April 28, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



643 



men. Out of the 265, thirty-five had taken 

 a major in science ; for many of the thirty- 

 five, this meant but three courses in science 

 during the whole college course. This tells 

 definitely, it seems to me, of our failure to 

 attract freshmen to science. This failure 

 is largely our own fault. It is the failure 

 of botany to provide a definite avenue to a 

 position, such as is offered by courses in 

 law, medicine, engineering, agriculture and 

 forestry. The boy does not enter botany, 

 because he knows of no such opportunity 

 in it. There is no definite course set forth 

 in the catalogue for the training of profes- 

 sional botanists, such as we find everywhere 

 in colleges of agriculture, engineering, etc. 

 Our second failure, and the most signifi- 

 cant one, it seems to me, is to hold our hare 

 long enough to make a plausible instructor 

 of him — to make even the beginner that 

 Dr. Bessey has in mind, one who knows 

 enough to find out what he must do to learn 

 how to bud pecan trees. It seems to me 

 the signal failure we are all guilty of in 

 teaching elementary botany is the failure 

 to catch the students' point of view — of 

 realizing that it is what the student needs 

 and likes in his own peculiar environment 

 that must determine the method of teach- 

 ing and the matter that we use. I can not 

 see that the materials for our courses should 

 be assembled, as they have been, from the 

 standpoint of the professor, upon the obvi- 

 ous assumption that what the professor 

 likes to teach the student is the best thing 

 for him to learn. This seems to me the 

 chief reason why we fail to hold students 

 in any considerable number for advanced 

 work. Naturally, this does not apply to 

 the two or three universities which attract 

 students from all over the country for 

 graduate work. It concerns the majority 

 of botanical departments, however, in 

 which the hope of advanced students must 



be realized chiefly from the beginning 

 classes. 



To become concrete, it would seem that 

 the microscope is responsible to a very 

 large measure for our difficulty. No hard- 

 headed boy of freshmen age expects to 

 carry a microscope around in his pocket 

 throughout his life. He is interested 

 in things that go and things that work, and 

 I believe that we shall get his sympathy 

 and interest and succeed in holding him 

 for advanced work only as we give him 

 what he wants and needs in this respect. 

 Last year a freshman girl opened our eyes 

 somewhat more widely on this very point. 

 She was working with the germination of 

 seeds in the greenhouse; after describing 

 the steps in germination, she added naively 

 as an afterthought, "the seeds we worked 

 with were real peas such as you see on 

 the table." The microscope has made the 

 student feel that he is dealing with an 

 unreal world, and that the plants 

 we use in botany are none of them of the 

 least importance in every-day life. Not 

 only is the microscope far too special an 

 instrument for the beginner, but this spe- 

 cialized tendency also permeates nearly all 

 elementary botanical teaching. I recently 

 encountered a sentence which will illus- 

 trate this fact. It is taken from a book 

 which "is addressed to pupils in their first 

 or second year in the high school." The 

 sentence is the following: 



The change from free parts of hypogynous 

 flowers to union of parts as shown in perigynous, 

 epigynous, epipetalous, sympetalous and synsepal- 

 ous flowers, reaching the climax in the composites. 



I find it difficult enough to get such ideas 

 into the heads of college sophomores, with 

 any real understanding of their meaning. 

 In the case of high-school students, it indi- 

 cates clearly that we are shooting far over 

 their heads. While I admit that a good 

 drill-master can make a student memorize 



