Nature Bulletin No. 756   May 16, 1964
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Seymour Simon, President
Roberts Mann, Conservation Editor

****:LOUIS AGASSIZ

The father of natural science education in our modern schools was the 
great Swiss naturalist and teacher, Louis Agassiz. From 1848 until his 
death in 1873, he was the professor of zoology and geology in the 
Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard. There, he not only trained a 
generation of zoologists and geologists, several of whom become 
famous: he gave a new slant, new purpose, and a powerful push to 
scientific education in America -- especially the study of natural 
history.

Agassiz was an inspiring teacher who preached and practiced a 
philosophy of education that was revolutionary in his day. He was 
passionately opposed to theories and conclusions obtained largely from 
books and attending lectures. Agassiz refused to be an oracle 
"imparting information" to his students. Instead, he required them to 
obtain it firsthand from specimens and their life histories. Thus, he 
made the study of natural science attractive and meaningful.

"Study nature, not books", was his slogan. In other words, take 
nothing for granted. He told his students: "Go to nature; take the facts 
in your hands; look, and see for yourself".  "The book of nature is 
always open". "If I succeed in teaching you to observe, my aim will be 
obtained. "

Modern programs of Outdoor Education, such as ours in the Forest 
Preserve District, have the same viewpoint and are patterned after the 
methods introduced by Louis Agassiz. Their purpose is to entice 
people to become acquainted and friendly with the trees, the 
wildflowers, and the wild creatures. We hope that, eventually, our 
Cook County preserves will be used by all schools as laboratories 
where classes go on field trips and from which they bring back, to the 
classrooms, some of the out-of-doors -- what they saw and heard; what 
they smelled, tasted and touched; specimens they found. That is 
learning.

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (pronounced "Ag-a-see"), born May 20, 
1807, was the son of a Protestant pastor in Motier, a village on Lake 
Morat in western Switzerland. Until he was 10 years old, when he 
could read, write and speak Latin as well as French, his father had 
been his only teacher. Meanwhile his hobby had been collecting, 
dissecting and study of local fishes.

After four years at preparatory schools in Switzerland, he attended 
universities at Zurich, Heidelberg, Munich and Erlanger until he 
obtained the coveted degrees of Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of 
Philosophy. Then, when he was only 19, came an opportunity which 
shaped his career: he was chosen to classify and catalog fishes 
collected in the Amazon river of Brazil by two Munich naturalists. 
This led to years of research and publications on the freshwater fishes 
of Europe, the fossil remains of extinct fish, and those of starfish and 
other marine animals.

From 1832 until 1846, Agassiz was professor of natural history at the 
University of Neuchatel. Meanwhile, after studying the movements 
and effects of glaciers in Switzerland, he announced his revolutionary 
concept of the Ice Age when glaciers covered much of the earth. By 
1846, when he came to America to deliver a series of lectures, he had 
issued 175 publications including 20 books.

Agassiz was a burly man nearly six feet tall, with a broad handsome 
face and a sunny disposition. At a time when professors wore tall silk 
hats and a majestic dignity, Agassiz wore a shapeless felt and trotted 
across the Harvard Yard, puffing furiously on one of the big cigars that 
he also smoked in classes. He was adored by his students, the public, 
and everyone who knew him. Longfellow said, "he had a laugh that 
the Puritans forgot", but James Russell Lowell came closest to 
expressing the greatness of this many-sided scientist and teacher:

"His magic was not far to seek, -- he was so human!"