In this work I have been focusing on the educational use of textbooks, especially natural history textbooks, for sex education by the teachers of selected schools. First, I conducted a theoretical introduction to the issue of textbooks and teaching sex education. Then my interviews with teachers examined how sex education is taught and whether the teachers use their textbooks as teaching aid. I have thoroughly analysed these interviews, from which I then draw my conclusions: how textbooks are used as a teaching aid and the impact of the quality of textbooks on their use. Furthermore, I conducted my subjective evaluation of the textbooks that teachers said they use. I compared this review to the evaluation of teachers, so I could carry out a discussion of these views. As the result of my work I find that some of the teachers participating in my research use the textbook as teaching aid, some not. Their decision is not affected by the quality of the topic in the textbooks. Of much greater importance is the form of sex education the teacher chooses and how the topic is being explained. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Organized education, historically, has been slow to commit itself to any sort of intensive examination of how learning can be both analyzed and substantially improved. But today Komoski (1960) tells us that we are looking beyond the traditional approaches to teaching. If a newly developed method is shown to be more effective than the techniques which have traditionally been employed, it is carefully considered for incorporation into the current education program. Programmed instruction is just such an example of a recently developed teaching method which claims it will contribute much to education. It dates back to Pressey's report (1926) of a simple teaching device which also gave tests and scores. Extensive research into this method, however, has occurred only during the past ten or twelve years. The intense interest in programmed instruction is understandable when we consider the goals of education in this country. The chief aim of education is to help each student achieve his fullest potential. The schools can best accomplish this by helping each student to recognize his own capacities, and by using methods which will contribute to an individual's developing intrinsically within himself the motivation for learning. However, there are present-day pressures which hamper the realization of these goals. Today the world is confronted with a population rise unprecedented in history. This "population explosion" is clearly reflected in the burgeoning school enrollments and the accompanying problems of inadequate classroom space and limited facilities. Unfortunately, the consequences of these pressures prove consistently detrimental to the establishment of an ideal educational system. For example, the increased teacher load has resulted in the practice of double sessions which has tended to reduce the amount of individual attention many teachers were previously able to devote to each student. And more extensive demands upon school budgets have led to minimal teacher salary raises, contributing further to the shortage of qualified teachers. This reveals the importance of development of new educational media in order to alleviate some of the stress on the teacher and to keep pace with currently expanding fields of knowledge.

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As home to 40 collections of technical and scientific objects and to the artworks it owns, TUD Dresden University of Technology boasts a large and significant stock of historical and contemporary artefacts from teaching, research and art.

The guiding principles of polytechnic education, as developed at the École Polytechnique in Paris from 1794, aimed at practical application and democratization. Accordingly, great value was attached to the practical experience of technology. At that time, it was possible to acquire these primarily through drawing exercises, demonstrations and experiments, as well as through geometric methods. In order to synthesize new technical means, it was supremely important to be able to determine from a drawing those connections that were both constructive and related to manufacturing technology. Therefore, the educational goals at the emerging polytechnic schools involved training spatial powers of imagination, conveying design thinking and encouraging precision skills. Such precision and reproducibility were required by the developing mechanized production in factories.

Describing plants and exploring their appearance, occurrence and usefulness have been common practice from antiquity. Even though the term “herbarium” underwent various changes in meaning over the centuries, it generally referred to a book on herbs, listing plants that were believed to possess pharmaceutical properties. Illustrations – some of them of high artistic quality – in books on herbs have been known since the Early Modern Period. Illustrative woodcuts created between 1530 and 1546, depicting the herbaria of the three pioneers of botany, Otto Brunfels, Leonhart Fuchs and Hieronymus Bock, had additional value as botanical reference points (Dressendörfer 2011). Nature printing, using the plant itself as the printing plate, was another method used in illustrating botanical books. It drew on the idea of nature inscribing itself to determine the technique of illustration. The rather elaborate procedure, described by Leonardo da Vinci and perfected during the 19th century, allowed for a detailed image of the plant in question.

Exhibits collected by the Duke of Weissenfels provided the basic stock for a larger collection of the Collegium Medico-Chirurgicum in Dresden. This was the first Saxon school of surgery, opening in 1748. It was succeeded by the Provisional Teaching Institute of Medicine and Surgery (1814/15) and the Surgical-Medical Academy (1815 to 1864). These institutions also made use of comprehensive collections in their training of military doctors, surgeons and medical practitioners. Unfortunately, none of these exhibits made it into the possession of the indirect successor institution, the Medical Academy “Carl Gustav Carus”, founded 90 years after the Surgical-Medical Academy closed. However, a physician interested in medical history began acquiring new objects for teaching purposes. Heinrich Fritz, head of the X-ray and Radium Institute of the Dresden-Johannstadt Hospital from 1948, then Professor of Radiology and Radiotherapeutics at the Medical Academy “Carl Gustav Carus” and Director of the Radiology Clinic, collected more than 20 different X-ray tubes, documenting the development of the relatively new discipline. They were on display in a purpose-built cabinet and were used in the training of medical students and medical technical assistants. Nevertheless, there seem to have been no systematic efforts at the new institution to collect material witnesses to medical history, despite the efforts of Heinz Egon Kleine-Natrop, a proven expert and promoter of Dresden’s medical history at the Medical Academy “Carl Gustav Carus”. Kleine-Natrop was the first Director of the Dermatological Clinic and full Professor of Dermatology from 1957. This lack of system when it came to acquiring historical exhibits was perhaps due to the proximity of two important institutions, both of which had been founded before World War I and already owned extensive medical history collections: the Karl Sudhoff Institute for the History of Medicine and the Natural Sciences in Leipzig and the “Deutsches Hygiene-Museum” in Dresden.

For thousands of years, coloring agents have been employed to dye textiles and other materials. Apart from the time-honored use of colors in many fields of design, research into colors has increased considerably as regards function and importance, particularly in recent years. The material witnesses associated with these processes have also found their way into the Dye Collection of the TUD Dresden University of Technology, one of the most comprehensive and significant collections of its kind in Europe. The inventory currently includes around 1,500 natural dyes of plant or animal origin, more than 20,000 synthetic dye samples and over 3,000 sample cards and books, as well as numerous samples of dyes prepared in the Institute of Colour Chemistry, the domicile of the Dye Collection. It also contains coal and tar products, various fiber materials, earth and mineral colors, and a collection of the Institute’s scientific papers and specimens from 1897 onwards. The Collection documents the development of color chemistry and the dye industry from the mid-19th century onwards and is still used today as a source of visual aids and as a reference work in teaching and for scientific purposes.

When scientists today talk of a mathematical model, they usually do not refer to objects such as those presented in this Collection, but to a formalized description − employing mathematical means − of a sub-problem from the world we experience. The more precisely an event is “modeled,” the better it can be predicted. Accurate weather forecasts, analyses of financial markets and the characterization of complicated processes from physics, chemistry and biology become possible when the power of computers is harnessed. Despite these obvious successes in almost all areas of life, despite their key role in advanced technology, and despite many attempts at mediation, mathematicians and the rest of society remain thoroughly divided: Their formalistic science is often regarded as incomprehensible and remote, not least because of its highly condensed language.

Universities have been setting up collections for teaching and research purposes since the 16th century. Cartographic collections deserving this name, however, only came into being during the 19th century, due to the development of geography (in German often referred to as “Erdkunde”) and geodesy. The late emergence of cartography as a science also had a delaying effect. Early attempts in collecting were, for example made, at the University of Wittenberg, founded in 1502. Here, Phillip Melanchthon had a store of wall maps he used in teaching (Stams 1985).