wager] TRAINING TEACHERS OF NATURE-STUDY 49 



school. Her life experiences have been exceedingly limited. As a 

 result she is unable to view with understanding these lessons sug- 

 gested in her outline, or to see them in a perspective of depth, and 

 consequently misinterprets the significance of many lessons, 

 emphasizes the unimportant elements to the submergence of the 

 principle toward which the content of the lesson points. Not 

 only so, but in her hopeless lack of experience, surrounded by a 

 world which she does not understand, she falls back upon the book 

 as her only refuge. From it she obtains her ideas, and toward it 

 she points the pupils under her charge. Outside her door the big 

 world is waiting. So it comes about that she does all the investi- 

 gating — in her books; and the pupils lose, probably forever, the 

 opportunity to use their own eyes, and exercise their own mental 

 powers, under the guidance of one to whom the great out-of-doors 

 is not entirely a closed book. Too often, indeed, the teaching is 

 badly done. 



We need to push this point still further. Unlike the three R's 

 the subject of Nature-Study has, in the past been but fragmen- 

 tarily presented, if at all, so that the teachers of to-day have not 

 had childhood guidance and instruction in it. They have not 

 grown up under the stimulus of the idea that its pursuit and mas- 

 tery in at least a small way, is as essential to an education, as, let 

 us say, arithmetic, grammar or geography. The error to which 

 I made reference, consists in believing that good teaching of the 

 subject is uniformly possible with the limited training and experi- 

 ence of the average grade teacher. The subject has not yet ac- 

 quired the historical momentum necessary to carry it convincingly 

 into the curriculum. It is there, in many cases, by suffrage, and 

 we must not deceive ourselves as to why it is so. 



Note, furthermore, that quite universally, by county and state 

 authority, are minima of special training being set up. The time 

 is not distant when the high school graduate, not to mention him 

 from the eighth grade, can no longer get a "job" teaching save he 

 follows with at least a year, or, in many cases, two, of special and 

 professional training. That the time required in this training shall 

 be increased with the developments of the future is certain. Con- 

 template also the marked ebb in the wave of enthusiasm for instruc- 

 tion in agriculture, which is after all, Nature-Study, and you must 

 admit that the outlook for the future is most encouraging. We 

 must turn our face toward it. 



