SHALL FORESTRY BE TAUGHT IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS? 



BY J. W. TOUMEY 



DIRECTOR OF THE YALE FOREST SCHOOL 



THE PUBLIC schools have been much attached to 

 the aphorism "science for science's sake." Nearly 

 one-half of the labor of the world is in connection 

 with the economic and commercial aspect of plants. 

 They are the chief sources of the three great necessities 

 of the human race, namely, food, clothing and shelter. A 

 large percentage of the population on the earth is actively 

 engaged in growing plants or in working their products 

 into form for man's use and benefit. 



Our public school students have been studying plants, 

 for the most part, without relating them to the welfare 

 and activities of mankind. They have been too much 

 occupied in the study of plant as related to plant. They 

 have been too little occupied with the economic and com- 

 mercial aspect of plants, although of fundamental im- 



Due to the rapidly increasing need for greater pro- 

 duction of useful plants, both in agriculture and forestry, 

 and for their improvement, interest is becoming more and 

 more focused on not only the sciences dealing with 

 plant production and utilization, but also upon the pro- 

 fessions and vocations under whose practice they arc 

 produced and utilized. A school that confines all its 

 training in plant life to the morphology and physiology of 

 plants and the relationships between them and finds no 

 time to train students in the actual production and utili- 

 zation of useful plants is out of touch with modern prog- 

 ress. Vocational subjects must continue to receive more 

 and more attention in our public schools together with 

 the sciences which underlie their practice. Means must 

 be found in the pursuit of them for the development of 



A NATURE STUDY CLASS OF YOUNGSTERS IN THE SECOND GRADE 



If a knowledge of forests and forestry is desirable and we surely believe that it is that knowledge must be cradled in our public schools, be- 

 cause it is here that the great body of our citizenship receives its intellectual training, and such classes as this afford opportunity for the observa- 

 tion and development of awakening vocational tendencies in the very young. 



portance in the welfare of the race. Although students 

 in our public and higher institutions of learning have 

 studied plants from a philosophical rather than from a 

 utilitarian point of view, in recent years more and more 

 attention is given to plant production and utilization. The 

 scientist devoted to his science for its own sake is slow- 

 ly but surely giving way to the scientist devoted to his 

 science for humanity's sake. Society has the right to 

 demand of the student of plants that he render service 

 which has a distinct and discernible economic value. 



qualities and powers in the student at least equal to those 

 found in the study of the older disciplines which they 

 replace. 



Society supports the public schools and expects them 

 to train the youth and coming generations in ways that 

 will enable them better to do the work of the world. The 

 duty of the schools is to supply both training and incen- 

 tive for better doing. Where the world has need for one 

 professionally trained, it has need for hundreds of voca- 

 tionally trained men and women. The public schools, 



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