isa-normaladvance-1903-00088

Description:	88THE NORMAL ADVANCE.The trees of the field and forest lend themselves admirably for study. They are everywhereperhaps easily reached. Their study is possible atall times of the year, even when the leaves areshed, although there is ample time in the schoolyear to study them while still in leaf. The meagerknowledge possessed by most students when theyreach their first work in botany, shows that thisline would not be beating over an already knownground. The poor selections often made for shadetrees shows that a first-hand knowledge of thecommoner trees of the woods would not only be asource of continual pleasure, but also of directpractical value.A study of the commoner weeds would be inplace. The most striking laws of botany are notthose found in rare specimens. The very fact thatsome plants are rare argues that they have notbeen able fully to meet the demands asked ofthem. The common plants are the plants whichhave best solved biological conditions and whichbest exhibit botanical laws. The very questionasked concerning each common weed, What makesit so common? would be to start the pupil of thecountry on one of the richest paths of inquiry.It would give meaning to every roadside. It wouldarrest his interest at every corner of the field. Itwould speak to him with ever new suggestions atevery turn. But it might also have a practicalvalue that would still more enlist the sympathy ofthe home. It might point out the obnoxious anddangerous weeds and present methods for their destruction deduced directly from their life histories.If to the study of the larger weeds were added thestudy of some of the simpler forms of plants, thepupil might learn in the school in a way to understand intelligently what on the farm was guesswork and haphazard knowledge. It might be amatter of direct practical benefit to the countrypupil to know the life histories of the commonblights, rusts and smuts which play such havocnow and then with the farms output, and whicharc to be dreaded at all times lest they become epidemic. . What sanitation has done for cities, sanitation applied to plants may do for the crops ofthe farm.But not the plant world alone lends itself toready study in the country school. The animalworld is equally available. The birds are perhaps,for evident reasons, best suited. Considerationsof humanity, as well as utility, urge desirability ofsuch study. What birds are really injurious, butstill better, what birds are of direct value to thefarmer, would be proper questions of study. Asystematic study of the kinds of birds common inthe community, of the foods they live upon, of thehabits of nesting and flight, would result in thecommon enlistment of the interest of the schooland community in the preservation of our birds,and would check perhaps as nothing else the unwonted Slaughter of the Innocents.What is true of birds applies to other forms.A knowledge of the commoner snakes, of the toadsand of frogs and other harmless creatures, wouldnot only interest the pupil anew in forms he willcontinually meet, but show him that, instead ofenemies, they are his constructive friends. In theinsect world itself, which peoples every farm withmillions of forms, the injurious ones could bepointed out and their cycle of life studied in order to more effectively resist them, while the myriads of harmless ones might contribute to thatpleasure which would come from knowing fairlyintimately the many forms of the flora and faunaof the farm, which, with the farmer, try to makea living on the same.
Source:	http://indstate.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/isuarchive/id/33845
Collection:	Indiana State University Archives

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