414 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [11:9— Dec, 1915 



Study materials in class room instruction. This does not mean, as 

 some might infer, that the prospective teachers should be taught 

 in exactly the same way, the same amount of material, and by the 

 same method, as they are expected to use in their instruction in the 

 grades. This is hardly a psychological possibility, and even if 

 it were possible it would be undesirable because it would tend to 

 make teachers of Nature-Study mere automatons, persons without 

 initiative. Through the instruction that they receive the teachers 

 must learn to appreciate, for instance, that the specific aims, 

 materials, and methods must be different in teaching the cow to a 

 group of first grade pupils than to a group of seventh grade pupils, 

 because the dominant interests of these two groups are different. 

 One of the difficult problems in the presentation of Nature-Study 

 materials to prospective teachers is just how many lessons of forty- 

 five minutes each are requisite to give them the Nature-Study 

 point of view' Further, how many lessons are necessary to give 

 an appreciation of the aims and purposes of the subject, for the 

 organization of courses of study in the grades, and for making 

 conscious the methods of instruction ? The writer confesses his 

 inability to answer these questions. All that he is sure of is that 

 all of these elements must be emphasized. No teacher can be 

 dynamic, virile, constructive, and enthusiastic who does not see 

 the contribution of each particular lesson to the realization of the 

 general aims of the subject, the relation of the general aims to the 

 aim of education, and the aim of education to the fullness of life. 

 The teacher of Nature-Study who feels keenly and deeply that the 

 general aims and purposes of Nature-Study are to give a "speaking 

 acquaintance" with the animate and inanimate world, to give 

 practical information for ready adjustment in the environment, 

 and to give training in problem solving will spiritualize every 

 lesson, while the teacher who has no such outlook will be a mere 

 school keeper. 



One of the most urgent helps that the prospective teacher 

 requires is aid in the organization of a course of study in Nature- 

 Study for the elementary school. The wealth of material that may 

 be used, to the inexperienced, is so vast that it tends to demoralize. 

 When there are so many opportunities for topics that may be used 

 for instruction, there may be a tendency to use too many of them 

 with the result that none of them are well done. If the average 

 teacher is given a course in Nature-Study that is workable in the 



