Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Agassiz's hands-on science teaching innovation

Anon, Grasshopper becomes human, Finland 1885
Louis Agassiz
, in Lane Cooper, editor, Louis Agassiz as a Teacher: Illustrative Extracts on His Method of Instruction (Ithaca, NY: Comstock Publishing, 1945), p. 82—

In 1847 I gave an address at Newton, Massachusetts, before a Teachers' Institute conducted by Horace Mann. My subject was grasshoppers. I passed around a large jar of these insects, and made every teacher take one and hold it while I was speaking. If any one dropped the insect, I stopped till he picked it up. This was at that time a great innovation, and excited much laughter and derision. There can be no true progress in the teaching of natural science until such methods become general.