THE A \4 TC T RE-S 7 7 T D V REVIEW \ 2 ■. 7 -oct. , . 906 



THE FIELD TRIP IN NATURE-STUDY 



BY STANLEY COULTER 

 Professor ot Biology, Purdue University 



In order that nature-study may work its perfect work the child 

 must be brought face to face with nature. In other words, field trips 

 are absolutely essential in successful nature-study work. The field 

 trip has perhaps presented the most serious difficulties involved in 

 the subject; difficulties, however, of fairly easy solution save in excep- 

 tional cases such as those furnished by schools located in the conges- 

 ted districts of great cities. Teachers in some cases regard the field- 

 trip as a failure, in others as a positive damage, in very many others 

 as an annoyance to be suffered as rarely as possible. 



In the main these difficulties arise from two sources: first an imper- 

 fect conception of the purpose and limitations of natnre-study, and 

 second failure in the organization of the trip. The character and 

 extent of the tiip is of course largely determined by the mental and 

 physical capacity of the child, but whatever its character certain fun- 

 damental principles are involved in every successful field trip. These 

 may be summarized as follows: (i) A definite purpose. (2) A 

 reasonable purpose, or one that is wholly within the comprehension 

 of the child. (3) A reasonable distance to the area to be studied. (41 

 A definite and limited area of fairly distinct boundaries. 



Nothing works greater disaster in a field trip than the absence of 

 a definite purpose. The surest way to bring about failure is to trust 

 to what the children see without direction and without purpose. In 

 such cases there can be no means of control, no method of com- 

 paring results; there is none of the fine stimulus of competi- 

 tion and of reinvestigation because of differing results, no eager- 

 ness for accuracy. I once visited a summer laboratory in which the 

 direction given to the student was, "go out and catch what you can 

 and then study what you catch. ' ' The result was poor with university 

 students; it certainly gives no more promise of good results for pupils 

 in the grades. Many of the children have absolutely no point of con- 

 tact with nature, others will be interested for a brief time only in the 

 more evident features of local interest, and but a very few will gain 

 any real or permanentgood. But with a definite purpose these difficul- 



