TEACHING AND LEARNING n 



course should be as it is in the science, — to express physiolog- 

 ical phenomena in exact figures whose correctness is guaranteed 

 by accurate scientific logic. For this purpose it is requisite 

 that the student shall have the use of good laboratory and green- 

 house facilities, ample materials, and efficient tools, — that is, 

 apparatus. All these I shall describe a little later, but I wish 

 to emphasize the need for them here, because there has grown 

 up among us an idea that such facilities are not only unneces- 

 sary for good work, but even are of less worth than the simple 

 arrangements which the student can improvise or adapt for 

 himself from easily procurable materials. The argument is, 

 that such adapting inculcates ingenuity, facility in manipula- 

 tion, and self-reliance. I have myself in the past been an 

 advocate of this idea, but a longer experience as a teacher has 

 shown me that it is fallacious, and that the method is educa- 

 tionally wasteful if not pernicious. For one thing the student's 

 time, attention, and energy are so largely absorbed by the prep- 

 aration of the apparatus that he has little of either remaining 

 for observation of the phenomena of the plant, and for another 

 the crudeness of tools and consequent looseness of results incul- 

 cate a wholly wrong ideal and habit of scientific work. And 

 as to skill in manipulation, that is best acquired by systematic 

 practice, at first under guidance, in the essential processes pre- 

 liminary to experimentation, while the training in ingenuity 

 and self-reliance depend less upon the method than upon the 

 spirit of the course. There is nothing peculiar to Plant Physi- 

 ology whereby in it alone of all the sciences it is better to do 

 imperfect work with self-made tools than to do exact work with 

 good tools made expressly for the purpose. I speak now of 

 college work in an organized course in the subject; in the demon- 

 stration work of an elementary general course the simpler appli- 

 ances showing qualitative results are more in place, while in 

 lower grades the arrangements improvised and made up by 

 the children are actually the best, for to them the things which 

 they do for themselves are of more account than all the wisdom 

 of the sages. 



