Within the botanical profession we need to have widespread discussion of objectives and of improving methods in botany and biology teaching, and in this Plant Science Bulletin will be very valuable. Conferences and symposia on biology teaching should be held in the Teaching Section, and at various local meetings. We need to exchange information on what we are doing in the various colleges, and together formulate standards and goals for plant science in various curricula. Certain universities could act as centers for work with colleges, teachers colleges, and high schools in their respective localities. Botanists should be stimulated to study aims, objectives, and methods, and to contribute articles to various educational journals to improve and expand the services of plant science in biology and general education programs.
Much work needs to be done with regard to educational administrators and college faculties.
After thoroughly discussing the problems among ourselves, we need to evolve and publish criteria for evaluating biological and botanical programs with regard to content, method, and professional preparation of personnel. Fundamentally, we need to work out standards and goals to provide information that will be useful to the regional accrediting associations in evaluating colleges of various kinds, and in encouraging them to improve. We might also set forth conditions which we regard as unsatisfactory to aid them in looking for faults in need of correction. However, our standards should not be in terms of minimum conditions required for accreditation, but rather in terms of ideal goals towards which colleges should be encouraged to develop. The emphasis in the accrediting agencies is definitely on gradual, encouraging, positive and constructive action, rather than merely on police action.