May 16, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



757 



remains in use after that time it is evident 

 that it has worn well in at least one person's 

 head. The present standard secondary course 

 in botany has been in use in a large part of 

 the United States for somewhat more than 

 that time. At about the time it congealed into 

 a fixed and generally understood course, I was 

 teaching both college and preparatory botany 

 in the University of West Virginia. As a 

 teacher of botany, I was naturally much inter- 

 ested in the subject and took advantage of 

 every opportunity to examine its workings. 

 At the same time, I took care that none of my 

 own students failed to get a decent familiarity 

 with botany as it had previously been taught 

 in the high schools; that is, with a knowledge 

 of the flowering plants growing in the vicin- 

 ity. As to the wisdom of including the study 

 of individual flowering plants, my opinion has 

 grown stronger with the years. 



During the last seven years I have seen and 

 overseen a very large amount of botanical 

 teaching, including the work of more than 

 twenty teachers. In two high schools and in 

 the work given students of high school grade 

 in the College of Agriculture of the Univer- 

 sity of the Philippines, the course has been as 

 outlined in Bulletin 24 of the Insular Bureau 

 of Education. This course is really general 

 botany, including the general facts and prin- 

 ciples of morphology and physiology, in- 

 cluding also drill in the determination of 

 plants by means of keys, and the preparation 

 of an herbarium of fifty determined species. 

 In a considerable number of high schools 

 where the teachers had had the usual first year 

 of college botany and no other preparation in 

 the subject, the outline in this bulletin was 

 found not to be an adequate guide for their 

 work, and the course given was accordingly 

 as near as they could come to the standard 

 high school course, with the help of one or 

 another of the texts in most general use in the 

 States. All possible assistance, including the 

 distribution of numerous determined plants, 

 was given these teachers, in the attempt to 

 make their teaching " alive." So much de- 

 pends upon the teaching ability of the teacher 

 that a comparison of results even when judg- 



ment is based on familiarity with the subse- 

 quent work of a large number of students is 

 not sure to be fair. But it certainly has been 

 the case here that the students who were given 

 instruction modeled after the standard Amer- 

 ican course have on the whole proved less 

 interested in the subject, and less familiar 

 with it, than those whose course had followed 

 the local outline. 



The students in the latter course get a first- 

 hand knowledge of the plant cell, of the char- 

 acteristic tissues of the higher plants, and of 

 some of the typical plants illustrating the 

 course of evolution. They learn accuracy, if 

 the teacher teaches it, very much as they 

 would in some other course. They are taught 

 to think; enough for instance to be able to 

 explain why the great groups of plants are 

 characterized by their reproductive structures. 

 They get a better idea of the variety and 

 resourcefulness of nature than American stu- 

 dents can be given, but this is because so 

 many of the things we used to have to take 

 on faith are growing about them. Also, and 

 this is the characteristic of the course, each 

 student becomes better acquainted with a con- 

 siderable number of plants which he is already 

 used to seeing, by determining them with a 

 key and preparing them for his herbarium. 



The teaching of botany should serve several 

 uses. It should teach accuracy in observation 

 and in depiction. It should help to create the 

 habit of accurate thought. It should equip 

 the students with a considerable amount of 

 practical information. It should also give 

 them an interest in the subject, which will 

 stay with them after they get their credit and 

 leave the class room. The standard course is 

 essentially inadequate in two respects. It 

 does not convey such information, which will 

 be useful to many of those who have taken it, 

 as it well might do. And it does not give the 

 majority of those who take it an interest in 

 the subject which will abide with them. The 

 reason for the latter failure is that the course 

 does not deal as it should do with things 

 which are already familiar and interesting to 

 the student, and does not include exercises of 

 a kind which most of the students can have 

 anything to do with after they leave school. 



