THE 



NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



DEVOTED TO ALL PHASES OF NATURE-STUDY IN SCHOOLS 



Vol. 4 FEBRUARY, 1908 No. 2 



THE RELATION OF SCIENCE AND NATURE-STUDY 



[Editor's Note. The following is the conclusion of the report of the 

 first meeting of the American Nature-Study Society which was begun in 

 the January issue of this magazine.] 



IV 



By MAURICE A. BIGELOW 

 Teachers College, Columbia University 



It has been well said by one of the foremost leaders of the 

 American nature-study movement that "Nature-study is a re- 

 volt from the teaching of mere science in the elementary grades." 

 For many years the leaders of the movement have been de- 

 manding that lines be drawn between nature-study for elementary 

 schools and science for higher schools; and within recent years 

 it has come to be generally recognized by very many educators 

 that the best nature-study for the primary and grammar grades 

 is that which is differentiated from the existing science teaching 

 in high schools. Nature-study then stands for a reaction from 

 science teaching as we commonly understand science teaching. 

 Nature-study is simply the result of looking at elementary- 

 school problems from the standpoint of educational principles 

 rather than from that of science in the strict sense, and the 

 recognition that the prevailing science teaching of the higher 

 schools is utterly unsuitable for young children of the elementary 

 schools. 



Such, in brief outline, are the causes of the movement away 

 from the prevailing science teaching of higher schools and to the 

 establishment of nature-study as something differing from 

 science teaching sufficiently to warrant the introduction of the 

 new name for elementary studies of natural things. To under- 

 stand the nature-study movement and to view logically and con- 

 servatively the problems of coordination, correlation or different- 

 iation between nature-study and science teaching, we must first 



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