A test written by a four-year-old child in 1972, in the former Soviet Union. The lines are not ideal, but the teacher (all red writing) gave the best grade (5) anyway.
"Gift" developed by Friedrich FroebelMaGeography in Montessori Early Childhood at QAIS
Early childhood education (ECE), also known as nursery education, is a branch of education theory that relates to the teaching of children (formally and informally) from birth up to the age of eight. Traditionally, this is up to the equivalent of third grade. ECE is described as an important period in child development.
ECE emerged as a field of study during the Enlightenment, particularly in European countries with high literacy rates.
It continued to grow through the nineteenth century as universal
primary education became a norm in the Western world. In recent years,
early childhood education has become a prevalent public policy issue, as funding for preschool and pre-K is debated by municipal, state, and federal lawmakers. Governing entities are also debating the central focus of early
childhood education with debate on developmental appropriate play versus
strong academic preparation curriculum in reading, writing, and math. The global priority placed on early childhood education is underscored with targets of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4. As of 2023, however, "only around 4 in 10 children aged 3 and 4 attend early childhood education" around the world.
Furthermore, levels of participation vary by widely by region with,
"around 2 in 3 children in Latin American and the Caribbean attending
ECE compared to just under half of children in South Asia and only 1 in 4
in sub-Saharan Africa".
ECE is also a professional designation earned through a post-secondary education program. For example, in Ontario,
Canada, the designations ECE (Early Childhood Educator) and RECE
(Registered Early Childhood Educator) may only be used by registered
members of the College of Early Childhood Educators, which is made up of
accredited child care professionals who are held accountable to the College's standards of practice.
Research shows that early-childhood education has substantial
positive short- and long-term effects on the children who attend such
education, and that the costs are dwarfed by societal gains of the
education programs.
The Developmental Interaction Approach is based on the theories of Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, John Dewey, and Lucy Sprague Mitchell. The approach focuses on learning through discovery.
Jean Jacques Rousseau
recommended that teachers should exploit individual children's
interests to make sure each child obtains the information most essential
to his personal and individual development. The five developmental domains of childhood development include:
To meet those developmental domains, a child has a set of needs that
must be met for learning. Maslow's hierarchy of needs showcases the
different levels of needs that must be met the chart to the right
showcases these needs.
Physical: the way in which a child develops biological and physical functions, including eyesight and motor skills
Social: the way in which a child interacts with others
Children develop an understanding of their responsibilities and rights
as members of families and communities, as well as an ability to relate
to and work with others.
Maslow's Hierarchy of NeedsEmotional:
the way in which a child creates emotional connections and develops
self-confidence. Emotional connections develop when children relate to
other people and share feelings.
Language: the way in which a child communicates, including how they
present their feelings and emotions, both to other people and to
themselves. At 3 months, children employ different cries for different
needs. At 6 months they can recognize and imitate the basic sounds of
spoken language. In the first 3 years, children need to be exposed to
communication with others in order to pick up language. "Normal"
language development is measured by the rate of vocabulary acquisition.
Cognitive skills: the way in which a child organizes information.
Cognitive skills include problem solving, creativity, imagination and
memory.
They embody the way in which children make sense of the world. Piaget
believed that children exhibit prominent differences in their thought
patterns as they move through the stages of cognitive development:
sensorimotor period, the pre-operational period, and the operational
period.
Froebel's play theory
Friedrich Froebel was a German Educator that believed in the idea of children learning through play.
Specifically, he said, "play is the highest expression of human
development in childhood, for it alone is the free expression of what is
in the child’s soul." Froebel believed that teachers should act as a
facilitators and supporters for the students's play, rather than an
authoritative, disciplinary figure. He created educational open-ended
toys that he called "gifts" and "occupations" that were designed to
encourage self expression and initiation.
Maria Montessori's theory
Maria
Montessori was an Italian physician that, based on her observations of
young children in classrooms, developed a method of education that
focused on independence. In Montessori education, a typical classroom is
made up of students of different ages and curriculum is based on the
students' developmental stage, which Montessori called the four planes
of development.
Montessori's Four Planes of Development:
The first plane (birth to age 6): During this stage, children
soak up information about the world around them quickly, which is why
Montessori refers to it as the "absorbent mind". Physical independence,
such as completing tasks independently, is a main focus of the child at
this time and children's individual personalities begin to form and
develop.
The second plane (Ages 6–12): During this stage, children also focus on independence, but intellectual rather than physical.
Montessori classrooms use what is called "cosmic education" during this
stage, which emphasizes children building on their understanding of the
world, their place in it, and how everything is interdependent. Children in this plane also begin to develop abstract and moral thinking.
The third plane (Ages 12–18): During this stage, adolescents shift
to focus on emotional independence and on the self. Moral values,
critical thinking, and self-identity are explored and strengthened.
The fourth plane (Ages 18–24): During this last stage, focus shifts
to financial independence. Young adults in this plane begin to solidify
their personal beliefs, identity, and role in the world.
Vygotsky’s socio-cultural learning theory
Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky
proposed a "socio-cultural learning theory" that emphasized the impact
of social and cultural experiences on individual thinking and the
development of mental processes.
Vygotsky's theory emerged in the 1930s and is still discussed today as a
means of improving and reforming educational practices.
In Vygotsky's theories of learning, he also postulated the theory of the
zone of proximal development. This theory ties in with children
building off prior knowledge and gaining new knowledge related to skills
they already have. In the theory it describes how new knowledge or
skills are taken in if they are not fully learned but are starting to
emerge. A teacher or older friend lends support to a child learning a
skill, be it building a block castle, tying a shoe, or writing one's
name. As the child becomes more capable of the steps of the activity,
the adult or older child withdraws supports gradually, until the child
is competent completing the process on his/her own. This is done within
that activity's zone—the distance between where the child is, and where
he potentially will be.
In each zone of proximal development, they build on skills and grow by
learning more skills in their proximal development range. They build on
the skills by being guided by teachers and parents. They must build
from where they are in their zone of proximal development.
Vygotsky argued that since cognition occurs within a social
context, our social experiences shape our ways of thinking about and
interpreting the world.
People such as parents, grandparents, and teachers play the roles of
what Vygotsky described as knowledgeable and competent adults. Although
Vygotsky predated social constructivists, he is commonly classified as
one. Social constructivists believe that an individual's cognitive
system is a resditional learning time. Vygotsky advocated that teachers
facilitate rather than direct student learning.
Teachers should provide a learning environment where students can
explore and develop their learning without direct instruction. His
approach calls for teachers to incorporate students’ needs and
interests. It is important to do this because students' levels of
interest and abilities will vary and there needs to be differentiation.
However, teachers can enhance understandings and learning for
students. Vygotsky states that by sharing meanings that are relevant to
the children's environment, adults promote cognitive development as
well. Their teachings can influence thought processes and perspectives
of students when they are in new and similar environments. Since
Vygotsky promotes more facilitation in children's learning, he suggests
that knowledgeable people (and adults in particular), can also enhance
knowledges through cooperative meaning-making with students in their
learning, this can be done through the zone of proximal development by
guiding children's learning or thinking skills .
