194 
Frederic E. Clements 
shortcomings from the students’ standpoint have been more obvious. 
Dependable opinions by either the conference or the questionnaire 
method are to be obtained with difficulty, if at all, by the teacher 
from his own students, but this can be readily done by a colleague. 
It has been found that students will discuss matters of content and 
method with entire frankness and great intelligence, when they feel 
that their confidence will be respected. The conference has decided 
advantages over the questionnaire in that it permits refining the 
students’ views, but it is time-consuming, and may be supplemented 
by the questionnaire when categorical answers to definite questions 
are desired. The use of conference and questionnaire for twenty 
years, aided by all too rare volunteer criticisms, has confirmed the 
impression that the traditional content of biological courses is entirely 
foreign to the students’ normal interest and needs, in spite of the 
fictitious interest often engendered by the teacher’s enthusiasm and 
the student’s docility. This is readily checked by the opinions ex¬ 
pressed when courses have been changed to meet the students’ 
views, but it receives its strongest confirmation from the evidence 
afforded by the usual general courses. Measured by the number of 
students that it discourages from advanced work, as well as by the 
much larger number that it fails to attract, such a course is the chief 
factor in the present unsatisfactory status of biology. Its effect is 
far-reaching, for in forms variously diluted it finds its way into 
schools, and comes to represent the only kind of botany and zoology 
that the public can know. Its disastrous effect is seen in the general 
attitude of the “educated” public toward biology, as well as in the 
almost complete disappearance of the amateur within the last few 
decades. While the differentiation of agriculture, horticulture, and 
forestry from botany, and of medicine from zoology was in some 
measure inevitable, it might well have taken place within the parent 
subject had biologists been more sympathetic toward human needs 
and less myopic as to applied science. The ground thus lost can 
never be regained, but it is still possible for biology to render unique 
service and regain lost prestige by increasing its sympathy and 
understanding. 
If the course in general botany is to reflect these qualities in a 
large degree, the teacher must turn to his students for understanding. 
He may do this gradually and indirectly, dropping this section and 
adding that as he determines student response, and perhaps approxi¬ 
mating to the desired result in a decade or more. Or he may subscribe 
fully and unequivocally to the principle that the students’ needs and 
