ON THE PREPARATION OF BOTANICAL 
 TEACHERS 
 
 By PROFESSOR C. E. BESSEY 
 
 [ Reprinted from Science, N. S. , Vol. XXXIII . , No. 852, Pages 
 633-639 , April 28, 1911.'] 
 

 

 ■ i 
 
 / 
 
 r 
 
 ay 
 
 &- 
 
 <o 
 
 [Reprinted from Science, N. S., Vol. XXXIII. , No. 
 852, Pages 633-639, April 28, 1911. [ 
 
 ON THE PREPARATION OF BOTANICAL 
 TEACHERS 
 
 Some months ago a suggestion was made 
 that at this dinner we should ask ourselves 
 the question : Why is it that with the enor- 
 mous classes we are having in botany there 
 is a marked dearth of properly trained 
 men who can serve as instructors in col- 
 leges and universities? 
 
 In order to be sure that I was right in 
 regard to such a dearth I wrote to some- 
 thing like a dozen of the professors of 
 botany in prominent institutions in the 
 country, making the inquiry whether they 
 had noticed the same thing, and uniformly 
 the answer was that there seems to be a 
 shortage in the supply of material for 
 instructors (in the college sense) and 
 young men for other minor positions. 
 
 I think there is no lack of men who are 
 ready to be professors of botany. I am 
 very certain that there is no trouble here, 
 but when a professor who knows what he 
 wants asks for a man who can take up this 
 work or that work as an instructor, the 
 situation is quite different. 
 
 What becomes of the great number of 
 students who are in our classes? The pro- 
 
 / 
 
 r 
 
 ay 
 
 th 
 
 36085 
 
2 
 
 fessor of botany in the University of Min- 
 nesota tells me that he has over 500 stu- 
 dents in his beginning classes. In Ne- 
 braska we have about 350, and elsewhere I 
 find essentially the same thing. Enormous 
 classes are pursuing general botany, and 
 yet so few are going on and qualifying for 
 even the minor teaching positions. 
 
 In talking this matter over recently with 
 a clergyman, who is also a botanist, he 
 said, “The truth is there is less real schol- 
 arship among students to-day than there 
 used to be,” and I think there is a grain 
 of truth in his remark. 
 
 I stopped our professor of Greek the 
 the other day and asked him what he 
 thought of our botanical problem. He 
 said, “It is just because the students have 
 got into the way of taking nothing but 
 first-year work. They take first-year 
 Greek, and that is the end of it, first-year 
 college Latin, first-year geology, first-year 
 philosophy, first-year physics, first-year as- 
 tronomy, and first year American history, 
 and so on. ’ ’ There is a good deal of truth 
 here too. 
 
 Here then is something to be thought of. 
 Students in the universities are taking be- 
 ginning work only, and botany suffers with 
 all other subjects. As educators we should 
 give serious consideration to this matter. 
 It is not right that we should permit pupils 
 to be taking these little educational bites 
 of all kinds, and in any sequence; on the 
 contrary they should be required to sit 
 down to a good square educational meal 
 taken in proper order. 
 
 It makes one sick at heart to witness 
 what is actually going on in the universi- 
 ties under our very eyes. We spread out 
 
3 
 
 before the students the courses we have to 
 offer, and in tempting phrase try to induce 
 as many as possible to enter our classes. 
 I am reminded of the proprietors of bazars 
 who have trinkets for sale, and try to in- 
 duce every passer-by to purchase, by loud 
 insistence upon the advantages resulting 
 from such a transaction. And the bewil- 
 dered student is left without a guiding 
 suggestion in the bulky catalogue. Oh, the 
 folly and the cupidity and the cowardice 
 of the system that bids the student make a 
 wise choice, but gives him no guide ! Had 
 I the power I should certainly sweep out 
 of existence all of the go-as-you-please ar- 
 rangements in the universities, and I 
 should substitute for them a logical and 
 carefully selected sequence of studies. 
 
 There is no doubt that many young men 
 turn from botany into various related sub- 
 jects, as agronomy, horticulture, forestry, 
 etc., and I have no complaint to make if 
 they do; but these subjects do draw stu- 
 dents away from scientific botany, and so 
 reduce the number available for teachers. 
 
