364 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It seems to me that the time is gone by when we need discuss 

 the direct applicability of teaching in elementary schools ; if 

 school training is read to mean education in the true sense of 

 the word, then there is no necessity for asking that a boy and 

 girl should learn at school only those subjects of which they will 

 make direct application as they grow older. Of course, this 

 does not preclude our keeping in mind the relative utility of the 

 various subjects to be taught, but it does and emphatically 

 preclude our falling into the error of imagining that a school- 

 subject is of educational value only in proportion to its direct 

 and foreseen utility in the application afterward. In other words, 

 education and teaching may be, and often are, very different 

 things. 



Now, as I understand it, the nineteenth century has discovered 

 possibly rediscovered the truth that you may impart a won- 

 drous amount of information to a boy or girl without awakening 

 those powers of observing and comparing that lie dormant in the 

 minds of most healthy human beings, and especially when young ; 

 and that many a brilliant boy grows up without being able to 

 draw correct inferences from the phenomena around him, and 

 therefore less able than he should be to hold his own in the world 

 he awakes in. 



The peculiarity of the study of elementary botany, properly 

 understood and pursued, lies especially in the interest it arouses 

 in the child's mind, and the ease with which it may be taught, 

 and I would insist and reinsist on the fact that it stimulates 

 and cultivates just those powers of accurate observation and com- 

 parison, and careful conscientious recording of the results, which 

 are so needed by us all ; and which, be it understood, moreover, 

 come so naturally to children who are not too much under the 

 baneful influence of the mere instruction the mere information 

 system. 



What I wish to emphasize is that the educational value of this 

 subject is no more to be measured merely by the number and 

 kind of facts which the child remembers, than is the educational 

 value of history to be measured by the dates learned, and the lists 

 of kings and battles committed to memory. History, reading 

 and writing, arithmetic, and other subjects, have an educational 

 value, if properly taught, quite apart from their value as mere 

 accomplishments, which may be granted ; but children are nat- 

 urally observers, and why this side of their hungry little natures 

 should be starved at the expense of their usefulness in after-life 

 has always been a mystery to me. 



To those who allow this, and I am happy to see that their 

 numbers are now many, it should hardly be necessary to point out 

 that the elements of botany afford the cheapest, cleanest, and most 



