SOME FUNDAMENTAL NEEDS IN NATURE-STUDY 



By MICHAEL F. GUYER 

 University of Cincinnati 



It is not the writer's intention to dwell upon the value of 

 nature-study in educating children but rather to inquire into a 

 few phases of the nature-study situation as it now exists, at least 

 in some parts of the middle states, and to point out what to him 

 seem to be some of its urgent needs. 



As we all know, the idea has had powerful and brilliant advo- 

 cates for hundreds of years, ever since the time of Comenius and 

 probably long before. We have had such precepts as Bacon's 

 "We should accustom ourselves to things themselves" and 

 Agassiz's "'Study nature — not books," dinned into us year after 

 year. But notwithstanding all this, the old memory grind goes 

 on in the school. Why' Why is it that much of the work in 

 nature-study cannot be reckoned successful today and in not a 

 few instances falls little short of farcical? 



It is evident that any movement towards improvement of 

 existing conditions must be based upon an analysis of the causes 

 of the present shortcomings of the subject. While there are a 

 number of important contributory factors, the fundamental one, 

 it seems to me, we must admit is the poorly prepared teacher. 

 And this may be said without casting any reflection upon our 

 present-day teachers, because the subject has come into favor 

 since they had their pedagogical training. As a rule where 

 nature-study is required, it has been put into the curriculum by* 

 some one in authority and then each teacher has been notified to 

 teach it. The prevailing idea seems to have been that any one 

 can teach nature-study and so the work has been saddled onto 

 teachers who have had no training in the subject-matter, who are 

 not imbued with the spirit of the movement, and who, in conse- 

 quence, have but vague ideas of what the subject is intended to 

 do for the child. Their own training has frequently been of the 

 formal type, based upon memorized ideas instead of personal 

 experiences, and the result is that they become bewildered when 

 called upon to teach something that cannot be prepared for 

 directly from books. These facts together with the tremendous 

 pressure under which the modern teacher works are far from be- 



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