 Nearly every one of the professors to 
 whom I sent inquiries referred to the low 
 remuneration that comes to the young man 
 who has fitted himself to be an instructor 
 in botany in college or university. And no 
 doubt this is a potent factor, and it is likely 
 to turn away many of the best men from 
 the teachers’ ranks. The fact is that a 
 bright young man looking to his life-work 
 will be turned more or less this way or 
 that way, as he sees that the world is ready 
 to pay him for it. Now I dislike to have 
 to say this; we like to think that the best 
 men will go forward if they have to go 
 with only a crust a day, and all that. 
 
4 
 
 There is very little truth in it, however. 
 We ourselves go where we find employ- 
 ment and adequate remuneration. And so 
 young men are lured away from botany 
 with its low remuneration, leaving us too 
 frequently only the poorer men. 
 
 Now we do not like to acknowledge this 
 condition of things. We like to think that 
 science is a sacred calling, something apart 
 from business, and we do not like to ac- 
 knowledge that a man who has the scien- 
 tific spirit in him can possibly be turned 
 aside by any thing like a salary. But 
 botany is a business, and it is not sacred 
 any more than selling shoes or editing a 
 newspaper is sacred. And as most men 
 can succeed in more than one of several 
 pursuits, so most men can succeed in bot- 
 any if they take hold of it seriously. Here 
 again we do not like to acknowledge the 
 truth of this statement; we think that we 
 are made of different kind of stuff. But I 
 do not believe it for a moment. I have no 
 doubt that some of us here might have been 
 millionaires if we had gone into business. 
 What I want to insist upon is this : that we 
 look at this matter squarely, and not try to 
 make out that we are a different kind of 
 people, and made out of different material. 
 We are not, and our business isn’t any dif- 
 ferent; it isn’t any more sacred. We must 
 be candid in this matter and admit that our 
 profession hasn’t anything sacred in it; 
 there is no sacred fire that must touch 
 every man before he can be a botanist. 
 There is nothing in this sentiment. As I 
 said before, botany is comparable to the 
 selling of shoes, or the running of a news- 
 paper. Botany is not extraordinarily dif- 
 ficult, and it does not require geniuses; 
 
5 
 
 only just good ability and perseverance; 
 that’s all. So men who might have been 
 botanists will continue to choose other vo- 
 cations, and some others will choose to be- 
 come botanists, and some of either will fail, 
 and some will succeed, just as is always the 
 case. Some men who might have become 
 brilliant botanists will become brilliant 
 business men instead. It has been said 
 that “botanists are born and not made.” 
 Maybe they are, but if so, they are born 
 with a multiplicity of other possibilities 
 also. 
 
 Brethren, let us remember that we are 
 quite like other men, and that with us the 
 factor of remuneration cuts as great a fig- 
 ure as it does elsewhere in society, in the 
 selection of a vocation. 
 
 Many of those to whom I wrote expressed 
 doubts as to the wisdom and effectiveness 
 of some of our teaching, and out of these 
 doubts that have been passed along to me 
 I obtain these suggestions: 
 
 There is some faulty elementary instruc- 
 tion; probably I should have said much 
 faulty instruction. Again, we do not be- 
 gin early enough in bending the human 
 twig in the right direction to make a good 
 botanist. There is a good deal of improper 
 presentation. We too often try to offer 
 “attractive” courses for the sake of draw- 
 ing students into our work. And this is 
 necessarily fatal to a scientific presentation. 
 Some of my correspondents suggest that 
 there are such persons as incompetent as- 
 sistants who supervise our laboratories, and 
 by their incompetence tend to drive away 
 some men. Further, it has been suggested 
 that probably there is nowadays too great 
 a neglect of field work. It used to be that 
 
6 
 
 in vacation time the young botanist had 
 something to think about, and something to 
 do. He could go out in the woods on long 
 botanical trips. He can not do this to-day 
 if he is a mere laboratory man. He can not 
 conveniently carry his microscope along 
 with him. A vasculum is a great deal 
 easier to carry than is a microscope, and 
 far easier to handle. I think my corre- 
 spondent was right : we have lost something 
 of our hold on young men because we have 
 nothing to substitute for the old-time field 
 botany. You can not do laboratory work 
 in vacation. Of course you can go to sum- 
 mer school, and sit down by the side of a 
 lake and study some of the algae found 
 there, but even that doesn ’t compare favor- 
 ably with the old-time tramping for miles 
 and miles through the woods and swamps, 
 with a vasculum slung over your shoulder. 
 
