Abstract
THE latest report of the Joint Committee of the Four Secondary Associations shows useful and, indeed, necessary work for education in the way of criticism, protest and suggestion. Complacency about the success of evacuation is now being reduced. Authorities who commandeer schools for officials and leave school buildings in a defective state have much to answer for. Such unwise economy is strange, after reckless expenditure elsewhere. A subsidiary subject syllabus is printed which a sub-committee of biologists has suggested for a London Higher School Certificate, since separate syllabuses for botany and zoology are regarded as unsatisfactory. This scheme for biology includes six important subjects, from histology to heredity and ecology, though the last-named is reduced to the study of fauna and flora in a restricted area. A practical examination and a written paper, each for three hours, are proposed, but the former, if ill-done, will not mean failure in the subject as a whole. The wide ground is well covered but, as the average teaching time for the whole of the syllabus, including practical work, is three hours a week, is there not too much to get through? Ambitious programmes tend to produce shallow knowledge which is soon lost.
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Biology in Schools. Nature 145, 384 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/145384a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/145384a0