CHILDREN AS NATURALISTS 



[Editor's Note. — -This series of letters from readers is continued 

 from the January issue of this magazine.] 



Ill 



By H. N. LOOMIS 

 Normal-Training School, New Britain, Conn. 



The article ".4 re Children Naturally Naturalists," in the Nov- 

 ember Review is timely, indeed, long overdue. I know of no 

 assertion which I have come to regard more groundless, or one 

 that has led more astray and generated more bad spirit in the 

 nature-study movement than the doctrine challenged by the 

 writer of this article. Among my acquaintance with teachers, 

 the really able men and women engaged in bringing school 

 children into helpful contact with the outdoor world, almost 

 none are allying themselves with the nature-study movement. 

 In fact, it requires some courage to use the term in their presence 

 without qualifications and apologies. When one seeks the 

 reason for this estrangement among the workers in this particu- 

 lar field, he finds it in certain dogmatic and unproven assertions 

 of nature-study writers and speakers. Prominent among these 

 assertions is the statement that children are naturally interested 

 in plants and animals, while the attention they give to machines, 

 experiments and the operations of street, factory and railroad 

 are forced and unnatural and even harmful before a certain 

 mystical age. For some years I have watched for some state- 

 ment in reliable quarters setting forth when, where, by what 

 means and by whom this fundamental doctrine was scientifically 

 settled. The matter, is of considerable importance for it has 

 driven apart earnest men and women striving for a common end. 



Without attempting at this time to trace the history of the 

 modern nature-study movement, or to determine who first broke 

 and prepared the soil, I wish to suggest the probable origin of the 

 doctrine under discussion : (a) Of late, teachers of biology have 

 written more, and perhaps more persuasively, than those en- 

 gaged in teaching the physical sciences, (b) It is during this 

 time that teachers of the physical sciences have had to face a new 

 and difficult philosophy; and it has not been evident to all just 

 how the vortex theory, electrons, etc., would effect popular ex- 



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