Vygotsky's approach encourages guided participation and student
exploration with support. Teachers can help students achieve their
cognitive development levels through consistent and regular interactions
of collaborative knowledge-making learning processes.
Piaget’s constructivist theory
Jean Piaget's constructivist theory gained influence in the 1970s and '80s. Although Piaget himself was primarily interested in a descriptive psychology of cognitive development, he also laid the groundwork for a constructivist theory of learning.
Piaget believed that learning comes from within: children construct
their own knowledge of the world through experience and subsequent
reflection. He said that "if logic itself is created rather than being
inborn, it follows that the first task of education is to form
reasoning." Within Piaget's framework, teachers should guide children in
acquiring their own knowledge rather than simply transferring
knowledge.
According to Piaget's theory, when young children encounter new
information, they attempt to accommodate and assimilate it into their
existing understanding of the world. Accommodation involves adapting
mental schemas
and representations to make them consistent with reality. Assimilation
involves fitting new information into their pre-existing schemas.
Through these two processes, young children learn by equilibrating their
mental representations with reality. They also learn from mistakes.
A Piagetian approach emphasizes experiential education; in
school, experiences become more hands-on and concrete as students
explore through trial and error.
Thus, crucial components of early childhood education include
exploration, manipulating objects, and experiencing new environments.
Subsequent reflection on these experiences is equally important.
Piaget's concept of reflective abstraction was particularly influential in mathematical education.
Through reflective abstraction, children construct more advanced
cognitive structures out of the simpler ones they already possess. This
allows children to develop mathematical constructs that cannot be
learned through equilibration – making sense of experiences through
assimilation and accommodation – alone.
According to Piagetian theory, language and symbolic
representation is preceded by the development of corresponding mental
representations. Research shows that the level of reflective abstraction
achieved by young children was found to limit the degree to which they
could represent physical quantities with written numerals. Piaget held
that children can invent their own procedures for the four arithmetical
operations, without being taught any conventional rules.
Piaget's theory implies that computers can be a great educational
tool for young children when used to support the design and
construction of their projects. McCarrick and Xiaoming found that
computer play is consistent with this theory.
However, Plowman and Stephen found that the effectiveness of computers
is limited in the preschool environment; their results indicate that
computers are only effective when directed by the teacher.
This suggests, according to the constructivist theory, that the role of
preschool teachers is critical in successfully adopting computers as
they existed in 2003.
David Kolb's experiential learning theory, which was influenced by John Dewey, Kurt Lewin
and Jean Piaget, argues that children need to experience things to
learn: "The process whereby knowledge is created through the
transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combinations of
grasping and transforming experience." The experimental learning theory
is distinctive in that children are seen and taught as individuals. As a
child explores and observes, teachers ask the child probing questions.
The child can then adapt prior knowledge to learning new information.
Kolb breaks down this learning cycle into four stages: concrete
experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and
active experimentation. Children observe new situations, think about the
situation, make meaning of the situation, then test that meaning in the
world around them.
Practical implications of early childhood education
In
recent decades, studies have shown that early childhood education is
critical in preparing children to enter and succeed in the (grade
school) classroom, diminishing their risk of social-emotional mental
health problems and increasing their self-sufficiency later in their
lives.
In other words, the child needs to be taught to rationalize everything
and to be open to interpretations and critical thinking. There is no
subject to be considered taboo, starting with the most basic knowledge
of the world that they live in, and ending with deeper areas, such as
morality, religion and science. Visual stimulus and response time as
early as 3 months can be an indicator of verbal and performance IQ at
age 4 years.
When parents value ECE and its importance their children generally have
a higher rate of attendance. This allows children the opportunity to
build and nurture trusting relationships with educators and social
relationships with peers.
By providing education in a child's most formative years, ECE also has the capacity to pre-emptively begin closing the educational achievement gap between low and high-income students before formal schooling begins. Children of low socioeconomic status
(SES) often begin school already behind their higher SES peers; on
average, by the time they are three, children with high SES have three
times the number of words in their vocabularies as children with low
SES.
Participation in ECE, however, has been proven to increase high school
graduation rates, improve performance on standardized tests, and reduce
both grade repetition and the number of children placed in special
education.
A study was conducted by the Aga Khan Development Network's
Madrasa Early Childhood Programme on the impact that early childhood
education had on students’ performance in grade school. Looking
specifically at students who attended the Madrasa Early Childhood
schools (virtually all of whom came from economically disadvantaged
backgrounds), the study found that they had consistently ranked in the
top 20% in grade 1 classes. The study also concluded that any formal
early childhood education contributed to higher levels of cognitive
development in language, mathematics, and non-verbal reasoning skills.
Especially since the first wave of results from the Perry Preschool Project
were published, there has been widespread consensus that the quality of
early childhood education programs correlate with gains in low-income
children's IQs and test scores, decreased grade retention, and lower
special education rates.
Several studies have reported that children enrolled in ECE
increase their IQ scores by 4–11 points by age five, while a Milwaukee
study reported a 25-point gain. In addition, students who had been enrolled in the Abecedarian Project,
an often-cited ECE study, scored significantly higher on reading and
math tests by age fifteen than comparable students who had not
participated in early childhood programs.
In addition, 36% of students in the Abecedarian Preschool Study
treatment group would later enroll in four-year colleges compared to 14%
of those in the control group.
In 2017, researchers reported that children who participate in
ECE graduate high school at significantly greater rates than those who
do not. Additionally, those who participate in ECE require special
education and must repeat a grade at significantly lower rates than
their peers who did not receive ECE.
The NIH asserts that ECE leads to higher test scores for students from
preschool through age 21, improved grades in math and reading, and
stronger odds that students will keep going to school and attend
college.
Nathaniel Hendren and Ben Sprung-Keyser, two Harvard economists,
found high Marginal Values of Public Funds (MVPFs) for investments in
programs supporting the health and early education of children,
particularly those that reach children from low-income families. The
average MVPF for these types of initiatives is over 5, while the MVPFs
for programs for adults generally range from 0.5 to 2.
Beyond benefitting societal good, ECE also significantly impacts
the socioeconomic outcomes of individuals. For example, by age 26,
students who had been enrolled in Chicago Child-Parent Centers were less
likely to be arrested, abuse drugs, and receive food stamps; they were
more likely to have high school diplomas, health insurance and full-time
employment.
Studies also show that ECE heightens social engagement, bolsters
lifelong health, reduces the incidence of teen pregnancy, supports
mental health, decreases the risk of heart disease, and lengthens
lifespans.
The World Bank's 2019 World Development Report on The Changing Nature of Work
identifies early childhood development programs as one of the most
effective ways governments can equip children with the skills they will
need to succeed in future labor markets.
