114 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLAT;I. No. 1205 



4.14 per cent, to 12.69 per cent. As Down- 

 ing^^ has pointed out, these and other simi- 

 lar figures indicate that 



Botany and zoology are apparently giving way 

 to related subjects that either appeal to school 

 authorities aa more effective educationally or to 

 the public as more closely allied to every-day af- 

 fairs. . . . The data for botany and zoology are 

 indicative that another decade will see these bio- 

 logical subjects eliminated from the high-school 

 curriculum. 



From similar data compiled for the 

 state of Missouri, a committee of the Mis- 

 souri Society of Teachers of Mathematics 

 and Science conclude that 



There is no longer any demand for science for 

 science's sake in the curriculum of the secondary 

 school. 



The situation is a challenge to all who are 

 or who should be interested in the place 

 and function of botany in the schools. 



The solution of the problem lies not in 

 reducing botanical instruction to a purely 

 vocational basis, but in joining with all 

 scientific and educational forces to combat 

 the vicious tendency to commercialize all 

 popular education. President Butler has 

 declared that "the growing tendency of 

 colleges and universities to vocationalize all 

 their instruction," is "closely related to 

 poor teaching." It is also closely related 

 to distorted ideas of relative values, and to 

 poor scholarship, and threatens insidiously 

 to undermine the very foundations of ap- 

 plied science. As Professor Keyser^^ has 

 effectively stated : 



It is said that intelligence is good because it 

 prospers us in our trades, industries and profes- 

 sions: it ought to be said that these things are 

 good because and in so far as they prosper intelli- 

 gence. 



In conclusion, a brief word concerning 

 the aims and content of advanced botan- 



11 Downing, Elliot E., "Enrollment in Science 

 in the High Schools," Science, N. S. Vol. 46, 351- 

 352, October 12, 1917. 



12 Science, N. S., Vol. 41, 447, March 26, 1915. 



ical education for those intending to enter 

 botany as a profession. Here two clearly 

 distinct problems stand out: the teaching 

 of botany and the education of botanists. 

 The two are not synonymous. One needs 

 to have something more than a knowledge 

 of law to make a successful lawyer, some- 

 thing more than a knowledge of disease and 

 materia medica to make a successful physi- 

 cian, something more than a knowledge of 

 plants to measure up to what should be the 

 highest ideals of a botanist. Knowing all 

 the botanical facts, one should also be able 

 to see his science in long perspective, to 

 understand the painful and halting steps 

 by which a science of botany gradually 

 emerged from the cultivation of vegetables 

 and simples, its relation to other sciences, 

 to the intellectual and economic life of 

 mankind, and to the broad philosophical 

 problems, the solution of which is the final 

 goal, the deepest satisfaction and the larg- 

 est justification of all intellectual endeavor. 

 One should not only be intelligent in his 

 subject ; he should also be intelligent about 

 his subject. If we see no further ahead 

 than chromosomes and genes, species and 

 sieve tubes, mutants and enzymes, impor- 

 tant as these are, we are of all men most 

 fliiserable. The outstanding names in the 

 history of botany, as in every other science, 

 are of those who have had a broad philo- 

 sophical grasp of their subject. 

 , In botanical education, also, we should 

 never lose sight of the fact that the man 

 is more important than the science. There 

 is not time to go into details ; what I have 

 in mind is said better than I can say it in 

 a short note by Curtis in Science for Au- 

 gust 24, 1917 (pp. 182-183). The idea is 

 succinctly stated in the last sentence, which 

 I here paraphrase : To teach botany is one 

 thing; to teach men to be botanists is a 

 greater task. 



I once heard the late Hamilton Wright 



