The War Hits Succotash Biology

Abstract

The war has thrown a few grenades into what our schools are teaching in the entrenched sciences of physics and meteorology. Stream-lined short courses which function promptly to make fliers, artillery men, sailors and weather observers have taken the place of the leisurely presented academic exercises which preceded them. Biology cannot maintain a business as usual schedule in these times. The succotash biology starting with a diet of the morphology of beans and corn must give way to something else. Any educational activity designed to prepare one for life must take into consideration the fact that the life of the average American changed when the Japs showed at Pearl Harbor that they had studied the Sunday morning habits of the Aimerican iilitary only too well. From now on and for the duration at least, we are going to live a life of reality, not a life of Riley and intellectual gymnastics. There is nothing academic to the problems faced by a flier dropped in a parachute on a tropical isle, by a sailor washed ashore on an Aleutian beach, by a marine adrift in a rubber boat, or by a ski trooper stranded in the snow on a inountain peak. No one would question the reality which must be faced by a civilian bombed out of his home on a winter's night or a city refugee transferred suddenly away from the delicatessen to a region where he must live off the land. With the lowering of the draft age to eighteen, many of our high school boys will fin-d themselves suddenly livinig in a new world and for the problems of that new world our biology and conservation courses should give them some preparation. The hilum of beans and the hypocotyl of corn will be less significant information to these boys than how a cattail plant may keep them comfortable on a windy, cold, winter's night. We used to dip cat-tail heads in kerosene to nse as torches in political campaigns and to dip them in gilt to use as ornaments in art work but this is not the time for art and we cannot yet celebrate any great victory with torch-light parades. Just what does a cat-tail plant mean to yon as a biology teacher? Take the from an old head and hold it in your clenched hand. Clench the other hand while it is empty. You will soon notice how warm your fluff-clenching first is when it is compared with the empty fist. Little of the heat escapes through the insulating fluff. Is this academic? Maybe it is unless you find some night that you have to sleep in the open when your feet are likely to freeze. If you do have to sleep this way, take along two pairs of socks, one much larger than the size you normally wear. Fill the larger socks partly with cat-tail fluff. When you get ready to roll into your blankets, work your sock-covered feet down into the fluff in the larger socks so that there is a layer of fluff between the two socks. Now roll in and forget your feet. The chances are they will give you less bother than the rest of your body if the night is cold. If you happen to establish a semi-permanent camp near a cat-tail marsh, you * Presented before the Detroit Regional Meeting of The National Association of Biology . Teachers, Oct. 10, 1942.