According to a 2020 study in the Journal of Political Economy by Clemson University economist Jorge Luis García, Nobel laureate James J. Heckman
and University of Southern California economists Duncan Ermini Leaf and
María José Prados, every dollar spent on a high-quality early-childhood
programs led to a return of $7.3 over the long-term.
The Perry Preschool Project, which was conducted in the 1960s in Ypsilanti, Michigan,
is the oldest social experiment in the field of early childhood
education and has heavily influenced policy in the United States and
across the globe.
The experiment enrolled 128 three- and four-year-old African-American
children with cognitive disadvantage from low-income families, who were
then randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. The intervention
for children in the treatment group included active learning preschool
sessions on weekdays for 2.5 hours per day. The intervention also
included weekly visits by the teachers to the homes of the children for
about 1.5 hours per visit to improve parent-child interactions at home.
Initial evaluations of the Perry intervention showed that the
preschool program failed to significantly boost an IQ measure. However,
later evaluations that followed up the participants for more than fifty
years have demonstrated the long-term economic benefits of the program,
even after accounting for the small sample size of the experiment, flaws
in its randomization procedure, and sample attrition.
There is substantial evidence of large treatment effects on the
criminal convictions of male participants, especially for violent crime,
and their earnings in middle adulthood. Research points to improvements
in non-cognitive skills, executive functioning, childhood home
environment, and parental attachment as potential sources of the
observed long-term impacts of the program. The intervention's many
benefits also include improvements in late-midlife health for both male
and female participants.
Perry promoted educational attainment through two avenues: total years
of education attained and rates of progression to a given level of
education. This pattern is particularly evident for females. Treated
females received less special education, progressed more quickly through
grades, earned higher GPAs, and attained higher levels of education
than their control group counterparts.
Research also demonstrates spillover effects of the Perry program on the children and siblings of the original participants.
A study concludes, "The children of treated participants have fewer
school suspensions, higher levels of education and employment, and lower
levels of participation in crime, compared with the children of
untreated participants. Impacts are especially pronounced for the
children of male participants. These treatment effects are associated
with improved childhood home environments."
The study also documents beneficial impacts on the male siblings of the
original participants. Evidence from the Perry Preschool Project is
noteworthy because it advocates for public spending on early childhood
programs as an economic investment in a society's future, rather than in
the interest of social justice.
International agreements
The
first World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education took place
in Moscow from 27 to 29 September 2010, jointly organized by UNESCO and the city of Moscow. The overarching goals of the conference are to:
Reaffirm ECCE as a right of all children and as the basis for development
Take stock of the progress of Member States towards achieving the EFA Goal 1
Identify binding constraints toward making the intended equitable expansion of access to quality ECCE services
Establish, more concretely, benchmarks and targets for the EFA Goal 1 toward 2015 and beyond
Identify key enablers that should facilitate Member States to reach the established targets
Promote global exchange of good practices
Under Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals,
which the UN General Assembly unanimously approved in 2015, countries
committed to "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education’
including early childhood."
Two targets related to goal 4 are "by 2030, ensure that all girls and
boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and
pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education." The
‘Framework for Action’ adopted by UNESCO member states later in 2015
outlines how to translate this last target into practice, and encourages
states to provide "at least one year of free and compulsory pre-primary
education of good quality." The Sustainable Development Goals, however, are not binding international law.
In 2022, Human Rights Watch
adopted a policy calling on states to make at least one year of free
and compulsory, inclusive, quality pre-primary education available and
accessible for all children.
In doing so they advocated making one year of pre-primary education to
be included as part of the minimum core of the right to education.
They further called on all states to adopt a detailed plan of action
for the progressive implementation of further years of pre-primary
education, within a reasonable number of years to be fixed in the plan.
According to UNESCO, a preschool curriculum is one that
delivers educational content through daily activities and furthers a
child's physical, cognitive, and social development. Generally,
preschool curricula are only recognized by governments if they are based
on academic research and reviewed by peers.
Preschool for Child Rights have pioneered into preschool
curricular areas and is contributing into child rights through their
preschool curriculum.
Percentage of children aged 36 to 59 months who are developmentally on track, 2009–2017
Curricula in early childhood care and education (ECCE) is the driving
force behind any ECCE programme. It is ‘an integral part of the engine
that, together with the energy and motivation of staff, provides the
momentum that makes programmes live’.
It follows therefore that the quality of a programme is greatly
influenced by the quality of its curriculum. In early childhood, these
may be programs for children or parents, including health and nutrition
interventions and prenatal programs, as well as center-based programs for children.
Barriers and challenges
Children's learning potential and outcomes are negatively affected by exposure to violence, abuse and child labour.
Thus, protecting young children from violence and exploitation is part
of broad educational concerns. Due to difficulties and sensitivities
around the issue of measuring and monitoring child protection violations
and gaps in defining, collecting and analysing appropriate indicators,
data coverage in this area is scant. However, proxy indicators can be
used to assess the situation. For example, ratification of relevant
international conventions indicates countries’ commitment to child protection. By April 2014, 194 countries had ratified the CRC3; and 179 had ratified the 1999 International Labour Organization's
Convention (No. 182) concerning the elimination of the worst forms of
child labour. However, many of these ratifications are yet to be given
full effect through actual implementation of concrete measures.
Globally, 150 million children aged 5–14 are estimated to be engaged in
child labour.
In conflict-affected poor countries, children are twice as likely to
die before their fifth birthday compared to those in other poor
countries.
In industrialized countries, 4 per cent of children are physically
abused each year and 10 per cent are neglected or psychologically
abused.
In both developed and developing countries,
children of the poor and the disadvantaged remain the least served.
This exclusion persists against the evidence that the added value of
early childhood care and education services are higher for them than for
their more affluent counterparts, even when such services are of modest
quality. While the problem is more intractable in developing countries,
the developed world still does not equitably provide quality early
childhood care and education services for all its children. In many European countries, children, mostly from low-income and immigrant families, do not have access to good quality early childhood care and education.
Orphan education
A lack of education during the early childhood years for orphans
is a worldwide concern. Orphans are at higher risk of "missing out on
schooling, living in households with less food security, and suffering
from anxiety and depression."
Education during these years has the potential to improve a child's
"food and nutrition, health care, social welfare, and protection." This crisis is especially prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa which has been heavily impacted by the aids epidemic. UNICEF
reports that "13.3 million children (0–17 years) worldwide have lost
one or both parents to AIDS. Nearly 12 million of these children live in
sub-Saharan Africa."
Government policies such as the Free Basic Education Policy have worked
to provide education for orphan children in this area, but the quality
and inclusiveness of this policy has brought criticism.
