hatch] WHY MANY FAIL IN TEACHING NATURE-STUDY 99 



and upon this basis doles out her generalizations, forgetting that 

 they may be worse than meaningless to her pupils when gained 

 by them in this unnatural way. For some teachers it is easier to 

 think for pupils than it is to get them to think for themselves. 

 Such teachers are better at teaching their subjects than they are 

 at teaching pupils. They wonder why it is necessary to teach 

 again a subject that has once been presented clearly. Pupils 

 must do their own thinking and reach their own conclusions if 

 they are to be of any value to them. Above all things the teacher 

 of nature-study needs to cultivate open-mindedness on the part 

 of her pupils. They must be ready to change conclusions pre- 

 viously reached, if further investigation and thought demand that 

 the change be made. They need to learn to base judgment upon 

 reliable evidence. They need to know what to class as reliable 

 evidence. They need to be discouraged in basing conclusions 

 upon insufficient data. Right here it is hard for some teachers 

 to go slowly. They are in such a hurry to tabulate and pigeon- 

 hole every scrap of knowledge that the child has that they can't 

 wait to let the child do some of this work for himself later in life 

 when there is a necessity for it. 



Nature-study is peculiar in that the material dealt with, for the 

 most part, is at first hand. This being true the teacher who tries 

 to teach this subject without sufficient suitable material on hand, 

 or within the reach of the child when it is needed, misses the 

 pith of the whole matter. There is a pathetic side to nature-study 

 which manifests itself, for instance, when a teacher stands before 

 her class with a dead apple twig six inches in length in her hand 

 and attempts to teach her pupils about the apple bud and how 

 it is fitted to be protected during the winter. The humor of the 

 situation becomes apparent when the class is studying life and 

 it is largely done through the study of dead specimens of plants 

 and animals. As a rule dead plants and animals do not manifest 

 life. Pupils are intensely interested, generally, in the study of 

 life under different forms and conditions. About it the most 

 interesting of problems cluster. These problems suggest to us 

 an ideal method of instruction. When we can present our work 

 to our pupils in the form of a problem, or a series of related 

 problems, we have solved in a large measure the problem of 

 teaching. These problems are found in the material of nature- 

 study, hence the importance of having that material at hand when 