 Some of my correspondents suggested 
 that there is too much narrow training now- 
 adays. I think this probably comes rather 
 close to some of us. We get hold of a 
 bright young fellow after he has had a half 
 year’s work, or little more, and put him 
 into something that narrows him to a single 
 line of work. He makes a good specialist, 
 but he is too narrow for a botanist. He is 
 far too narrow a man to be put in charge 
 of classes in general botany. 
 
 Again, I think we set our requirements 
 too high for the young teacher. We de- 
 mand much more than is really necessary. 
 We older men forget how very little we 
 knew when we began teaching. We act as 
 though we felt that men must be stuffed 
 with every detail of technical knowledge 
 before they are ready to be sent out as 
 teachers. We want these men to be pre- 
 
7 
 
 pared all around, and well prepared, too. 
 This is all right enough when you are 
 thinking of specialists to fill positions call- 
 ing for a particular preparation. But 
 when the inquiry is made for a young man 
 to be an instructor we should go back to 
 our own experience. We did not know 
 much, but we got on somehow, and our 
 classes seemed to learn from us. Yet to- 
 day we act as though we felt that we must 
 send out young teachers who are perfect 
 machines for any kind of botanical work. 
 We act as though we were not sending out 
 men with initiative and with ability. 
 
 Let me illustrate my meaning by an ex- 
 ample. A few years ago the government 
 sent to Nebraska for a young fellow who 
 was not especially well prepared in botany 
 and took him to Washington, and after a 
 few days shipped him down to Alabama, 
 and put him in charge of a group of men. 
 They were studying pecan tree diseases. 
 This man from northern Nebraska, who 
 had never seen a pecan tree, found himself 
 in charge of a squad of men engaged in 
 budding pecans. He knew nothing about 
 budding pecans. But he had initiative 
 enough to master the situation, and after a 
 night’s study and practise he went ahead 
 as though he had been budding pecans all 
 his life, and succeeded! I did not train 
 that man in pecan budding ; in fact I could 
 not have recommended him as a budder of 
 pecans. Yet he “made good,” not because 
 he had been stuffed by the right kind of 
 knowledge, but because with his founda- 
 tion of knowledge he had energy and 
 ability. 
 
 Now let us ask whether we are not set- 
 ting up a wrong standard? We are think- 
 
8 
 
 ing of how full a man is of the botany we 
 have put into him. Should not our atti- 
 tude be this: “this man has made a good 
 beginning, he has the right kind of ma- 
 terial in him, take him and let him grow 
 up with his work.” 
 
 Now there is not one of you here who 
 has not learned ten times more of botany 
 out of college than he learned in college. 
 You had the qualities in you to make you 
 successful, and had a fair beginning in the 
 science. I was quite interested in looking 
 over the summaries in the second edition of 
 the “American Men of Science” to find 
 that the botanists are requiring young men 
 to work longer for their bachelor’s and 
 doctor ’s degrees than are the chemists, 
 physicists, zoologists, mathematicians or 
 geologists. I do not believe botany is pro- 
 portionally that much harder. We are 
 putting too high a value on what we are 
 putting into our students, and neglecting 
 the man himself. We are in danger of 
 having men grow “stale,” as the athletes 
 say. Probably we keep our men with us 
 too long. We should send them out while 
 they are still fresh and vigorous. 
 
 I think we should map out very defi- 
 nitely a series of successive semesters of 
 work that should constitute fair prepara- 
 tion for the average young man who wishes 
 to become a botanist. Such a botanist 
 should be ready to begin teaching, or even 
 investigating, not as an expert, but as a 
 beginner. And every one must necessarily 
 be a beginner in his work at one time in 
 his life. Let us think of these young men 
 that we are suggesting for positions as be- 
 ginners merely ; and when you send one to 
 me I shall take him as a beginner, not as 
 
9 
 
 a finished botanist. Yet very commonly 
 we say to our students that they can not 
 begin either investigating or teaching until 
 they have made a special study in partic- 
 ular fields. We try to impress them with 
 the great importance of graduate work, and 
 the littleness of their present knowledge, 
 and we impress upon them also our con- 
 viction of their general inability. 
 