People who categorize themselves as anti-imperialists often state that they are opposed to colonialism, colonial empires, hegemony, imperialism and the territorial expansion of a country beyond its established borders. An influential movement independent of the WesternLeft that advocated religious anti-imperialism was Pan-Islamism; which challenged the Western civilisational model and rose to prominence across various parts of the Islamic World during the 19th and 20th centuries. Its most influential ideologue was the Sunni theologian Muhammad Rashid Rida, a fierce opponent of Western ideas, who called upon Muslims to rise up in armed resistance by waging Jihad against imperialism and re-establish an Islamic Caliphate. Through his resolution in the Second World Congress of Comintern (1920), Lenin accused the anti-imperialism of Pan-Islamists of favouring the interests of the bourgeoisie, feudal landlords and religious clerics; and enjoined fellow communists to compulsorily fight Pan-Islamism. Since then, Soviet authorities regularly employed the charge of Pan-Islamism to target Islamic dissidents for anti-Soviet activities and fomenting anti-communist rebellions.
The phrase gained a wide currency after the Second World War and at the onset of the Cold War
as political movements in colonies of European powers promoted national
sovereignty. Some anti-imperialist groups who opposed the United States supported the power of the Soviet Union, while in some Marxist schools, such as Maoism, this was criticized as social imperialism. Islamist movements traditionally view Russia and China as imperial and neo-colonial
forces engaged in persecution and oppression of Muslim communities
domestically and abroad, in addition to the U.S. and its allies like Israel.
In the late 1870s, the term "imperialism" was introduced to the
English language by opponents of the aggressively imperial policies of
British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1874–1880). It was shortly appropriated by supporters of "imperialism" such as Joseph Chamberlain.
For some, imperialism designated a policy of idealism and philanthropy;
others alleged that it was characterized by political self-interest;
and a growing number associated it with capitalist greed. John A. Hobson and Vladimir Lenin
added a more theoretical macroeconomic connotation to the term. Many
theoreticians on the left have followed either or both in emphasizing
the structural or systemic character of "imperialism". Such writers have
expanded the time period associated with the term so that it now
designates neither a policy, nor a short space of decades in the late
19th century, but a global system extending over a period of centuries,
often going back to Christopher Columbus.
As the application of the term has expanded, its meaning has shifted
along five distinct but often parallel axes: the moral, the economic,
the systemic, the cultural and the temporal. Those changes reflect—among
other shifts in sensibility—a growing unease with the fact of power,
specifically Western power.
The relationships among capitalism, aristocracy and imperialism have been discussed and analysed by theoreticians, historians, political scientists such as John A. Hobson and Thorstein Veblen, Joseph Schumpeter and Norman Angell. Those intellectuals produced much of their works about imperialism before the World War I
(1914–1918), yet their combined work informed the study of the impact
of imperialism upon Europe and contributed to the political and
ideologic reflections on the rise of the military–industrial complex in the United States from the 1950s onwards.
John A. Hobson strongly influenced the anti-imperialism of both Marxists and liberals, worldwide through his 1902 book on Imperialism. He argued that the "taproot of imperialism" is not in nationalist pride,
but in Capitalism. As a form of economic organization, imperialism is
unnecessary and immoral, the result of the mis-distribution of wealth in
a capitalist society. That created an irresistible desire to extend the
national markets into foreign lands, in search of profits greater than
those available in the Mother Country. In the capitalist economy, rich
capitalists received a disproportionately higher income than did the
working class. If the owners invested their incomes to their factories,
the greatly increased productive capacity would exceed the growth in
demand for the products and services of said factories. Lenin adopted
Hobson's ideas to argue that capitalism was doomed and would eventually
be replaced by socialism, the sooner the better.
Hobson was also influential in liberal circles, especially the British Liberal Party. Historians Peter Duignan and Lewis H. Gann argue that Hobson had an enormous influence in the early 20th century that caused widespread distrust of imperialism:
Hobson's ideas were not entirely
original; however his hatred of moneyed men and monopolies, his loathing
of secret compacts and public bluster, fused all existing indictments
of imperialism into one coherent system....His ideas influenced German
nationalist opponents of the British Empire as well as French
Anglophobes and Marxists; they colored the thoughts of American liberals
and isolationist critics of colonialism. In days to come they were to
contribute to American distrust of Western Europe and of the British
Empire. Hobson helped make the British averse to the exercise of
colonial rule; he provided indigenous nationalists in Asia and Africa
with the ammunition to resist rule from Europe.
On the positive side, Hobson argued that domestic social reforms
could cure the international disease of imperialism by removing its
economic foundation. Hobson theorized that state intervention through
taxation could boost broader consumption, create wealth and encourage a
peaceful multilateral world order. Conversely, should the state not
intervene, rentiers (people who earn income from property or securities)
would generate socially negative wealth that fostered imperialism and
protectionism.
Political movement
As
a self-conscious political movement, anti-imperialism originated in
Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in opposition to the
growing European colonial empires and the United States control of the Philippines after 1898.
However, it reached its highest level of popular support in the
colonies themselves, where it formed the basis for a wide variety of national liberation movements during the mid-20th century and later. These movements, and their anti-imperialist ideas, were instrumental in the decolonization process of the 1950s and 1960s, which saw most European colonies in Asia and Africa achieving their independence.
An early use of the term "anti-imperialist" occurred after the United States entered the Spanish–American War in 1898. Most activists supported the war itself, but opposed the annexation of new territory, especially the Philippines. The Anti-Imperialist League
was founded on June 15, 1898, in Boston in opposition of the
acquisition of the Philippines, which would happen anyway. The
anti-imperialists opposed the expansion because they believed
imperialism violated the credo of republicanism, especially the need for "consent of the governed". Appalled by American imperialism, the Anti-Imperialist League, which included famous citizens such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry James, William James and Mark Twain, formed a platform which stated:
We hold that the policy known as
imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil
from which it has been our glory to be free. We regret that it has
become necessary in the land of Washington and Lincoln to reaffirm that
all men, of whatever race or color, are entitled to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness. We maintain that governments derive their just
powers from the consent of the governed. We insist that the subjugation
of any people is "criminal aggression" and open disloyalty to the
distinctive principles of our Government...
We cordially invite the cooperation of all men and women who remain
loyal to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the
United States.
Fred Harrington states that "the anti-imperialist's did not oppose
expansion because of commercial, religious, constitutional, or
humanitarian reasons but instead because they thought that an
imperialist policy ran counter to the political doctrines of the
Declaration of Independence, Washington's Farewell Address, and
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address".
An important influence on American intellectuals was the work of British writer John A. Hobson. especially Imperialism: A Study (1902).
Historians Peter Duignan and Lewis H. Gann argue that Hobson had an
enormous influence in the early 20th century that caused widespread
distrust of imperialism:
Hobson's ...hatred of moneyed men
and monopolies, his loathing of secret compacts and public bluster,
fused all existing indictments of imperialism into one coherent
system....His ideas influenced German nationalist opponents of the
British Empire as well as French Anglophobes and Marxists; they colored
the thoughts of American liberals and isolationist critics of
colonialism. In days to come they were to contribute to American
distrust of Western Europe and of the British Empire. Hobson helped make
the British averse to the exercise of colonial rule; he provided
indigenous nationalists in Asia and Africa with the ammunition to resist
rule from Europe.
