singer] NATURE-STUDY AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE 179 



Not that I advocate following the lines of least resistance in edu- 

 cation, but I want, in this paper, to enter protest against the mass 

 of science contained in the average text-book intended for use in 

 secondary and high schools. I believe them to be beyond the 

 comprehension and capacity of the pupils who use them in the 

 time given to these subjects in an over-crowded curriculum. 



In conclusion, fellow teachers, let me appeal to you to use 

 whatever in physics, chemistry or other sciences will attract the 

 interest of the children and make them love nature, and to dis- 

 card all that part of science which, though of value to the few 

 especially engaged in technical or theoretical work, is distasteful 

 to and beyond the ken of the majority of the pupils. Remem- 

 ber that only that is of vital interest to the child which comes into 

 the sphere of his experience, and is in reality part of his environ- 

 ment. Too often "we study nature from books and when we go 

 where she is we cannot rind her," but brighter days are dawning 

 and much depends upon you, enthusiastic teachers, to solve this 

 problem. The measure of your success will be the number of 

 pupils you can inoculate with a love for nature, which will often 

 lead to a real love for science, but there must be this sequence, 

 nature-study winning the attention of the children in the lower 

 grades, homeopathic doses of science in increasing cmantities 

 until the nature-study of the elementary schools blends into 

 science in the last years of the high school. I want, in closing, to 

 second the protest of Professor J. V. Crone, "against that effort 

 made in response to an awakened interest in nature in our public 

 schools to lay the foundations of science there under the name and 

 at the expense of nature-studv. True nature-study must say to 

 science, 'Thy ways are not my ways, nor my thoughts thy 

 thoughts.' Science is for the few; nature-studv for all. They 

 have nothing in common. They should not conflict, but let them 

 not be confused." 



