DISCUSSIONS 25 



the activity of" remembering, would facilitate the business- of teaching very 

 materially. For example, I remember how swiftly I was progressing when 

 in my early years I learned by heart the classification in the back of Orton's 

 "Zoology." In comparison my subsequent feats of memory seemed far less 

 impressive to me. 



Whatever criticism may be offered against the present undetermined theory 

 of teaching nature-science, we have gone far enough to realize that the old 

 system of science teaching failed because the natural mind gets no satisfaction 

 from studying things in isolation. Our fathers knew more places on the map 

 than we do, including the rivers the places are on, but they didn't know 

 what the rivers are doing, nor why the places are there. The older botan- 

 ists and zoologists knew their classification and their morphological charac- 

 ters, but the things they saw had slight relation for them to other groups of 

 facts. There is no question now about our children being able to understand 

 facts better, since the schools are taking to the idea of satisfying the thinking, 

 not the remembering, mind by giving some atten ion to the interpretation of 

 the facts of nature in terms of other groups of facts which exist in logical 

 relation. 



No reasonable person would disagree with Dr. Hornaday in his conten- 

 tion that children should read books, but think of the greater ease with which 

 facts could be "tunneled" ! I believe all teachers realize that however unsat- 

 isfactory much of the object teaching doubtless is, the knowledge of things 

 at first hand means keen intellectual pleasure. Moreover, we all know that 

 a book is interesting in proportion as the contents are related to things already 

 in our store of experiences. This common belief gives sufficient basis for 

 object teaching. The problem we have before us is concerned in the main 

 with the method with which we approach our end, and it consists largely of 

 getting more knowledge of how to handle the subject-matter. The great end 

 for nature-study seems to me to be the extension ot our children's knowledge 

 of the material world through the process of thinking. In the course of their 

 thinking they will come to classification near the close, for classification itself 

 is the outcome of a great deal of thinking. 



DeWitt Clinton High School, Henry R. LlNVILLE. 



New York City. 



IV 



Dr. Hornaday has rendered a distinct service to the pupils in the public 

 schools by pointing out some of the weaknesses in nature-study teaching. 

 The formal teaching of things already known by the pupil, the over-use of 

 lectures, talks and quizzes, the piling up of masses of undigested notes, the 

 discarding of systematic text-books, with the consequent lack of system in the 