The American rejection of the League of Nations in 1919 was
accompanied with a sharp American reaction against European imperialism.
American textbooks denounced imperialism as a major cause of the World
War. The uglier aspects of British colonial rule were emphasized,
recalling the long-standing anti-British sentiments in the United
States.
In Britain and Canada
Anti-imperialism within Britain emerged in the 1890s, especially from within the Liberal Party. For over a century, back to the days of Adam Smith
in 1776, economists had been hostile to imperialism on the grounds that
it is a violation of the principles of free trade; they never formed a
popular movement. Indeed, imperialism seems to have been generally
popular before the 1890s. The key impetus around 1900 came from strong public disapproval with the British actions during with the Second Boer War (1899–1902). The war was fought against the Afrikaners, who were Dutch colonists who had built new homelands in South Africa. Opposition to the Second Boer War
was modest when the war began and was generally less widespread than
support for it. However, influential groups formed immediately against
the war, including the South African Conciliation Committee and W. T. Stead's Stop the War Committee.
Much of the opposition in Britain came from the Liberal Party.
Intellectuals and activists Britain based in the socialist, labour and
Fabian movements generally oppose imperialism and John A. Hobson, a Liberal, took many of his ideas from their writings. After the Boer war, opponents of imperialism turned their attention to the British crown colonies in Africa and Asia. By the 1920s, the government was sponsoring large-scale exhibits promoting imperialism, notably the 1924 British Empire Exhibition in London and the 1938 Glasgow Empire Exhibition. Some intellectuals used the opportunity to criticise imperialism as a policy.[29]
Moderately active anti-imperial movements emerged in Canada and
Australia. The French Canadians were hostile to British expansion whilst
in Australia, it was the Irish Catholics who were opposed.[30]
French Canadians argue that Canadian nationalism was the proper and
true goal and it sometimes conflicted with loyalty to the British
Empire. Many French Canadians claimed that they would fight for Canada
but would not fight for the Empire.
Protestant Canadians, typically of British descent, generally
supported British imperialism enthusiastically. They sent thousands of
volunteers to fight alongside British and imperial forces against the
Boers and in the process identified themselves even more strongly with
the British Empire. A little opposition also came from some English immigrants such as the intellectual leader Goldwin Smith.
In Canada, the Irish Catholics were fighting the French Canadians for
control of the Catholic Church, so the Irish generally supported the
pro-British position. Anti-imperialism also grew rapidly in India and formed a core element of the demand by Congress for independence.
Marxism–Leninism
To the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, imperialism was the highest, but degenerate, stage of capitalismTo the Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara,
imperialism was a capitalistic geopolitical system of control and
repression which must be understood as such in order to be defeated
In the mid-19th century, Karl Marx mentioned imperialism to be part of the prehistory of the capitalist mode of production in Das Kapital (1867–1894). Much more important was Vladimir Lenin, who defined imperialism as "the highest stage of capitalism", the economic stage in which monopoly finance capital becomes the dominant application of capital.
As such, said financial and economic circumstances impelled national
governments and private business corporations to worldwide competition
for control of natural resources and human labour by means of colonialism.
The Leninist views of imperialism and related theories, such as dependency theory, address the economic dominance and exploitation
of a country, rather than the military and the political dominance of a
people, their country and its natural resources. Hence, the primary
purpose of imperialism is economic exploitation, rather than mere
control of either a country or of a region. The Marxist and the Leninist
denotation thus differs from the usual political science denotation of
imperialism as the direct control (intervention, occupation and rule)
characteristic of colonial and neo-colonial empires as used in the realm of international relations.
Concentration of production and capital leading to the dominance of national and multinational monopolies and cartels.
Industrial capital as the dominant form of capital has been replaced by finance capital,
with the industrial capitalists increasingly reliant on capital
provided by monopolistic financial institutions. "Again and again, the
final word in the development of banking is monopoly".
The export of the aforementioned finance capital is emphasized over the export of goods.
The economic division of the world by multinational cartels.
The political division of the world into colonies by the great powers, in which the great powers monopolise investment.
Generally, the relationship among Marxist-Leninists and radical, left-wing organisations who are anti-war, often involves persuading such political activists to progress from pacifism
to anti-imperialism—that is, to progress from the opposition of war, in
general, to the condemnation of the capitalist economic system, in
particular.
In the 20th century, the Soviet Union represented themselves as the foremost enemy of imperialism and thus politically and financially supported Third World
revolutionary organisations who fought for national independence. This
was accomplished through the export of both financial capital and Soviet
military apparatuses, with the Soviet Union sending military advisors
to Ethiopia, Angola, Egypt and Afghanistan.
However, anarchists
as well as many other Marxist organizations, have characterized Soviet
foreign policy as imperialism and cited it as evidence that the
philosophy of Marxism would not resolve and eliminate imperialism. Mao Zedong developed the theory that the Soviet Union was a social imperialist
nation, a socialist people with tendencies to imperialism, an important
aspect of Maoist analysis of the history of the Soviet Union.
Contemporarily, the term "anti-imperialism" is most commonly applied by
Marxist-Leninists, and political organisations of like ideological
persuasion who oppose capitalism, present a class analysis of society and the like.
About the nature of imperialism and how to oppose and defeat it, Che Guevara said:
imperialism
is a world system, the last stage of capitalism—and it must be defeated
in a world confrontation. The strategic end of this struggle should be
the destruction of imperialism. Our share, the responsibility of the
exploited and underdeveloped of the world, is to eliminate the
foundations of imperialism: our oppressed nations, from where they
extract capitals, raw materials, technicians, and cheap labor, and to
which they export new capitals—instruments of domination—arms and all
kinds of articles; thus submerging us in an absolute dependence.
— Che Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental, 1967
Depiction of the first shoot-down of Soviet helicopter gunships by the Afghan mujahideen using Western-supplied Stinger Missiles, widely regarded as the turning point in the Soviet-Afghan WarPolish anti-Soviet poster depicting Lev Trotsky.
Soviet foreign policy have been characterized as imperialist and colonialist.
The nations which were part of the Soviet sphere of influence were
nominally independent countries with separate governments that set their
own policies, but those policies had to stay within certain limits
decided by the Soviet Union. These limits were enforced by the threat of
intervention by Soviet forces, and later the Warsaw Pact. Major military invasions took place in East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1980–81 and Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. Countries in the Soviet Bloc were considered satellite states.
The Soviet Union exhibited tendencies common to historic empires.
The notion of "Soviet empire" often refers to a form of "classic" or
"colonial" empire with communism only replacing conventional imperial
ideologies such as Christianity or monarchy, rather than creating a
revolutionary state. Academically the idea is seen as emerging with Richard Pipes' 1957 book The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917–1923, but it has been reinforced, along with several other views, in continuing scholarship. Several scholars hold that the Soviet Union was a hybrid entity containing elements common to both multinational empires and nation states. The Soviet Union practiced colonialism similar to conventional imperial powers.
