48 THE PI.ANT WORIvD 



Our Teachers' Department. 



Edited by Professor Francis E. Lloyd, 



Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City. 



In opening a new department of The Plant World it is earnestly 

 hoped that this journal will extend its usefulness to a special but very 

 large class of people, comprising all the teachers of botany in both the 

 elementary and secondary schools in this country. It will be seen that 

 this must include both those whose interests are confined to the teaching 

 of Nature Study and those who are occupied in the instruction of pupils 

 in the high school. We are prone to think that these extremes of teaching 

 have little in common, but we do not have to meet this issue in order to 

 agree that all teachers alike have to do with the same materials, and that 

 in order to succeed in interesting our pupils, be they young or old, we must 

 ourselves be vitally interested in plants and their ways on the one 

 hand and in good methods of presenting knowledge about them on the 

 other. Now, there is no one who knows all about either of these, but 

 there are very many who have worked out in their experience numerous 

 handy and clever ways of presenting various topics ; and moreover there 

 are many whose special interest in particular lines of botanical study and 

 whose familiarity with particular groups of plants as they grow in the 

 field have given them a grasp of the details which enables them to point 

 out many facts important and interesting to teachers. But very few of 

 these persons have laid it on their conscience to help their fellows in the 

 profession by putting their ideas into print ; and yet, I take it, the things 

 which grow out of a teacher's experience are the very things which are 

 of most value to other teachers. I believe therefore that this department 

 can attain its greatest efiiciency only with the cooperation of the teachers 

 themselves, to whose interests The Plant World appeals. To such the 

 opportunity is offered for the publication of short helpful papers, which 

 shall embody experience, and which may, for this reason, be illuminating 

 and encouraging to others. 



As indicated in the foregoing paragraph, the teacher is interested in 

 two phases of knowledge, or we might perhaps better say, he looks at 

 the same body of knowledge from two different viewpoints. If he be 

 a teacher of botany, the great mass of botanical knowledge, or at any 

 rate some parts of it, are of great if not of absorbing interest to him. At 

 the same time, his calling leads him to inquire what parts of this wide 

 field of knowledge are of importance to the pupil, and how these may be 

 handled in the class-room and laboratory so as to obtain the best results 

 possible from them in pleasure, information, and training. The intelligent 



