TORREYA 



Vol. 19 No. 4 



April, igig 



BOTANY IN THE CITY HIGH SCHOOLS* 



By Francis T. Hughes 



Just at present high school biology in general and high school 

 botany in particular are in a very critical position. The cause I 

 belie\-e is both external and internal, but largely external. Pre- 

 judice, the child of ignorance, jealousy, and even patri(jtism, 

 strange as it may seem, are among the forces that are working 

 against us from the outside. While from the inside our failure 

 to recognize the changed conditions existing in our high schools, 

 due to a certain complacency and false sense of security in the 

 standing and permanency of our subject, has left us in a pre- 

 carious situation. 



To be more specific: I shall try briefly to outline what I 

 consider the external situation and the internal conditions that I 

 have just enumerated, and to point out, if I may, a few remedies 

 that may relieve the situation and bring botany back into its 

 own in the New York City high schools. 



First as to prejudice and ignorance, which are practically the 

 same thing. I heard an eminent physician say the other ev^ening 

 that the layman's knowledge of medicine was always one genera- 

 tion behind that of the specialists. And so in high school 

 botany we are accused by people who really ought to know 

 better, of teaching a kind of botany that was in vogue twenty 

 years ago, and which we never think of teaching now. Their 

 idea of botany is what they themselves studied years ago. It 

 consisted of memorizing long scientific names, learning endless, 

 minute classifications, and incidentally plucking a few flowers. 



* This and the next two papers were delivered at a meeting of the Club on March 

 II devoted to a conference on Botanical Education in the Secondary Schools. — Ed. 

 [No. 3, Vol. 19 of ToRREYA, Comprising pp. 37-55, was issued 14 May, 1919.] 



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