Rufus M. Jones, a Quaker teacher and writer, wrote an account of his boyhood that includes a familiar lament to those who are interested in nature.
It should be said that I knew no botany as a boy. I wish our teacher had spent less time instructing me in the geography of Russia and Terra del Fuego, and had taken a little time to give me some specific knowledge about the flowers and the birds of our own region.
Jones wrote that lament almost 100 years ago. Things were not much better when I was a boy, and a naturalist recently lamented that most junior-high students could identify dozens of brands of sneakers but could not name the common plants and birds they see on their way to school.
I wish I’d had the kind of teacher Jones imagined when I was a boy.
• Source: Rufus M. Jones, Finding the Trail of Life; New York, The Macmillan Company, 1927.
https://archive.org/details/findingtrailofli0000jone
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