The Chronicle-star combined with the Moss Point advertiser., 1945-09-14


this, and perhaps the botanists
know of no such principle by
which many varieties of the same
color seem to have a common sea-
son for blooming. But If such a
principle does exist, we should
like to know the interesting nat
ural reasons behind it-what il
is that makes the yellow color OF
certain flowers react to the par
ticular intensity of sunlight in
late summer. and the puppies and
blues react to the slightly changed
light of autumn.
A GOOD HIGH SCHOOL ought
to teach things lick this; or arth-
er, a good state educational sys-
TEN ought to provide a back
ground of simplified and inter
esting natural history for its stu
dents. And this is especially true
in this part of the country where
our life is not built around big
and crowded cities but rather
small cities and towns, and farm
ing communities.
II BY some unlikely miracle we
should find ourselves dictator of
education for the State of Missis-
Sopi, one of the first things we
should do would be to install a
faculty member in every high
school to work up a program of
natural history for the student
body that would awaken them to
the beauty and usefulness of the
land about them, and of the life
that lives upon it.
To make such a course interest
ing and meaningful to children OF
highschool age ii would have to
have more appeal that a dry and
formal biology course. II would
have to be based on scientific
facts, or course, but there should
also be field trips for the students
and studies of actual plant and
animal specimens rather than the
scientific diagrams of same. And
above all, the course should be
imaginative and creative enough
to open the eyes of young people
TO patterns and forces of nature
at work in their own back
grounds. whether they live in
city or country.
Practical education OF this
sort. for example. has been e
sp3nsible for considerable
progress in checking soil ero-
sion over the South in the past
IL yeers. When farmers began
to understand. the physics of
wafer circulation. and the ne
cessitY for cover crops and
binding grasses and contour
plcYinw. they were able TO ap-
ply this simple natural science
10 the saving and retaining
of their fields.
Another field that calls for
this sort of education Is the field
of forestry. If children in our
high schools were given a SIM
pie and interesting course in tree
life they would begin to realize
that the welfare of all life on
the earth is bound up together
- man, beast and plant - and
that the wanton destruction of
forests means inevitably that hui
man economy and welfare must
suffer.
For endless years, for example,
it has been the habit of many
farmers to burn over cut land
and second-growth pine land in
order to facilitate hunting or to
make a grass crop for woods
cattle. But the timber and wild
life values they have destroyed
in doing SO. have been worth a
hundred times-with no eXag-
geration-the meager gains. Boy
Scout groups and All Clubs and
other extension programs have
tried to educate against such
practices. But no general prog
ress can be brought about until
a general educational effort is
made. The workings and the
usefulness of natural forces must
be taught to our young people at
an early age. when it a appeal
to imaginations and intellects
that are stsill growing.
1t is one thing to give a child
a creative set of principles, based
on -enioyment-an
use. But it is quite another thing
to go to a middle-aged farmer
and tell him that practices he has
used all his life-and which his
father used before him are
wrong, destructive, and against
his own welfare.
The educational effort must
begin in the sehools-the effort
to open the eyes of our children
to the beauty of our useful
things, and the usefulness of our
beautiful things. And someday
we hope the Mississippi schools