ahearxe] NATURE-STUDY IN THE GARY SCHOOLS 59 



the names "door-weed" and "knot-weed" were discovered but why- 

 it is called "goose-grass" was reserved for future observation to 

 discover. 



The feature of the investigation that impressed me most forcibly 

 was Professor Dearness' solicitude that the students should DO 

 something to make a basis for every known answer or to justify 

 it. It seemed as though he would prefer errors of interpretation 

 of observation or experiment to truths that were merely guessed 

 or stumbled upon. 



Nature-Study in the Gary Schools 



Margaret Ahearne 

 (Paper presented at the Philadelphia meeting) 



In discussing nature-study in the Gary schools, I shall have to 

 speak more or less about the whole system. 



We have two large schools which have high school departments, 

 the Emerson school and the Froebel school. All of the other 

 schools contain the grades only. Even in the high schools the 

 children are spoken of as ninth grade and tenth grade children 

 rather than as freshmen and sophomores. 



Owing to the differences in the grades in the different buildings, 

 each building has developed nature-study in a slightly different 

 way. The class of children taught, the environment of the child- 

 ren and the training and individuality of the teacher also play 

 an important part in the way in which the nature-study is 

 developed. 



At the Froebel building the enrollment is nearly two thousand. 

 The majority of these children are in the lower grades. For 

 instance in the first grade there are ten divisions averaging thirty- 

 five each. Froebel is unusual in that there are so many children 

 in the primary department. There are at least twenty-eight 

 different nationalities represented at the Froebel school. 



All of the primary children in this building have nature-study 

 during the year. There are two nature-study teachers for the 

 primary department. The children have a one hour period a day. 

 When a new teacher tries to devote a whole hour to nature-study 

 she is apt to run out of material very quickly or else give the 

 children more than they can assimilate. But gradually she finds 

 ways by which she can use the whole hour with profit. 



