hornadav] THE WEAKNESS IN'NATURE-STUDY 243 



neling of facts into empty heads. They must dig, or they will remain 

 ignorant! And to do this, they should have such a text-book as has 

 not yet been written. 



The ideal text-book should be written by a practical teacher, who 

 is capable of taking a broad survey of the whole field of nature, and 

 who will not handicap his work by overloading it with his own favorite 

 subject. Do not try to handle botany and zoology in the same 

 volume; for an angel from Heaven could not do it successfully. In 

 zoology, anatomy should at first be severely and resolutely let alone! 

 And give up, once for all, the mistaken and pernicious notion that the 

 natural object is everything, and pictures and diagrams are nothings. 

 In spite of Agassiz, American children are not such idiots that they 

 can not learn continents and states from maps, and living things from 

 pictures. 



The utterly sinful waste of school time on such studies (!) as those 

 listed under the head of "Clothing, How to Uress Properly" in 

 The Review, (May issue, page 165), is a subject by itself; yet it 

 deserves to be reckoned with in solving the nature-study puzzle. If 

 the dead wood ever can be cut out of modern schoolcour ses of study, 

 the school pupil will have ample time to learn something worth know- 

 ing about the most important zoological forms of his own country. 



American educators may try all they please to evade the necessity 

 of teaching animal and plant classification as the bed-rock foundation 

 of their work, even in the upper grades of the grammar schools; but 

 the final result is inevitable. The processes of nature can not be 

 reversed by the fiat of a board of education. The multiplication table 

 must be learned before the pupil can successfully cope with percent- 

 age. Even a Bornean head-hunter knows better than to attempt to 

 put doors and windows in his house before he has built the founda- 

 tion and erected the walls. And yet, there are hundreds of persons 

 who believe that in an exposition of animal life the teacher can begin 

 wherever he pleases, and leave out "everything that does not happen 

 to strike his fancy, or that does not live in his own bailiwick. 



Inrecordingthe.se views. I am assuming that the nature-study to 

 which this journal is devoted is serious work, for pupils of reason 

 and sense, and not for primary department children who are too small 

 to use textbooks. I have not attempted to sugar-coat too deeply 

 what I have tried to say; for it seems to me that the time has come 

 for plain speaking. If my views meet with no concurrence and less 

 sympathy, I will at least be able to feel that I have conscientiously 

 posted this warning. 



