42 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [ 4 : 2 -feb. 1908 



The crux of the whole question of the future value and position 

 of nature-study lies in training teachers to teach it in nature from 

 nature alone. Nature-study, like all studies in the schools, 

 suffers from over-teaching. The teacher must organize the work 

 and must guide the student intelligently through it, but he must 

 do no more. His task is to put the student in the right attitude, 

 to show him how to work, and then to keep his hands off. We 

 all know that it is only the things which a student sees and does 

 and thinks for himself that become a part of him and are really 

 worth while. Unfortunately we often forget this. School is 

 but a part of life, and one's own experience the only real teacher. 

 For these reasons, we must expect no real improvement in nature 

 teaching, no broader recognition of its fundamental value until 

 we have trained a new generation of teachers. The teacher 

 needed cannot be adequately trained by six weeks in a summer 

 session, no matter what the school. Nor can he be trained by a 

 year or two cf botany or zoology as taught in the vast majority 

 of colleges and universities. Nearly all such courses are formal 

 and special, and have very little of nature in them. They are for 

 the most part intensive microscopic studies of structure, parti- 

 cularly of the lower plants and animals, Many of them indeed 

 actually unfit the student for the teaching of nature-study. In 

 spice of these facts, it goes without saying that the preparation of 

 teachers will still be carried on by the colleges and universities. 

 This will be done successfully only when they radically change 

 both the method and the matter of teaching elementary science. 

 The laboratory must be replaced by the greenhouse and the field, 

 in a large part if not wholly, and the microscope must be recog- 

 nized as a valuable accessory and not the chief means of study. 

 More important still will be the development of courses which 

 will give to the student, not only the exact methods and materials 

 that he will use as a teacher of nature-study and of high-school 

 science, but also that broader training without which a compe- 

 tent and enthusiastic teacher is impossible. 



We may discuss the problems of nature-study year after year, 

 .and we may come to agree fullv as to methods, materials and re- 

 sults. If, however, we fail to take steps at once to point out 

 what constitutes adequate training for the teacher, and to see 

 that this training is actually made available in fact and not in 

 name, we have wrought to little purpose. Vital changes in edu- 



