THE 



NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



DEVOTED TO ALL PHASES OF NATURE-STUDY IN SCHOOLS 



Vol. 3 • JANUARY, 1907 No. 1 



THE ESTABLISHED PRINCIPLES OF NATURE-STUDY 



BY MAURICE A. BIGELOW 



Teachers College, Columbia University 



[Read before the Section of Biology, of the New York State Science Teach- 

 ers' Association, December 27, 1906.] 



Some months ago one of the best known experts in the general 

 field of elementary education asked me essentially these questions: 

 ''What principles of nature-study may be considered firmly estab- 

 lished? When will the leaders in the nature-study movement begin 

 to reach agreement so that we may have some definite guidance in 

 our elementary schools and thus cease the apparently aimless groping 

 in the dark?" These questions, coming as they did from such an 

 authority on elementary education, deserve a most serious answer. 

 And the seriousness of the problem is still greater to one who knows 

 from the extensive correspondence connected with the editorial work 

 of The Nature-Study Review that just such questions are being 

 asked wherever educators have had their attention attracted to nature- 

 study. Everywhere there seems to be strong popular impression that 

 each advocate of nature-study is a law unto himself and that in each 

 region nature-study is quite distinct from all other places in the 

 world because the local leader appears to have views which are op- 

 posed to those held by leaders elsewhere. 



Is all this widespread impression really well founded ? Is it true 

 that nature-study as an educational movement is entirely disorganized 

 and that after all the years of work we have made no decided prog- 

 ress ? I feel certain that to these questions we can give an emphatic 

 negative answer, and so I invite your attention to some facts which 

 point to the conclusion that on some most important principles — in fact 

 the very foundations of nature-study — there is agreement on the part 



