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Frederic E. Clements 
brimming over with results and ideas that require comparison, 
checking and correlation. It is all but fatal to postpone discussion 
until the glow of inquiry has faded and then to hold it in the ordinary 
class-room with stiff rows of seats. Spontaneity and enthusiasm are 
invaluable group assets, and they can be obtained in the highest 
degree only in actual contact with living.plants. This has a further 
advantage that differences of opinion can be referred directly back 
to the plant for answer. Hence, there should be no distinction between 
laboratory and class-room, but all of the work, both individual and 
group, should be done where the plants are, whether this be the 
greenhouse, garden, field, or (much less satisfactory) the ordinary 
laboratory. 
The content of elementary courses in botany and other sciences 
has practically always been determined by the interest and ex¬ 
perience of the professor in charge, and rarely are the needs and 
interests of the students taken into account. Abundant evidence of 
this can be discovered during the course itself, but the most con¬ 
clusive testimony is furnished by the complete indifference of the 
vast majority of general students to the plant world after the course 
is finished, and the gradual extinction, in America at least, of the 
botanical amateur. To one that has inherited a course in elementary 
botany or has patterned one after the usual models, it seems revo¬ 
lutionary to contend that the students should be given a large or 
even a controlling share in determining the content as well as the 
methods of such a course. To one who has tried both ways, it seems 
incredible that teachers should still continue to feel that they alone 
know what is best for their students, and to give them such pabulum 
as the differentiation of the stele or alternation of generations. The 
practice still current of placing a section of some part of an unknown 
and invisible plant under the microscope for the purpose of having 
it drawn would be ludicrous, if it were not so wasteful of interest and 
opportunity. It is impossible to detail in a brief paper the cumu¬ 
lative evidence brought by students against the elementary course in 
which morphology is paramount. Moreover, it is unnecessary to do 
so when they are giving a proper share in determining the content, 
selecting the materials, and organising the methods of investigation. 
In every instance they have chosen to deal with growing plants 
familiar in field and garden, and they reach morphology and histology 
in the professional sense through the intense interest aroused by the 
study of function. 
Perhaps the one greatest handicap to effective teaching has been 
