formal technical completion of separate subjects and toward the developing of a workable training in the activities that relate the pupil to his own life. In the natural science field, the tendency is to attach less importance to botany and zoology and physiology as such, and to lay greater stress on the processes and adaptations of life as expressed in plants and animals and men. This tendency is a revolt against the laboratory method and research method of the college as it has been impressed into the common schools, for it is not uncommon for the pupil to study botany without really knowing plants, or physiology without knowing himself. Education that is not applicable, that does not put the pupil into touch with the living knowledge and the affairs of his time, may be of less educative value than the learning of a trade in a shop. We are coming to learn that the ideals and the abilities should be developed out of the common surroundings and affairs of life rather than imposed on the pupil as a matter of abstract, unrelated theory.
One of the marks of this new tendency in education is the introduction of unit courses in biology in the secondary schools, in the place of the formal and often dry and nearly meaningless isolated courses in botany, zoology, and physiology. This result is one of the outcomes of the recent nature-study discussions.
The present volume is an effort to meet the need for
