Journal of 



Applied Microscopy. 



Volume II. SEPTEMBER, 1899. Number 9 



Botany in Secondary Schools. 



Formerly there was but one way to teach botany, for a single phase of it 

 only was available. The gross structures of flowering plants were examined and 

 their names memorized, and the study culminated in " analysis," which by a 

 strange misapplication had come to mean the discovery of the names of plants. 

 With increasing knowledge this method of teaching came to seem very partial 

 and superficial. It must be confessed, however, that many schools have not 

 outgrown this primitive stage. 



A second period of botanical instruction was ushered in by the equipment 

 of laboratories with compound microscopes. Plants of the lower groups now 

 came into notice, and some knowledge of the general " make-up " of the plant 

 kingdom was developed. At first the pendulum swung to the opposite extreme, 

 and the contact was chiefly with the lower plants and through the microscope. 

 The student familiarized with flowering plants out-of-doors became the student 

 familiarized with structures under the microscope. Probably this is the favorite 

 method of instruction in the better equipped schools to-day. 



This method has been criticised as leading to no knowledge of plants as they 

 exist in nature. The laboratory student, transferred to forests and fields, seemed 

 to have no more knowledge of his surroundings than he had before studying 

 botany. It was questionable whether he could recognize in place the material 

 he had seen only in the laboratory. Another important criticism was that 

 students whose formal training ends with the secondary school cannot carry 

 such a contact with plants into their subsequent experience, and botany becomes 

 a closed subject rather than one full of perennial interest. 



A third method is coming into recognition, which seeks to combine the 

 advantages of the other two, and also introduces an entirely new standpoint. 

 The most conspicuous fact in reference to a plant is that it is alive and at 

 work. In order to do this work, the organs must be related properly to their 

 surroundings, and the study of these life-relations seems to be the natural 

 approach to plant structures. 



For example, the life-relation of a foliage leaf is its relation to light, and this 

 explains its position, its form, its relation to other leaves, and also its structure. 

 In the presence of this great fact the names of forms and positions of leaves 

 become matters of very small importance, and there is no danger of mistaking 

 definitions of words for knowledge of things. Again, the life-relations of roots 



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