620 



NATURE 



[October 23, 1890 



THE TEACHING OF BOTANY.^ 



THE discussion was opened at great length by Prof. Marshall 

 Ward, who reviewed the whole subject of teaching botany 

 (i to very young children and in schools, (2) as an academical 

 study at the Universities, and (3) as a special subject for those 

 who are in training for technical and other pursuits which require 

 a knowledge of that branch of science — e.g., foresters, gardeners, 

 timber merchants, &c. He said : — 



As I understand it, we may regard the study of botany as 

 approachable from three points of view. We may speak of 

 three ends to be attained : those of (i) elementary botany as a 

 school subject of general education ; (2) advanced botany, as a 

 subject of University or academic training, with a view to 

 teaching and research ; (3) special botany, for various purposes 

 in after life — e.g., those of foresters, planters, agriculturists, 

 horticulturists, brewers, medical men, timber merchants, &c. 



This is, of course, a merely arbitrary division for the argument, 

 and not a philosophical classification of the subject-matter of the 

 science of botany. 



The next point is the scope of the teaching in each case. I 

 should advocate that all children pass through the preliminary 

 training embraced under No. I. Not only so, but I would urge 

 the usefulness and importance of elementary botany in schools 

 quite apart from its possible pursuit afterwards. 



It seems to me that the time is gone by when we need discuss 

 the direct applicability of teaching in elementary schools : if 

 school training is read to mean education, in the true sense of 

 the word, then there is no necessity for asking that a boy and 

 girl should learn at school only those subjects of which they will 

 make direct application as they grow older. Of course this 

 does not preclude our keeping in mind the relative utility of the 

 various subjects to be taught, but it does — and emphatically — 

 preclude our falling into the error of imagining that a school- 

 subject is of educational value only in proportion to its direct 

 and foreseen utility in the application afterwards. In other 

 words, educating and teaching may be, and often are, very 

 different things. 



Now, as I understand it, the nineteenth century has dis- 

 covered — possibly re-discovered — the truth, that you may impart 

 a wondrous amount of information to a boy or girl without 

 awakening those powers of observing and comparing that lie 

 dormant in the minds of most healthy human beings, and 

 especially when young ; and that many a brilliant boy grows up 

 without being able to draw correct inferences from the phenomena 

 around him, and therefore less able than he should be to hold his 

 •own in the world he awakes in. 



The peculiarity of the study of elementary botany, properly 

 understood and pursued, lies especially in the interest it arouses 

 in the child's mind, and the ease with which it may be taught, 

 and I would insist and re-insist on the fact that it stimulates and 

 cultivates just those powers of accurate observation and com- 

 parison, and careful conscientious recording of the results, which 

 are so needed by us all ; and which, be it understood moreover, 

 come so naturally to children who are not too much under the 

 baneful influence of the mere instruction — the mere information 

 — system. 



What I wish to emphasize is that the educational value of this 

 subject is no more to be measured merely by the number and 

 kind oi facts which the child remembers, than is the educational 

 value of history to be measured by the dates learnt, and the lists 

 of kings and battles committed to memory. History, reading 

 and writing, arithmetic, and other subjects, have an educational 

 value, if properly taught, quite apart from their value as mere 

 accomplishments, which may be granted ; but children are 

 naturally observers, and why this side of their hungry little 

 natures should be starved at the expense of their usefulness in 

 after life has always been a mystery to me. 



To those who allow this, and I am happy to see that their 

 numbers are now many, it should hardly be necessary to point 

 out that the elements of botany afford the cheapest, cleanest, and 

 most easily attained means of cultivating in children the powers 

 of observing and comparing direct from Nature, and of leading 

 them to generalize accurately. 



Of course no advocacy is needed for good preliminary educa- 

 tion in elementary botany in the case of those who are about to 

 continue the pursuit of the subject as an academic study, or for 

 a special purpose, as noted under the headings (2) and (3) ; but 



' Discussion at the Leeds meeting of th; British Association, in Section D, 

 on September 5. 



