APPENDIX A 111 



presented, plus appropriate field work, is suggested as worthy of com- 

 parative study. 



Inservice Training. Teachers now in the public schools are faced 

 with the responsibility of giving adequate coverage to conservation. 

 That they thereby become automatically capable of doing so is of 

 course absurd. Before any intelligent effort can be made toward 

 providing experiences and understandings useful to pupils, the teacher 

 must acquire the basic information and understandings himself. 



The Ohio Conservation Education Workshop, 1945, recommended 

 that : ,^, 



"Administrators organize a series of faculty and committee 

 meetings dealing with the problems of conservation education, 

 that experts in the conservation of soil, water, forests, wildlife, 

 and minerals be invited to speak, that members report on perti- 

 nent articles in periodicals and on investigations of local con- 

 servation needs, that field trips, films and recordings be used." 1 



Another recommendation was : 



"That school administrators provide leadership and facilities 

 for gaining first hand experiences in and understandings of the 

 interrelationships of natural resources, and their significance. ' n 



The first recommendation, if adopted and put into action without 

 the most careful planning by someone freely conversant with the 

 conservation field, is a perfect opportunity to end up with a highly 

 disorganized study of a highly organized environment. It would seem 

 that study, by everyone concerned, of material such as that herein 

 assembled would prevent much confusion in the teachers' mind. The 

 second recommendation implies that administrators should have at 

 least an elemental knowledge of the field into which they are to lead 

 their staffs. 



Mastery of the fundamentals of plant conservation must precede 

 and is prerequisite to an understanding of the special problems, which 

 the student and the public hear most about. These problems will 

 require additional study, but what is read and heard about them will 

 then be understandable and even subject to criticism. Judgment is 

 out of the question without the fundamental knowledge. The teacher 

 should not lay himself open to being used as an unwitting propa- 

 gandist, as will surely happen on occasion if he is unprepared to 

 recognize biased statements. Conservation of natural resources is a 

 matter of great public concern. Private interests fight progress 

 which affects them adversely, actually or supposedly, and they have 

 the funds and organizations to propagandize their views. 



For example : Sportsmen have for years and years demanded that 

 states operate fish hatcheries and periodically place millions of young 

 fish in the streams. The sportsmen's reasoning ran like this: 



1 From the author's notes. 



