woodiiull] PHYSICAL NATURE-STUDY 



19 



gines, magnets, compasses, lightning, electric batteries, bells, 

 motors, mirrors, prisms, magnifying glasses, whistles, harmonicas, 

 all kinds of machinery and physical phenomena in general. Will 

 any one undertake to say that children are more interested in 

 plants and animals than in these, or that the realm of biology 

 presents simpler facts and relations than the physical world? 

 While the systematic study of physical phenomena belongs to a 

 later period, children from ten to fourteen years of age have an 

 inextinguishable interest in them and will study them whether we 

 help them or not. 



Physical nature-study deals with facts and relations in the field 

 of physics and chemistry which the children of elementary-school 

 age need to know for intelligent and happy living. 



Possibly teachers of physics and chemistry have been too much 

 hampered by their allegiance to the inductive method. They have 

 scrupulously avoided the giving of information. They have even 

 refused to make use of simple and direct means of illustration. 

 Other departments give information freely and thereby secure a 

 strong hold upon the pupils. Why should the department which 

 has the most interesting and most valuable information, informa- 

 tion which has a very practical bearing upon daily life, be so 

 chary of it ? This was not the attitude of Faraday, Tyndall, Clerk 

 Maxwell, and of many other leaders in the field of physical 

 science — past and present. But among the teachers of physics 

 and chemistry in the public schools of to-day there certainly is 

 greater indifference to the needs of the elementary-school pupils 

 than is shown by the teachers of other departments of knowledge. 



The Nature-Study Review will welcome contributions which 

 will indicate that the foregoing statements are no longer true. 

 Teachers and others are invited to make this journal the channel 

 for communicating their ideas on physical nature-study — its 

 methods, limitations, etc. 



