What’s in a Zone?: Biological Order versus National Identity in the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study

The American herpetologist and educator Arnold Grobman frequently repeated a cautionary tale about biology instruction in 1950s Hong Kong. There he witnessed high school students performing a dissection of local earthworms. Unfortunately, the specimens did not agree with the depictions in the students’ British textbooks. Since the students would be taking British exams, however, they dutifully labeled their specimens according to the anatomic elements identified in the text. As Grobman interpreted the incident, the students were being forced to choose between empirical reality and received authority, thereby missing out on one of the central benefits of laboratory instruction.¹ Even before