These anti-colonial movements inspired the rise of Pan-Islamism during the late 19th century; which gave birth to numerous Islamist organisations advocating anti-imperialism across the Muslim World; such as the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimeen) and Jamaat-e-Islami. Syro-Egyptian Islamist theoretician Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865 C.E/1282 A.H- 1935 C.E/1354 A.H), a Salafi theologian greatly influenced by preceding militant Islamic revivalist movements, was an ardent opponent of European imperial powers; and he called for armed Jihad to defend the Islamic World from encroaching colonialism, complemented by a political programme to establish Islamic states which would implement Sharia (Islamic laws). He extended this anti-imperialist campaign to the theological level through the Arab Salafiyya movement; which professed the key theme of returning to the values of Salaf al-Salih. This encompassed a theological assault on Western ideological currents emanating from the principles of secularism and nationalism as well as denunciation of Westerncultural imperialism.
After Rashid Rida, the mantle of Islamist anti-imperialism was spearheaded by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, South Asian revolutionary Islamist leader Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi and Egyptian Jihadist theoretician Sayyid Qutb.
Mawdudi held the belief that West was in decline and that restoration
of Islamic prowess was inevitable. Openly equating Western colonialism
with atheism, Mawdudi called upon Muslims to rally in Jihad
against the imperialist forces to regain their spiritual, cultural,
economic and military sovereignty and self-sufficiency. Sayyid Qutb, an
Egyptian scholar influenced by both Mawdudi and Rashid Rida, took their
ideas to its logical culmination; proclaiming the necessity of a
permanent, un-ending Islamist revolution not only against the
imperialists but also its allied regimes in the Muslim World. This revolution against the apostate regimes has to be waged as an armed Jihad by an ideological vanguard committed to establish the Islamic state and uphold Tawhid (Islamic monotheism). These ideas gained prominence and arose in influence across the Islamic World during the post World War 2 era. During the Cold War period, the Islamist intellectuals from the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e Islami also launched fervent anti-communist campaigns, ideologically critiquing socialism and Marxism and chiding leftists as agents of Soviet Imperialism.
In his book "Al Jihad Fil Islam", South Asian revolutionary Islamist scholar Abul A'la Mawdudi made a comprehensive Islamic refutation of imperialism.
He argued that oppressive rulers justify imperialism in the name of
progress and socio-political reforms. Describing the main features of
imperialism, Mawdudi wrote:
"the basic quality of imperialism
is the dominance of one particular nation or country... Thus, the doors
of imperialism remain closed to people of other nationalities and for
this reason, they can play no major role in running its affairs. This
gives rise to the development of other faults in the system and
characters of the subject nation. They develop a weakness of character,
lose self-esteem and the sense of righteousness. Even if the ruling
nation does not treat the subjects with outright cruelty and arrogance,
their (the subject nation’s) character sinks to such a low ebb of
ignobility that they become quite incapable of striving for attaining
and maintaining self-rule for a very long time."
According to the Egyptian Jihadist theoretician Sayyid Qutb, the imperialism of secular Western powers was a by-product of their historical Crusading spirit and driven by ideological differences
The Indian Jamaat-e-Islami Hind launched a ten-day nationwide campaign titled Anti-Imperialism Campaign in December 2009. Contemporary Jihadist movements such as Al-Qaeda, influenced by Sayyid Qutb's thought, declares itself as a "global revolutionary vanguard" waging Jihad to defend Muslims from atrocities committed by the forces of Western imperialism and its allies.
In the worldview of EgyptianJihadist theoretician Sayyid Qutb, imperialist policies of the secular Western regimes were a continuation of their historical "Crusading Spirit". In his commentary of the Qur'anicverse 2:120 "{Never will the Jews be pleased with you, (O Prophet), nor the Christians until you follow their way..}", Sayyid Qutb writes:
"The conflict between the Judeo-Christian world on the one side, and the Muslim community
on the other, remains in essence one of ideology, although over the
years it has appeared in various guises and has grown more sophisticated
and, at times, more insidious. We have seen the original ideological
conflict succeeded by economic, political and military confrontation, on
the basis that ‘religious’ or ‘ideological’ conflicts are outdated and
are usually prosecuted by ‘fanatics’ and backward people. Unfortunately,
some naïve and confused Muslims
have fallen for this stratagem and persuaded themselves that the
religious and ideological aspects of the conflict are no longer
relevant. But in reality world Zionism and ChristianImperialism, as well as world Communism, are conducting the fight against Islam
and the Muslim community, first and foremost, on ideological grounds...
The confrontation is not over control of territory or economic
resources, or for military domination. If we believe that, we would play
into our enemies’ hands and would have no one but ourselves to blame
for the consequences."
Sometimes
liberals also oppose imperialism. However, liberal anti-imperialists
are distinct from socialist anti-imperialists because they do not
support anti-capitalism.
South Korean liberals have opposed Chinese and Japanese imperialism. "No Japan Movement" is related to anti-imperialist sentiment in South Korea. On August 14, 2019, seven politicians of the DPK's descendants of independence activists said at a press conference, "In the spirit of Great Korean Independence 100 years ago, let's overcome the economic invasion of Shinzo Abe's government." (100년 전 대한독립의 정신으로 아베 정부 경제침략을 이겨내자.)
South Korean liberals, unlike protectionist anti-imperialists,
believing that the Japanese government's actions that undermined the "free trade principle" (자유무역 원칙 or 자유무역 철칙) during the Japan–South Korea trade dispute were far-right imperialist 'economic invasion'.
(South Korean liberals argue that the Japanese government caused unfair
damage to the South Korean economy to avoid compensation for Korean
victims of Japanese war crimes during the past imperialist Japan.) South Korean liberals also oppose the appropriation of Korean culture of the Chinese people.
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt assert that traditional anti-imperialism is no longer relevant. In the book Empire,
Negri and Hardt argue that imperialism is no longer the practice or
domain of any one nation or state. Rather, they claim, the "Empire" is a
conglomeration of all states, nations, corporations, media, popular and
intellectual culture and so forth; and thus, traditional
anti-imperialist methods and strategies can no longer be applied against
them.
Plant reproduction is the production of new offspring in plants, which can be accomplished by sexual or asexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction produces offspring by the fusion of gametes, resulting in offspring genetically different from either parent. Asexual reproduction
produces new individuals without the fusion of gametes, resulting in
clonal plants that are genetically identical to the parent plant and
each other, unless mutations occur.
