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science of botany and of biology, as it is to-day, is the best that 
the human intellect can get out of itself, and that the child is not 
capable of beginning to appreciate that, I can hardly admit, al- 
though I am far from immediate contact with children. The 
child, it seems to me, demands leadership. The child, after all, 
comes to its teacher not merely to express itself, but to get an 
opportunity to do something better, to be led into something 
more entertaining, more interesting than it can itself achieve, and 
we do not need to be afraid if we know our biology, 1 am sure, 
of taking the child with us into the knowledge we have, as far as 
we can, assuming that he does want to be led and instructed with 
the best that we have. The great difficulty I most feel with our 
teaching, and especially with university teaching, is that we are 
not enough devoted to the subject. We feel that we have got to 
adopt the argument of the other man to defend it. We do not 
feel sure enough of it so that the subject dominates all our own 
work. I cannot conceive that a teacher can be thoroughly suc- 
cessful who is more interested in the pupil than he is in the sub- 
ject, because I feel if he is more interested in the pupil than he is 
in the subject, if he is more concerned in taking the viewpoint of 
the pupil than the subject, what has he for the pupil? Nothing 
new. The pupil comes to the teacher with his own viewpoint; 
he has the right to expect of the teacher that he will meet there 
a person with something exceptional that he has not worked up to. 
What object should we have? To inspire them, to show them by 
our example that we believe actually that a person who devotes 
himself to digging down into a knowledge of the fundamentals 
of life, will make himself happy. If we can impress that on our 
pupils, even the little foreigners that so many of us come in con- 
tact with, I believe that we shall overcome any difficulty in main- 
taining their interest in their school work. 
And I want to say one more thing, and with that I am through. 
I do not admit at all what the newspapers prove to us every once 
in a while about the grades, even in the high schools, not being 
able to spell, and that modern education is vastly inferior to the 
old-time district school. The boy that goes through high school 
now receives an education that is quite comparable to that which 
his grandfather got in college. Laboratory equipment is avail- 
