e of the most foundational and catholic of all
educational fields. The great variety of aim and of matter not merely
allow, but make imperative, the use of all possible methods; and there
is no method found fruitful in education which does not lend itself to
use in biology. The lecture method, the textbook, the recitation, the
quiz and the inverted quiz, the method of assigned readings and
reports, the method of conference and seminar, the laboratory method,
and the field method are all applicable and needed in every course,
even the most elementary.

=Prostitution of the laboratory=

Our method has thus crystallized about the laboratory as the one
essential thing; but worse, we have used the very shortcomings of the
laboratory as an excuse for extending its sway. The laboratory method
is the method of research in biology. It is our only way to discover
unknown facts. Is it, therefore, the best way to rediscover facts?
This does not necessarily follow, though we have assumed it.
Self-discovered facts are no better nor more true than communicated
facts, and it takes more time to get them. The laboratory is the
slowest possible way of getting facts. We have tried to correct this
quantitative difficulty by extending the laboratory time, by speeding
up, by confining ourselves to static types of facts like those of
structure, and by using detailed laboratory guides for matter and
method, all of which tends to make the laboratory exercise one of
routine and the mere observation and recording of facts or a
verification of the statements in manuals. The correction of these
well-known limitations of the laboratory must come, in my opinion, by
a frank recognition of, and breaking away from, certain of our
misapprehensions about the function of the laboratory. Some of these
are:

=Real purpose and possibility of laboratory work=

1. That the chief facts of a science should be rediscovered by the
student in the laboratory. This is not true. Life is too short. The
great mass of the student's facts must come from the instructor and
from books. The laboratory has as its function in respect to facts,
some very vital things: as, making clear certain classes of facts
which the student cannot visualize without concrete demonstration;
giving vividness to facts in general; gaining of enough facts at first
hand to enable him to hold in solution the great mass of facts which
he must take second hand; to give him skill and accuracy in
ob