Asexual reproduction is a type of reproduction where the
offspring comes from one parent only, thus inheriting the
characteristics of the parent. Asexual reproduction in plants occurs in
two fundamental forms, vegetative reproduction and agamospermy. Vegetative reproduction involves a vegetative piece of the original plant producing new individuals by budding, tillering, etc. and is distinguished from apomixis,
which is a replacement of sexual reproduction, and in some cases
involves seeds. Apomixis occurs in many plant species such as dandelions
(Taraxacum species) and also in some non-plant organisms. For apomixis and similar processes in non-plant organisms, see parthenogenesis.
Natural vegetative reproduction is a process mostly found in perennial plants, and typically involves structural modifications of the stem or roots and in a few species leaves.
Most plant species that employ vegetative reproduction do so as a means
to perennialize the plants, allowing them to survive from one season to
the next and often facilitating their expansion in size. A plant that
persists in a location through vegetative reproduction of individuals
gives rise to a clonal colony. A single ramet,
or apparent individual, of a clonal colony is genetically identical to
all others in the same colony. The distance that a plant can move during
vegetative reproduction is limited, though some plants can produce
ramets from branching rhizomes or stolons that cover a wide area, often
in only a few growing seasons. In a sense, this process is not one of
reproduction but one of survival and expansion of biomass of the
individual. When an individual organism
increases in size via cell multiplication and remains intact, the
process is called vegetative growth. However, in vegetative
reproduction, the new plants that result are new individuals in almost
every respect except genetic. A major disadvantage of vegetative
reproduction is the transmission of pathogens from parent to offspring.
It is uncommon for pathogens to be transmitted from the plant to its
seeds (in sexual reproduction or in apomixis), though there are
occasions when it occurs.
Seeds generated by apomixis are a means of asexual reproduction,
involving the formation and dispersal of seeds that do not originate
from the fertilization of the embryos. Hawkweeds (Hieracium), dandelions (Taraxacum), some species of Citrus and Kentucky blue grass (Poa pratensis) all use this form of asexual reproduction. Pseudogamy
occurs in some plants that have apomictic seeds, where pollination is
often needed to initiate embryo growth, though the pollen contributes no
genetic material to the developing offspring. Other forms of apomixis occur in plants also, including the generation of a plantlet in replacement of a seed or the generation of bulbils instead of flowers, where new cloned individuals are produced.
Structures
A rhizome
is a modified underground stem serving as an organ of vegetative
reproduction; the growing tips of the rhizome can separate as new
plants, e.g., polypody, iris, couch grass and nettles.
Prostrate aerial stems, called runners or stolons, are important vegetative reproduction organs in some species, such as the strawberry, numerous grasses, and some ferns.
Adventitious
buds form on roots near the ground surface, on damaged stems (as on the
stumps of cut trees), or on old roots. These develop into above-ground
stems and leaves. A form of budding called suckering is the reproduction or regeneration of a plant by shoots that arise from an existing root system. Species that characteristically produce suckers include elm (Ulmus) and many members of the rose family such as Rosa,Kerria and Rubus.
Bulbous plants such as onion (Allium cepa), hyacinths, narcissi and tulips reproduce vegetatively by dividing their underground bulbs into more bulbs. Other plants like potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) and dahlias reproduce vegetatively from underground tubers. Gladioli and crocuses reproduce vegetatively in a similar way with corms.
Gemmae are single cells or masses of cells that detach from plants to form new clonal individuals. These are common in Liverworts and mosses and in the gametophyte generation of some filmy fern. They are also present in some Club mosses such as Huperzia lucidula . They are also found in some higher plants such as species of Drosera.
Usage
The most
common form of plant reproduction used by people is seeds, but a number
of asexual methods are used which are usually enhancements of natural
processes, including: cutting, grafting, budding, layering, division, sectioning of rhizomes, roots, tubers, bulbs, stolons, tillers, etc., and artificial propagation by laboratory tissue cloning. Asexual methods are most often used to propagate cultivars with individual desirable characteristics that do not come true from seed. Fruit tree propagation is frequently performed by budding or grafting desirable cultivars (clones), onto rootstocks that are also clones, propagated by stooling.
In horticulture, a cutting is a branch that has been cut off from a mother plant below an internode and then rooted, often with the help of a rooting liquid or powder containing hormones. When a full root has formed and leaves begin to sprout anew, the clone is a self-sufficient plant, genetically identical.
Examples include cuttings from the stems of blackberries (Rubus occidentalis), African violets (Saintpaulia), verbenas (Verbena) to produce new plants. A related use of cuttings is grafting, where a stem or bud is joined onto a different stem. Nurseries offer for sale trees with grafted stems that can produce four or more varieties of related fruits, including apples.
The most common usage of grafting is the propagation of cultivars onto
already rooted plants, sometimes the rootstock is used to dwarf the
plants or protect them from root damaging pathogens.
Since vegetatively propagated plants are clones, they are
important tools in plant research. When a clone is grown in various
conditions, differences in growth can be ascribed to environmental
effects instead of genetic differences.
The gametophyte is the multicellular structure (plant) that is haploid, containing a single set of chromosomes in each cell. The gametophyte produces male or female gametes (or both), by a process of cell division, called mitosis.
In vascular plants with separate gametophytes, female gametophytes are
known as mega gametophytes (mega=large, they produce the large egg
cells) and the male gametophytes are called micro gametophytes
(micro=small, they produce the small sperm cells).
The fusion of male and female gametes (fertilization) produces a diploid zygote, which develops by mitotic cell divisions into a multicellular sporophyte.
The mature sporophyte produces spores
by meiosis, sometimes referred to as reduction division because the
chromosome pairs are separated once again to form single sets.
In mosses and liverworts, the gametophyte is relatively large,
and the sporophyte is a much smaller structure that is never separated
from the gametophyte. In ferns, gymnosperms, and flowering plants
(angiosperms), the gametophytes are relatively small and the sporophyte
is much larger. In gymnosperms and flowering plants the megagametophyte
is contained within the ovule (that may develop into a seed) and the microgametophyte is contained within a pollen grain.
Unlike animals, plants are immobile, and cannot seek out sexual
partners for reproduction. In the evolution of early plants, abiotic
means, including water and much later, wind, transported sperm for reproduction. The first plants were aquatic, as described in the page Evolutionary history of plants,
and released sperm freely into the water to be carried with the
currents. Primitive land plants such as liverworts and mosses had motile
sperm that swam in a thin film of water or were splashed in water
droplets from the male reproduction organs onto the female organs. As
taller and more complex plants evolved, modifications in the
alternation of generations evolved. In the Paleozoic era progymnosperms reproduced by using spores dispersed on the wind. The seed plants including seed ferns, conifers and cordaites, which were all gymnosperms, evolved 350 million years ago. They had pollen grains that contained the male gametes for protection of the sperm during the process of transfer from the male to female parts.
