hunter] nature-study and biology 131 



we build our high-school science". "Nature-study is an intro- 

 duction to science." A western city says, "Nearly all our 

 elementary teachers have had courses in biology and carry out 

 the same methods of instruction (experimental method) in 

 grades as in the high school." 



Personal experience in New York City, where the correlation 

 in most schools is very slight, shows that pupils who have had 

 experimental science as is given in some of the elementary schools 

 of the city (where a special teacher gives instruction under the 

 departmental system) come to their biological work with an 

 entirely different mental attitude from pupils who have not had 

 this training. In such pupils the habit of scientific thinking is 

 already forming. 



It is not the purpose of this paper to suggest methods of im- 

 provement in nature-study, but some very evident lines of 

 advancem.ent are open, if this report means anything. Expres- 

 sion of opinion has been freely given, and some of the criticism 

 obtained is just. The past decade has shown great strides in the 

 direction of the introduction of nature-study in the schools, the 

 obvious suggestion arising from the data just given would indicate 

 that the teachers of nature-study should next attack the problems 

 of subject-matter and point of view. More uniformity of subject- 

 matter and more uniformity in presentation ; less time devoted to 

 reading or teaching about nature and more time given to experi- 

 mental work of a simple sort; the correlation of nature work and 

 elementary physiology; the introduction of cyclic work of a kind 

 that will have ultimate bearing on the problems of life ; and last 

 but not least, the proper training in the normal schools for the 

 teaching of nature-study — these are some of the problems to 

 which the leaders of the nature-study movement might well 

 devote their energies during the next decade of nature-study 

 development in the elementary schools. 