 We need broad general courses with defi- 
 nite beginnings and endings, and including 
 something of all the phases of the science, 
 well wrought together into one science, and 
 not courses consisting of a collection of 
 disjointed and disconnected phases of the 
 subject. I think here is one of our mis- 
 takes. As one of my correspondents wrote 
 very emphatically, “this splitting up of 
 the science so that the student thinks of it 
 as morphology, so many hours ; physiology, 
 so many hours ; pathology, so many hours ; 
 and mycology, and algology, and bryology, 
 and taxonomy, etc., has done much to dis- 
 courage young men.” 
 
 No doubt also we can help to make more 
 botanists by encouraging an esprit de corps 
 among our students, whether they are un- 
 dergraduate or graduate students. All are 
 botanists; even the newest recruit belongs 
 to the botanical army. Let us not with- 
 hold honor from these new additions to our 
 force. And yet I have seen in many places 
 a tendency to persistently belittle the 
 knowledge of the student in his first and 
 second years on the theory, I suppose, that 
 it is good for a young fellow to be “taken 
 down, ’ ’ and made to feel that in this stage 
 he is little better than a fool. I do not 
 think this is right. 
 
 Another thing that we can do is to study 
 
10 
 
 our men, and select the more promising. 
 And we must not be too particular, either, 
 in our choice. I have seen some rather 
 unpromising men turn out to be very suc- 
 cessful botanists. We must not turn men 
 away simply because at first they do not 
 seem to be promising. Some slow men 
 finally become good botanists and success- 
 ful teachers. On the other hand, I have 
 known some brilliant men who in the end 
 have done very little with all their bril- 
 liancy. I feel sure that as teachers we 
 should frankly tell our students what we 
 think they are able to do. Let us stop 
 looking for Torreys, Grays, Farlows, 
 Barneses, Coulters, etc. That, however, is 
 what we are doing. We are putting up a 
 standard that is only reached once in a 
 long while. Let us realize that the young 
 fellows in our classes are very much as we 
 were — just mediocre men. Most of us are 
 that, but we got on somehow, and have 
 been measurably successful. And so will 
 they. Give them a chance. 
 
 Then I fear that we have not treated 
 botany as a profession, but merely as a 
 subject of study. Of course it is to be 
 studied, and of course, also, it is to be 
 taught. But it is also a profession, and 
 we should weave into our instruction much 
 of the ethics of the science, whether it is to 
 take the form of teaching or investigation. 
 The young botanist should be made to feel 
 that he is going to use his botanical knowl- 
 edge, and that he can do so with entire 
 propriety. Let us stop saying to the young 
 man: “You do not know enough yet to be- 
 gin ’ ’ — but let him begin ! 
 
 Now, before I come to my closing dis- 
 cussion I want to make a slight digression 
 
11 
 
 in order to speak of college courses in gen- 
 eral, and especially the go-as-you-please 
 method to be found in most of our institu- 
 tions. I fully believe in having work pre- 
 scribed as to kind and place in the college 
 curriculum. I believe in prescribing the 
 necessary language work early in the 
 course. I believe also in prescribing the 
 other science work. The old-fashioned 
 classical courses, with some modifications 
 admitting science, appear to me to be about 
 the best foundation. You ask me why so? 
 For the reason that they began at some 
 place and ended at some place. There was 
 consistency and continuity, with resultant 
 training. The so-called “free elective” 
 plan is to me the worst of all plans. The 
 student is dazed by the many things that 
 he can do; and he does not know what to 
 do. In most institutions, he is supposed 
 to have an adviser, but, as Abraham Flex- 
 ner shrewdly says, “the advice is equiva- 
 lent to perfunctory consent to propositions 
 which the student himself submits.” So 
 the student generally ends by doing a lot 
 of the easier things in a hodge-podge, aim- 
 less manner. 
 
