[14 THE NA TURE-STUDY REVIEW [4:4— apr., .908 



But the question arises, if our present teachers are poorly 

 trained for nature-work, wherein lies the fault. Teachers in 

 elementary and secondary schools naturally look to normal 

 schools, to colleges, and to universities for adequate training, hut 

 it must be confessed that not infrequently they have looked in 

 vain. There can be little doubt that some of our normal schools 

 merit the charge sometimes brought against them of stocking 

 their students with a plethora of method without giving them an 

 adequate foundation in subject-matter. On the other hand, 

 there is equal justice in the claim that many of our universities 

 and colleges are ignorant of the needs of teachers in the lower 

 schools or are not interested in them. Seemingly many university 

 professors have no conception of the nature of the work which will 

 be required of the majority of their hearers who go into the pro- 

 fession of teaching, or for that matter into any other profession 

 where initiative and creative effort are at a premium. While 

 our ideals of what true university work should be, may be cited in 

 justification of present university methods of instruction, still the 

 practical fact confronts us that here in America, besides affording 

 opportunity for research and supplying information for such pur- 

 poses, most of our universities must likewise perform the func- 

 tions of a college in supplying the more disciplinary work of 

 teaching their students how to think and how to approach truth. 

 And it is from a lack of this very disciplinary work that our 

 nature-study teachers of today are suffering. They have been 

 fed largely by the funnel method. They have sat at the feet of 

 their scientific or literary Gamaliel instead of rolling up their 

 sleeves and bending to the work with him — a fact for which he is 

 responsible rather than the}*. Their shortcomings as teachers 

 are due not infrequently to his failure to realize that, in the 

 foundations of his subject at least, his own efficiency as an edu- 

 cator is measured not by how much he imparts but by how much 

 he reveals*, and that if his hearers are to become successful teachers 

 his own methods must be exemplary. Instead of this, we have 

 predominantly the learned lecture. 



The reason for this is perhaps not far to seek. Many of our 

 professors received their advanced training in German universi- 

 ties where the lecture svstem prevails, and they have attempted 

 to follow out the same plans in our American schools without 

 duly eonsidering the fact that the American student upon enter- 



