APPENDIX B 

 CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES 



Suggestions to Teachers. In thousands of classrooms throughout 

 this country there are growing plants. It is a rare school building 

 which is not surrounded by plants. How many pupils graduate from 

 these buildings with any real knowledge of the part plants play in 

 their lives? One of the fundamental aims of pedagogy is that young 

 children must be taught their relationship to the immediate total 

 environment. Nothing else sinks in. Nothing else concerns them in 

 timately. Nothing else is effective in building desirable habits of 

 thinking and acting. First hand experience is the watchword for the 

 primary grades. 



At higher levels the use of symbols and vicarious experience, audio 

 and visual, allows the expansion of horizons. Yet, in the intermediate 

 grades the study of geography is a very inefficient process, as any high 

 sr.hool geography teacher can testify. The amount of retention is 

 pitiful. In spite of well illustrated texts, the jump into the unknown 

 is too sudden, too complete. Another principle of teaching is that the 

 transition from the known to the unknown must be gradual and 

 closely related. How can a pupil be expected to understand a distant 

 culture when he is almost totally ignorant of his own environment? 



Plants offer a simple and convenient entree into knowledge of the 

 natural sciences and their relation to people. From this base of 

 vegetation we can reach out or expand in a great many directions. It 

 is with reluctance that we refrain from chopping into grade levels the 

 suggestions to teachers and other leaders who may have contact with 

 the younger generation. Instead we will, for the moment, leave it to 

 the instructor to convey the information according to the level of his 

 charges. 



Nothing so vitalizes learning as direct observation of the real 

 thing. Elementary and secondary education are often cursed by a 

 preoccupation with symbols and abstractions. These intangible entities 

 are for the well developed and experienced mind. Recall which subjects 

 produce failures in wholesale lots when stuffed down the unready men- 

 tal esophagi of the student body ! Are they not the most abstract 

 portions of the curriculum ? The great virtue of elementary science is 

 that it lends itself to direct observation. The great virtue of conserva- 

 tion as a vehicle for teaching such science is that the conservation 

 viewpoint makes science significant, to the individual and the commu- 

 nity. This significance arises from the fact that conservation deals 

 with current problems which have social repercussions, and which will 

 yield to scientific treatment. 



The most direct application of the information and ideas here 

 presented naturally falls on biology and botany classes. The materials 

 may just as logically be placed in general science or science survey 

 courses. They have a valid claim on geographic studies, and certainly 

 on vocational agriculture. Portions, at least, deserve inclusion in 



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