trafton] CHILDREN'S interest in nature materials 151 



others bad, to be repressed. Nor should we forget that the child 

 comes by both characteristics as a resiilt of his inheritance and is 

 no more to be blamed for the latter than for the former. The 

 first instincts of the child show his kin to Nature. The child 

 desires to be put out in the open air, and where circumstances 

 allow, he grows up with his pets, the plants and the wild animals. 

 In thickly crowded cities, untoward surroundings tend to check 

 this natiiral tendency, but it still manifests itself, though re- 

 pressed. 



After a few years of this free life, the child is introduced into 

 our system of civilization through the educating agencies of our 

 republic, partly in the home, chiefly in the schoolroom. Often- 

 times this change has been abrupt and the child has been almost 

 rudely torn away from his early attachment, and no opportunity 

 is allowed for contact in later years with those phases of nature 

 with which the growing child and youth ought to be in touch as 

 he develops into manhood. 



The development of the child and the demands of ovcc civiliza- 

 tion necessarily require the child to spend a large amount of his 

 time in preparing to become a part of that civilization, but just 

 as truly do they demand that these ties which bind the child to 

 Mother Nature shall not be entirely broken, but that these chords 

 from Nature's heart shall be fastened more securely to the child's 

 life in order that through them may be absorbed the inspiration 

 that Nature can furnish. How to teach Nature so that these ends 

 may best be accomplished is the problem that teachers are now 

 solving. 



To make a local study of some of the problems involved in the 

 relation of Natiire and the child, questions were sent to the four 

 upper grades of the Passaic schools to be answered by the children. 

 Altogether the papers of a little less than one thousand children 

 have been examined in preparing the results tabulated below. 

 The questions sent out were formulated with two special objects 

 in mind, first to test the children's knowledge of animals and 

 plants, and second, to see Nature from the child's standpoint. 

 The first object was easily attained and the results are of local 

 interest as matters of information, but they also may suggest the 

 subject-matter which shoiild be taken up in Nature teaching in 

 the Passaic schools. The second object was much more difficult 

 of attainment, but the results may be of more than local interest 



