Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/656

638 enable students to become familiar with the limits and characteristics of the main vegetable groups. To know how to determine the scientific name of a plant is also useful, but is of secondary importance.

It may be objected that the teachers now in our secondary schools are not sufficiently trained to carry on this work properly. Better give no instruction in it at all, then. But this need not be the condition. If all our boards of education fully realized the need of special training in this line, and were not, in many cases, so lamentably corrupt; and if vacancies were always filled by the deserving, instead of those who have a "pull," we would have plenty of teachers in our secondary schools in sympathy with and abundantly prepared for this work. Our universities and other higher institutions are sending out plenty of well-trained science teachers, who stand ready to supply any demand for their services. As to the training that science teachers should have, F. Mühlberg expresses the opinion that "the teacher of natural science ought to have the necessary special scientific schooling for that purpose. In no department of instruction is it less permissible to teach authoritatively than in this, and to make it a subordinate branch for a teacher not specially prepared for it is often worse than to provide no scientific instruction whatever; the teacher must not only be master of the material he teaches, but ought also to be a model of the intellectual training he tries to impart; he should have the capacity to observe, describe, and reason accurately about the material of study. In order to give his instruction in such a way as to incite his pupils to an interested activity in their studies, it is indispensable for him constantly to try to develop his own intellectual powers further, and continually refresh them by special studies."

But the most important point is yet to be considered, viz., the development that ought to result from pursuing such a course of study.

The first thing that all beginners must learn is to see a thing just as it is. None of us have this power fully developed. We go through life with our eyes only partially open. We do not see things as they really are. The first power that a proper study of plants and animals develops is that of observing accurately. None do this when they begin the work. Usually they see at first only vague generalities. But the best stimulus to seeing accurately comes through expressing what has been seen. This expression should be required of the pupils in three forms: drawing, notes, and oral discussions. This is a very valuable part of