Feb. 27, 1927.Dear Miss Turner,
Your Christmas messages were a joy. It is a great place I'm in & I'm glad I'm here. Having waded through a year of the Systemic Zoo, I begin to take more kindly even to that. Although I could wish that the three years of zoology were not all spent on the details of Systemic, at least when they're finished they have the material for really understanding some of the big, underlying principles, especially Evolution. This last term I have tried to correlate and emphasize some of the big points of comparative anatomy and evolution for them. And the really discouraging thing about these kids is that so long as they have details which they can memorize & which they think are in their syllabi, they will cheerfully learn by heart all the bones in the skull and all the technical terms for types of dentition & then be quite incapable of using that information in a general question as to the way mode of living is reflected in the structure of the skull & dentition. But really I feel the fault is with the system & not with the students.
Anyhow I've learned much this year & have a few ideas of how to do things differently next year.
So Eleanor has decided to spend her other 6 months in America rather than in the Mofussil. It seems to me she is wise to get all the stimulus for study & teaching that she can, and I never did understand clearly what she expected to do or accomplish in the Mofussil. I really feel, however, that she is rather losing her head in her enthusiasm for research in the requests & almost demands she is making for physiology. I am solidly with her that a course in physiology is needed & we with our new science building and partial physiology quipment and Eleanor's training are best fitted to start it going. But I don't think she is far-sighted in saying she is willing to give up zoology nor that she must have 2 new rooms, new electrical wiring, & a class to teach all the minute she gets back. She sounds as though she hadn't been here to know the situation - financially we are facing a deficit for the current year, the English boards are extremely pessimistic with their own financial prospects in maintaining, let alone, increasing their effort, & the general feeling here is that America is immensely wealthy but is holding on to its wealth & not really understanding needs here. So our position is to impress people that we can't retrench & keep up the necessary educational standard & get impress [sic] them that we are not extravagant.
Furthermore, Eleanor should realize that these kids can't jump into basal metabolisms & blood volumes and until they've learned the A. B. C's of the subject & in reality that is all we can expect to do here for sometime to come, as far as I can see. For at present with the university offering only the most elementary syllabus in intermediate physiology, there are not adequately qualified teachers for it in the secondary schools. And I have a feeling that that is the first need to be met, with a looking forward to stimulus towards research when a brilliant student arises. And with the duplication of the apparatus you had sent, there would be sufficient to start a small class of B.A. students on its way. And Eleanor is rather spoiling her chances for even starting it by such high-handed demands, for Miss McDougall was only won over with considerable arguing that these students should be taught Physiology at all, & if a great outlay is needed for new apparatus & new rooms that even that is impossible.
That is the way things impress me from this end & I've written Eleanor my feelings which I hope won't make her feel I'm unsympathetic [to] her basic idea, but I think she needs a little studying & aholding of her horses!
I'm enclosing an account of our West Coast Trip at Christmas time. It has been wonderful to have had Miss Wells for a pal for I fear I should not have had the initiative to have planned & executed any of the things we have done & they have been so extremely worth while. We are looking forward eagerly to Kashmir & the northern cities of Aspa & Delhi this summer. Please will you pass around the account to those at college who may be interested, the zoo people & Bea Hyslop particularly.
I am much saddened by news from home yesterday of the death of my adorable little niece with meningitis.
Lovingly,
D. Elizabeth.