NO. 1095, VOL. 42] 



a few words may be devoted to pointing out the shocking waste 

 of time and energy, on the part of all concerned, in the prevail- 

 ing cases where students come up to a University, or other 

 institution for higher education, insufficiently prepared for pro- 

 gressive study. 



It is still true that boys and young men leave school without so 

 much as a notion of the real meaning and aims of science : this 

 applies no less to subjects like physics and chemistry, which are pro- 

 fessedly much taught in schools now, than to subjects like natural 

 history and botany, which, though avowedly in the curriculum 

 of some good schools, are usually entirely ignored. 



There is considerable discussion about the details, but many 

 practical teachers regard such subjects as unfitted for school, 

 because the boys and girls soon cease to be interested, and get 

 lost in the masses of facts and hard names that beset their path : 

 this, to my mind, simply shows where the whole system is 

 wrong, and wrong because the tyrant empiricism still rules the 

 prevailing methods of teaching in schools. 



I shall go so far as to say that the only remedy for this state 

 of things is for the teachers to lose that blind worship of facts, as 

 facts, which dominates our school system. I am aware that this 

 lays me open to very serious misconstructions, but I hope to 

 make that all right in the sequel. 



I would say to the teachers, therefore, do not fall into the 

 mistake of measuring a boy's progress by the amount of dog- 

 matic information which he imbibes, and splutters forth on to 

 his examination papers, but look to the quality of his under- 

 standing of the relations between relatively few and well chosen 

 facts ; and again, pay less attention to the number of facts which 

 a boy observes and of names he remembers, and more to the 

 way in which he directly makes his observations, and intelli- 

 gently describes them, even if untechnically. 



This is, I firmly believe, the only cure for the malady under 

 consideration — i.e. it is the prevention of it. 



Children in schools are taught most subjects from printed 

 books, and it is not my province to criticize the necessity of this 

 as regards those subjects ; but let a competent teacher try the 

 experiment of making the children read directly from Nature, 

 and he will soon see that the new exercises have a powerful 

 effect. They will stumble, and they will even make stupid 

 mistakes and mispronunciations ; but do they not do so when 

 they are reading — i.e. observing and comparing and interpreting 

 — printed words in a book ? Of course they do, and therefore 

 the teacher must not be discouraged by their stumbling and mis- 

 apprehending when first they have to look at and compare 

 different leaves and flowers, and give forth the articulate sounds 

 which correspond to the impressions created on their minds. 



Every weary teacher knows what a blessing is variety in the 

 studies of the class, and it passes my comprehension why advan- 

 tage is not taken of the splendid opportunity offered by the 

 study of elementary observational botany. 



We now come to the important subject of method. How 

 should botany be taught ? 



Here, again, I shall consider the subject from the same three 

 points of view referred to above. 



(i) Elementary botany in schools should be confined to lessons 

 in observation and comparison of plants, and the greatest possible 

 care should be taken that books are not allowed to replace the 

 natural objects themselves. Indeed, I would go so far as to 

 advise that books be used only as an aid to the teacher, were it 

 not that a judiciously written text-book might be employed later 

 on by even young children as a sort of reading-book. 



The chief aids should be the parts of living plants themselves, 

 however, and, in spite of the outcry that may be expected from 

 pedantic town teachers, I must insist that every school might be 

 easily provided all the year round with materials for study. I 

 even venture to think that these materials might be collected by 

 the children themselves : at any rate there should be no difficulty 

 about this in the country. 



I will illustrate these remarks by a few examples. The teach- 

 ing of elementary botany to children should commence with the 

 observation of external form, and might well be initiated by a 

 comparative study of the shapes of leaves, the peculiarities of 

 insertion, their appendages, and so on. 



The point never to be lost sight of is that if you teach a child 

 to discriminate, -with the plants in hand and from observation 

 only, between such objects as the simple, heart-shaped, opposite, 

 ex-stipulate stalked leaves of a lilac, and the compound, pinnate, 

 alternate, stipulate leaves of a rose, you lay the foundations of a 

 power for obtaining knowledge which is in no way to be measured 



