bigelow] SCI EX CI-., NATURE-STUDY AND BIOLOGY 241 



Uncle Rennus' stories of Brer Rabbit for illustrative study, 

 getting much enjoyment and thereby much better work in an 

 original, from students who have claimed no originality. These 

 lessons accomplished much. Not only as drawing lessons, but in 

 alertness of eye and mind. The many students who think draw- 

 ing requires talent and should be studied only by those who possess 

 it are finding their mistake. Drawing does not require talent, it 

 does require careful observation and thought, and the practice 

 which any ability demands. 



General Science, Nature-Study, and Biology 



Maurice A. Bigelow 



Teachers College, Columbia University 



(Read at the Philadelphia meeting of the American Nature-Study Society, 

 December, 19 14. 1 



"General Science" is an unfortunate name that in the past few 

 years has been applied to certain general studies of nature that 

 have been on trial in the last year of some elementary schools and 

 in the first year of many four-year high schools. I have deliber- 

 ately characterized the name as "unfortunate" because I have for 

 years believed that all studies of nature preliminary to the organ- 

 ized sciences should be from the nature-study point of view, that 

 is. they should deal with nature as it concerns our everyday life 

 directly and not at all indirectly through the principles of formal 

 science. Hence, it seems to me unfortunate that the naming and 

 the organizing of this new study, which stands between nature- 

 study and the high-school sciences, did not happen to be the work 

 of educators who understood thoroughly the nature-study point 

 of view. I am sure that such persons would have called the new 

 subject of study not "general science" but "introduction to 

 science," for they would have realized that it should be planned 

 as a transition from nature-study into real science and not as an 

 abstract of the formal sciences. The major part of the subject- 

 matter thus far arranged for the new course of study is science, 

 and far from the nature study point of view. Some of the books 

 now in use might have been made from a few standard science books 

 by the use of scissors, paste and patience, for they are only scrap- 

 books of science. I find in them the atoms and molecules of chem- 

 istry, the conservation of energy and laws of motion of physics, 

 the doctrine of evolution and the cell-protoplasmic theories of 