 Now let me make a few suggestions with 
 regard to the courses in botany. I fear 
 that I may shock some of you by some 
 things I am going to say. 
 
 In the University of Nebraska we are 
 working on a three-year schedule (in a 
 four-year college course) for undergraduate 
 work in botany, intended to fit men for 
 filling instructorships in botany. I do not 
 believe in the 4 ‘ quick-meal ’ ’ process in edu- 
 cation, but as I look over what I have been 
 doing the last forty or more years, it seems 
 to me that we can concentrate our work 
 
12 
 
 to such an extent that a man who brings 
 proper preparation otherwise to the work 
 ought to be able, in three years, if properly 
 guided, to complete the course. We are 
 making this schedule aggregate from 
 twenty to twenty-five hours only — not quite 
 the equivalent of a single study taken three 
 years. In this time we think it is possible 
 to take a bright young man and fit him 
 well to begin work. Of course he will not 
 be the equal of 'our older men. Let us, 
 however, give up the idea that we can turn 
 out young men who know as much as Dr. 
 Coulter or Dr. Farlow. That will take 
 years ; but a man can have a good prepara- 
 tion for teaching botany, as good as the 
 young engineer gets — and he is ready for 
 work when he finishes his course.. So we 
 are working on a three-year schedule and 
 I think we are going to accomplish with it 
 what has hitherto taken a much longer 
 time. 
 
 We are proceeding with the following 
 limitations. First : Such a three-year 
 schedule must include a general survey of 
 the plant kingdom. 
 
 Second: This three-year course must in- 
 clude the essentials of cytology and his- 
 tology. It may not include an extensive 
 knowledge of them, but their technique at 
 least, and enough so that a man has mas- 
 tered a few, at least, of the principles. 
 
 Third : Such a schedule must include the 
 essentials of plant physiology. 
 
 Fourth: It must include also the essen- 
 tials of taxonomy. I will not attempt to 
 say how much that should be, and yet I 
 am certain that there should be a eonsid- 
 the plants that a man is likely to come in 
 erable knowledge of taxonomy in regard to 
 
13 
 
 contact with. I should feel embarrassed 
 if called upon to teach in a part of the 
 world where I did not know what the plants 
 around me were. I would not like to em- 
 ploy a man in my department who would 
 frankly confess that he could not tell an 
 ash tree from a maple. 
 
 These are some of the things that should 
 be known. There are many things I have 
 not included, but I think that what I have 
 put into my schedule will fairly prepare a 
 young man for beginning to teach. He can 
 not take my classes, perhaps, nor Dr. Coul- 
 ter’s classes, but he can begin where we 
 began in teaching, and work up! 
 
 Now this amount of botanical knowledge, 
 as I have mapped it out, is very much more 
 than many of us had when we began. It 
 should fit a man for beginning to give in- 
 struction in the smaller colleges or in the 
 minor positions in the universities. It 
 should fit him to lead intelligently the stu- 
 dents that come to him in our normal 
 schools. I take it that it is in this direc- 
 tion that we must move if we are to be 
 able to supply from our schools and our 
 universities the men who are to follow us. 
 
 You will notice that in all this I have 
 said — “men.” I have said so because I 
 have found that when the demand comes, 
 it is mostly for men. I do not know why 
 this is so. We say very pretty things about 
 our women students, and give them good 
 high standings, and say complimentary 
 things about them as students ; and yet 
 when you yourselves look around for some 
 one to be an instructor, and we write and 
 say — “there is a young woman here who 
 will make a good instructor” — you say: 
 “Our present circumstances are such that 
 
14 
 
 we can not employ a woman.” Here is 
 one thing that we ought to change. The 
 supply of competent women is much larger 
 than of competent men, and I can assure 
 you from experience in my own depart- 
 ment that they make admirable instructors. 
 
 I have gone over this problem of the 
 making of botanical teachers in this rapid 
 way in order to stir up thought along many 
 lines. For I hold that it is a serious prob- 
 lem ; and that we as teachers of botany owe 
 it to the future that we should prepare in 
 a proper way for the succession of teachers 
 that must follow us. 
 
 Charles E. Bessey 
 University of Nebraska 
 
3 0112 072856120