Botany in the Schools

Observer, Volume xi, Issue 667, 10 October 1891, Page 9

Botany in the Schools

The schoolmaster is abroad, but evidently he does not discharge his duties satisfactorily, for a gentleman has found it necessary to educate our eduoators on the subject of botanical lessons. At last meeting of the Board of Education, the secretary produced a letter, which he paid he had been unable to decipher, though he could read the concluding words of it—' Send the letter to press. 1 The Board agreed to comply with the writer's request and the puzzling MS. was handed to the OM. With the aid of the ' devil,' we have managed to decipher the undecipherable (which is just scarcely so illegible as Mr Kice's educated scrawl) and we have pleasure in presenting a few choice extracts to our readers. The name of the writer even we were unable to decipher, but he writes from Karioi, under date 28th Sept. as follows : —

More than a year ago, an order was ishued by the board that in all shools botany should be tanght ; still I cannot see that such is dono anywhere. All there is about it is that teachers talk about it in the shoolroom. Can a man become a swimmer if he does not go in to the watter ?no ! i?'o can a child not become a botanist if not took out in nature, . . . Oure shools kost more tan righu as it is. Nobody here is so well payed as the shoolmaster. Oure shoolmasters are all made of such stuff as would give a good tailor and not fit for such, tings. Oure children can eat watercresse if ihe have no cabage. . . . Yea ;it wouli be better for them to go out on fine weather than ait penned up in lha shoolroom. All I can see government shoo s are disgusting the way they_ are worked on, and private shools are too expensiv. . . . Botany should be 1 aught in shools. children should be toofc out in fields, naatur's gardens, bush, swwarap and all other places *hey could be taken to from the plough to the shearing shed— from the plu to the sheeves and were it would be done ; to mines. As each shooi has a garden, they can see the- germination and thus obtain a knowledge of the culinary and. vegetable fit for the citchen would be given them and shools com-' piting with ich other — not a penny expense. Who wants to become a swimmer must go in to the watter, and a, botanist in the field. Send the letter to press. ,■'. ,