22 THE NA TURE-STUD Y REIVE W f 4 : ,-jan., igo8 



processes involved in the operation of obtaining the solution; 

 and when this has been done, and the operation has become clear, 

 he will be in a position to understand how to present science to 

 children. This definition also implies several other points which 

 are vital to nature-study; as, for example, this: that the 

 problem must be spontaneous with the child, — must be the 

 child's own problem, — or, in other words, must be real to him in 

 order that his curiosity be keenly aroused. If this is to be the 

 case, the problem must arise naturally out of the child's own 

 concrete experiences, so that the materials of the problem must be 

 connected closely in some way with the child's life. Furthermore 

 the answer must not be given him, and he must not be dogmatically 

 corrected if his first solution seem to the teacher to be wide of the 

 mark; but he must be directed to further evidence, and thus 

 trained in the most precious habit of weighing evidence and 

 verifying conclusions. 



This definition of science as problem-solving is not only rich in 

 implications for the teacher, but it also furnishes a very satis- 

 factory answer to the problem of the distinction between nature- 

 study and science. In the light of this definition we see that 

 there is and should be no essential difference between them. 

 In the elementary school the child solves his real problems, but 

 these are of a simple and more concrete kind; as he proceeds, 

 and acquires power in the art, his problems become more complex 

 and more abstract; until, in the graduate school, under the 

 name of research, he is working at very complex and very ab- 

 stract problems, — problems on the borderland of human knowl- 

 edge, — but with no essential difference in the spirit and the 

 methods of the work. This is the ideal condition, the one to- 

 wards which, let us hope, we are moving. In this condition there 

 will be no distinction of kind between nature-study and science, 

 but only one of degree. This condition is far from the practice 

 of the present time. We now have the true scientific investigat- 

 ing spirit only in the elementary science and in the research work. 

 The intermediate work, extending, say, from the seventh grade 

 through the college, although devised presumably to prepare 

 for research, is too often actually carried on by dogmatically 

 cramming the memory with "facts and laws," with a total 

 neglect of motive and a consequent deadening of the research 

 spirit. 



