bk.flow] NATURE-STUDY AND MANUAL TRAINING 91 



that it may be put into successful practice. Elementary agriculture 

 may not be forced upon the schools by legislation but interested 

 teachers, working along the lines just indicated, may prepare the way 

 for the elementary schools to do their share in raising the life of rural 

 communities to a higher social and economic level. In so doing the 

 other forces already active will be able to do better and more effective 

 work . 



The school-garden as an outdoor laboratory has almost unlimited 

 possibilities. It fulfills the highest function of nature-study by being 

 a center of activity whereby the children may "learn those things of 

 nature that are best worth knowing to the end of making life better 

 worth living." 



CORRELATION OF NATURE-STUDY AND MANUAL TRAINING 



BY MAURICE A. BIGELOW 

 Teachers College, Columbia University 



[A paper read before the Eastern Association of Manual Training Teachers, 

 Newark, N. J. July 1, 1905.] 



It is chiefly in the line of methods of teaching that manual training 

 and nature-study come into contact. It is now generally agreed by 

 leaders of nature-study that it must be taught by actual examination 

 of natural things themselves. This, the laboratory method of higher 

 education, means handling plants, animals, and lifeless objects in 

 order to learn through the senses. It is decidedly an active method 

 as compared with ordinary teaching. In short, the nature study 

 method consists largely in learning by doing. Of course, the best 

 teachers of nature-study will not depend entirely upon the learning- 

 by-doing method. Some supplementary didactic teaching is necessary 

 and valuable ; but the foundation of all real nature-study and of every 

 goodnature-study lesson is in the actual "doing things" with natural 

 objects which the pupils have before them. It is in this method of 

 learning by doing, by the pupils' own activity, that we find close 

 similarity between nature-study and manual training, and here in 

 method is the real basis for the most important correlation between 

 the two subjects. The problems of correlation involved are largely 

 those of relating the activities of nature-study and manual training. 



The best nature-study courses consist in two distinct kinds of work : 

 (1) that adapted to the schoolroom, (2) that for outdoors. In each 



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