2 2 2 THE NA TU RE-STUD Y RE VIE W [ 3 : 8-nov., ,907 



to the notion that teaching consists in imparting a certain definite 

 amount of knowledge that it is difficult to realize the teacher may- 

 still teach while ignorant of the facts involved. Information is 

 not the prime desideratum in nature-study. It is a spirit of 

 investigation and appreciation. Surely the teacher may lead the 

 pupils in these. 



The field work in nature-study meets objection from the 

 parents, frequently, who feel that school time should not be 

 frittered away in running about out-of-doors. This is an objec- 

 tion that may best be met by avoiding it, until parents realize 

 that frequent recreation is an imperative need with the easily 

 fatigued nerve centers of the child, and that the fresh air work is 

 no loss but a distinct gain. The teacher may well afford to utilize 

 time after school, or even on Saturday to go out for the nature- 

 study rambles with her pupils. Nothing can quite take their 

 place. Nature-study will continue to be a prefunctory per- 

 formance until the teacher acquires the joy of tramping out-of- 

 doors. 



Merely getting out, however, is not enough. A picnic is not 

 necessarily nature-study. The teacher needs to see to it that the 

 pupils accomplish some real work while out. This means careful 

 planning of the lesson and relating it to the year's course; a pre- 

 liminary survey of the route insures finding the things wanted. 

 Then the pupils must be held to the plan. Naturally interesting 

 things not foreseen will be encountered. The lesson plan may 

 not be too rigidly adhered to, yet elasticity must not degenerate 

 into aimlessness. 



These ideal out-of-door lessons may not always or everywhere 

 be feasible. Winter will necessitate utilizing, in part at least, 

 material that may be kept and reared in the schoolroom. Possi- 

 bly city conditions may preclude all w< >rk with animals and plants 

 in their native haunts. Yet the out-door world is still the child's 

 world. The sky-line may be a silhoutte of buildings instead of 

 green hills, pavement may replace broad fields, and alleys the 

 country lanes; yet all this is a very real and interesting environ- 

 ment. The city child's experiences are quite unlike but just as 

 absorbing as those of the country-bred lad ; and it is these experi- 

 ences we are trying to make the stepping stones to education. We 

 may need to plan the work on a basis of industrial evolution 

 rather than with organic evolution in mind, yet the aims and 



