14 THE IMPORTANCE OF PLANTS 



which make of the educational product thesis that the teaching process should 

 a coniplctch' social being, that is, one be based upon, and should proceed 

 who is an affable, cooperative, well- from, the background of a student, 

 adjusted, civic-minded, healthy, and that is, his experience. Tliere are 2 

 (above all) happy extrovert. According corollaries of this doctrine: 1. It is 

 to this latter view of educational aims, perhaps educationally unwise to plunge 

 a major function of education is the im- a student into a completely new kind 

 pro\ement of society through the ef- of experience, one in which he has no 

 feets of education on the behavior and background, one which constitutes, in 

 attitudes of individuals as members of other words, a completely new kind of 

 a group. The liberal studies— the hu- knowledge; 2. Education should an- 

 manities, the fine arts, the pure sciences swer the "felt needs" of student. But 

 —are supposed to help in achieving this these attitudes overlook the thrill, the 

 social objective, but pronouncements mental excitement, the sense of won- 

 eoncerning their efficacy in such der, awe, and beauty which may re- 

 achievement are in general only vaguely suit when the student mind, perhaps 

 pious. for the first time, encounters facts and 



I do not argue against good citizen- ideas of which it has had no forewarn- 

 ship, emotional stability, roseate health, ing. If the needs of students are to be 

 jihads against pathogenic bacteria, or the major criteria of what we teach, one 

 happv extroversion. I should like wonders how he might justify the initi- 

 mereiy to indicate that there are rea- ation of students into the Ode on a 

 sons for regarding such virtues with Grecian Urn, into Christopher Mar- 

 some restraint. Repeated and perhaps lowe's Dr. Faustus, into the writings of 

 undiscriminating emphasis upon the Thomas Wolfe or Arnold Toynbee or 

 social functions of education and upon Joseph Conrad, or into the study of the 

 human beings as units of society often great nature cvcles or of organic evolu- 

 leads to excessive veneration of con- tion, topics which, I feel certain, most 

 formitv (at which the bees and ants students are not aware of needing. To 

 have done rather well) and to a corre- teach a kind of botanv which neglects 

 sponding suspicion of or deprecation of the presentation of new intellectual 

 individualism or unorthodoxy. Great horizons, of unexpected and unappreei- 

 creations in music, painting, literature, ated facts and principles in favor of a 

 and pure sciences have in considerable kind of botany which emphasizes foun- 

 degree been creations of highly individ- dation plantings, or the care and fced- 

 ualistic, often sociallv maladjusted in- ing of petunias or what to do about the 

 troverts possessed of little social con- bagworms on the Pfitzers, is not really 

 sciousness or little civic virtue. I do not to teach botany at all and is clearly 

 advocate that we strive in education to not to be effective in providing other 

 produce skittish introverts but that we than a utilitarian and mundane (al- 

 should place more emphasis upon the though probably socially significant) 

 growth of individual minds, that we education in the ways of plants, 

 teach botanv in an effort to stimulate Time for a summary- of what I have 

 individual minds and outlooks, and said this far. If we are to grant botany 

 that we cease worr\dng about the pos- an important place in liberal education, 

 sible social justification or social utility we must be cognizant of two things: 1. 

 of what we teach. We must teach botany in an effort to 



Frequentlv linked with the view stimulate and nourish individual 



that education should concentrate on minds, without compulsion to assess 



the production of good citizens is the the value of our teaching on the yard- 



