hgrnaday] THE WEAKNESS IN NATURE-STUDY 241 



THE WEAKNESS IN TEACHING NATURE-STUDY 



BjT WILLIAM T. HORNADAY 

 Director of New York Zoological Park 



[Editorial Note. — This paper by Dr. Hornaday is so full of ideas radically 

 opposed to those commonly accepted by science teachers that it will certainly set 

 many readers of The Review at work defending their own views. Have we been 

 going to an extreme in basing our modern teaching on actual perception of natural 

 things themselves, and have we not neglected books too much? This is the prob- 

 lem which the following article sets before us. It deserves discussion. Perhaps- 

 there is a ' golden mean between two extremes" represented by observational 

 study and book study.] 



At this hour the most interesting and far-reaching study in which a 

 naturalist can engage is— why "nature-study is still so disorganized, 

 and so far from being firmly established in our school system. " This 

 question is taken from the editorial admission in The Nature-Study 

 Review, May issue, page 169. 



Beyond doubt the state of fact presupposed by the question really 

 exists. To an interested bystander it iseems that the teachers of 

 the kaleidoscopic things called "nature-studies" are, as a mass, 

 groping in Egyptian darkness for the method which shall be to 

 them all a pillar of light. It also seems that some of the reasons 

 for this are so plainly evident that they should be apparent to all. 



In the first place, all over this broad land — where up-to date-meth- 

 ods prevail — the teachers are struggling to do the work that forty 

 years ago was demanded of the pupil. Take geography, for instance. 

 The modern method practically requires the teacher to marshal facts 

 by the thousand and place them by his own efforts within empty 

 minds. Instead of starting with a bird's-eye view of the world and 

 gradually coming down to small details, the pupil must first be taken 

 out and shown the marvels of his own town, the wonders of his own 

 creeks and hills. In American schools much valuable time is wasted 

 in solemnly teaching things that all pupils who are not idiots would 

 be bound to learn early without a teacher and school "periods. ' ' The 

 great round world is approached by a long series of stealthy rlank 

 movements, chiefly at the expense of the teacher. 



Teaching from the object has become such a fetich that it is worked. 

 beyond its legitimate limit. By many the text-book seems to be 

 regarded as the pupil's last resort, a sort of necessary evil. Memor- 

 izing from a book has been replaced by the talk of the teacher, and! 

 the scanty scrawls, called ''notes," made by the pupil. I have seen 