It is believed that insects fed on the pollen, and plants thus evolved to use insects
to actively carry pollen from one plant to the next. Seed producing
plants, which include the angiosperms and the gymnosperms, have a
heteromorphic alternation of generations with large sporophytes
containing much-reduced gametophytes. Angiosperms have distinctive
reproductive organs called flowers, with carpels,
and the female gametophyte is greatly reduced to a female embryo sac,
with as few as eight cells. Each pollen grains contains a greatly
reduced male gametophyte consisting of three or four cells. The sperm of
seed plants are non-motile, except for two older groups of plants, the Cycadophyta and the Ginkgophyta, which have flagella.
Flowering plants, the dominant plant group, reproduce both by sexual and asexual means. Their distinguishing feature is that their reproductive organs are contained in flowers. Sexual reproduction in flowering plants involves the production of separate male and female gametophytes that produce gametes.
The anther produces pollen grains which contain male gametophytes. The pollen grains attach to the stigma on top of a carpel, in which the female gametophytes (inside ovules) are located. Plants may either self-pollinate or cross-pollinate. The transfer of pollen (the male gametophytes) to the female stigmas occurs is called pollination.
After pollination occurs, the pollen grain germinates to form a pollen
tube that grows through the carpel's style and transports male nuclei
to the ovule to fertilize the egg cell and central cell within the
female gametophyte in a process termed double fertilization.
The resulting zygote develops into an embryo, while the triploid
endosperm (one sperm cell plus a binucleate female cell) and female
tissues of the ovule give rise to the surrounding tissues in the
developing seed. The fertilized ovules develop into seeds within a fruit formed from the ovary. When the seeds are ripe they may be dispersed together with the fruit or freed from it by various means to germinate and grow into the next generation.
Pollination
An orchid flower
Plants that use insects or other animals to move pollen from one
flower to the next have developed greatly modified flower parts to
attract pollinators and to facilitate the movement of pollen from one
flower to the insect and from the insect to the next flower. Flowers of
wind-pollinated plants tend to lack petals and or sepals; typically
large amounts of pollen are produced and pollination often occurs early
in the growing season before leaves can interfere with the dispersal of
the pollen. Many trees and all grasses and sedges are wind-pollinated.
Plants have a number of different means to attract pollinators
including color, scent, heat, nectar glands, edible pollen and flower
shape. Along with modifications involving the above structures two other
conditions play a very important role in the sexual reproduction of
flowering plants, the first is the timing of flowering and the other is
the size or number of flowers produced. Often plant species have a few
large, very showy flowers while others produce many small flowers, often
flowers are collected together into large inflorescences to maximize
their visual effect, becoming more noticeable to passing pollinators.
Flowers are attraction strategies and sexual expressions are functional
strategies used to produce the next generation of plants, with
pollinators and plants having co-evolved, often to some extraordinary
degrees, very often rendering mutual benefit.
Flower heads showing disk and ray florets.
The largest family of flowering plants is the orchids (Orchidaceae), estimated by some specialists to include up to 35,000 species,
which often have highly specialized flowers that attract particular
insects for pollination. The stamens are modified to produce pollen in
clusters called pollinia,
which become attached to insects that crawl into the flower. The flower
shapes may force insects to pass by the pollen, which is "glued" to the
insect. Some orchids are even more highly specialized, with flower
shapes that mimic the shape of insects to attract them to attempt to
'mate' with the flowers, a few even have scents that mimic insect pheromones.
Another large group of flowering plants is the Asteraceae or sunflower family with close to 22,000 species,
which also have highly modified inflorescences composed of many
individual flowers called florets. Heads with florets of one sex, when
the flowers are pistillate or functionally staminate or made up of all
bisexual florets, are called homogamous and can include discoid and
liguliflorous type heads. Some radiate heads may be homogamous too.
Plants with heads that have florets of two or more sexual forms are
called heterogamous and include radiate and disciform head forms, though
some radiate heads may be heterogamous too.
Ferns
Ferns typically produce large diploids with stem, roots, and leaves. On fertile leaves sporangia are produced, grouped together in sori and often protected by an indusium.
If the spores are deposited onto a suitable moist substrate they
germinate to produce short, thin, free-living gametophytes called prothalli that are typically heart-shaped, small and green in color. The gametophytes produce both motile sperm in the antheridia and egg cells in separate archegonia.
After rains or when dew deposits a film of water, the motile sperm are
splashed away from the antheridia, which are normally produced on the
top side of the thallus, and swim in the film of water to the antheridia
where they fertilize the egg. To promote out crossing or
cross-fertilization the sperm is released before the eggs are receptive
of the sperm, making it more likely that the sperm will fertilize the
eggs of the different thallus. A zygote
is formed after fertilization, which grows into a new sporophytic
plant. The condition of having separate sporophyte and gametophyte
plants is called alternation of generations. Other plants with similar
reproductive means include the Psilotum, Lycopodium, Selaginella and Equisetum.
The bryophytes, which include liverworts, hornworts and mosses, reproduce both sexually and vegetatively.
The gametophyte is the most commonly known phase of the plant.
Bryophytes are typically small plants that grow in moist locations and
like ferns, have motile sperm with flagella
and need water to facilitate sexual reproduction. These plants start as
a haploid spore that grows into the dominant form, which is a
multicellular haploid body with leaf-like structures that photosynthesize.
Haploid gametes are produced in antheridia and archegonia by mitosis.
The sperm released from the antheridia respond to chemicals released by
ripe archegonia and swim to them in a film of water and fertilize the
egg cells, thus producing zygotes that are diploid. The zygote divides
by mitotic division and grows into a sporophyte that is diploid. The
multicellular diploid sporophyte produces structures called spore capsules.
The spore capsules produce spores by meiosis, and when ripe, the
capsules burst open and the spores are released. Bryophytes show
considerable variation in their breeding structures and the above is a
basic outline. In some species each gametophyte is one sex while other species may be monoicous, producing both antheridia and archegonia on the same gametophyte which is thus hermaphrodite.
One of the outcomes of plant reproduction is the generation of seeds,
spores, gemmae and other vegetative organs that allow plants to move to
new locations or new habitats.
Plants do not have nervous systems or any will for their actions.
Even so, scientists are able to observe mechanisms that help their
"children" thrive as they grow. All organisms have mechanisms to
increase survival in offspring.
Offspring care is observed in the Mammillaria hernandezii,
a small cactus found in Mexico. A cactus is a type of succulent,
meaning it retains water when it is available for future droughts. M. hernandezii also stores a portion of its seeds in its stem, and releases the rest to grow.
This can be advantageous for many reasons. By delaying the release of
some of its seeds, the cactus can protect these from potential threats
from insects, herbivores, or mold caused by micro-organisms. A study
found that the presence of adequate water in the environment causes M. Hernandezii
to release more seeds to allow for germination. The plant was able to
perceive a water potential gradient in the surroundings, and act by
giving its seeds a better chance in this preferable environment. This evolutionary strategy gives a better potential outcome for seed germination
There are similar reproductive strategies found in both mammals
and plants. A divergence between the two is that in harsh environmental
conditions, mammals produce fewer and larger offspring, whereas plants
produce more seeds.
