1 1 6 THE NA TURESTUD V RE VIE IV U ■ *— apr., 1908 



school educators who are daily facing the facts instead of che 

 theories of the schoolroom. Certainly if the subject is to make 

 good on any considerable percentage of the glowing prospects 

 held out by its propagandists, its advocates must bestir them- 

 selves into proposing and agreeing upon some rational plan of 

 organized subject-matter. It may really be questioned if the 

 highly idealized schemes of some of its more enthusiastic advo- 

 cates have not hindered rather than helped the cause in the eyes 

 of some of our practical school principals. However this may be, 

 we are now at a point where propaganda is no longer sufficient. 

 There is urgent need of suitable organization of material and 

 ideas. 



Again, I find that the concurrent opinion of the several pro- 

 fessors of nature-study subjects with whom I have been able to 

 confer recently, is that too much has been attempted in nature- 

 study. All agree that it is better to restrict the work, at least, 

 until it is more thoroughly established. As a matter of fact this 

 restriction is going on unconsciously, and plants and animals 

 have come to make up the chief material in many schools. The 

 older idea of a helter skelter type of work has been found too 

 Utopian for realization, if for no other reason, because of human 

 limitations. A sufficient number of teachers does not exist 

 who can handle any and all kinds of material that may come to 

 hand, a fact, however, which doubtless works out for the best be- 

 cause while it is true that the child is largely systemless in his 

 observations, one of the prime objects of education is to teach 

 him to systematize things. Where a catch-as-catch-can variety 

 of nature-study has been attempted, the usual result has been 

 that if the children were at all interested, the teacher has been 

 deluged with a mass of material as unfamiliar to her as to them, 

 and with their enthusiasm thus nipped in the bud the children 

 have lost all interest in the work. 



Again, from a survey of the general school situation as it exists 

 at present, I believe that if nature-study is to meet with any 

 immediate success in our schools with their inelastic curricula, 

 it must have a being of its own apart from other subjects. This 

 is not true because nature can be made to order but because our 

 school curricula have been so made, and, on account of the inertia 

 of routine, will continue to exist in that Avay for a number of years 

 to come. In my opinion, one important reason that the subject 



