THE 



NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



DEVOTED TO ALL PHASES OF NATURE-STUDY IN 

 ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 



Vol. I SEPTEMBER, 1905 No. 5 



THE RELATION OF GEOGRAPHY TO NATURE-STUDY IN 

 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 



BY HAROLD W. FAIRBANKS, PH.D. 



Author of " Stories of our Mother Earth," " Home Geography," " Stories of Rocks and 



Minerals," etc. 



Introduction 



It requires but a slight experience with educational problems 

 to discover that there exists a very wide divergence of opinion 

 as to what should be included under the terms geography and 

 nature-study, and the relationship, if any, which exists between 

 their respective fields. A part of what in one school is called 

 geography is in another included under the head of nature-study. 

 In one school geography and nature-study are taught as though 

 they had nothing in common, while in another they are more or 

 less closely correlated. Still farther, the instruction in nature- 

 study, or science as it is often called, is given from different 

 standpoints and with widely different objects in view. On the 

 one hand it is the informal introduction of the child to the phe- 

 nomena of his environment, while on the other hand the methods 

 and aims of science dominate the instruction. 



There is a wide-spread feeling on the part of teachers that 

 the work in geography does not produce satisfactory results, and 

 the subject has been condemned in some quarters as merely an 

 agglomeration of facts from many unrelated fields ; while the 

 progress of the nature-study idea has suffered from the lack of 

 a distinctly formulated purpose or unifying principle to serve as 

 a basis for its expression under varying circumstances in different 

 pants of the country. 



