guybr] fundamental needs in nature-study 117 



languishes now in many schools is largely because it has no back- 

 bone of its own, no proper raison d'etre in the eyes of the teacher. 



This does not mean, of course, that the work commonly called 

 nature-study which is used for furthering the child's knowledge 

 of geography, for example, should be abandoned. Such work 

 might well be incorporated in the regular geographical work as a 

 more rational way of teaching geography and not be reckoned as 

 a part of the specific work in nature-study. 



The advantages, in having a thoroughly systematized line of 

 nature-work with carefully selected materials properly appor- 

 tioned to the various grades are evident. If the work is planned 

 with the aim of having gradually developed certain fundamental 

 principles by the time the course has been concluded, certainly 

 the child, although unconscious of the fact, has been grounded 

 in proper habits of thought that no amount of desultory ob- 

 servation could have developed. If his investigations have been 

 directed along carefully selected lines he loses none of the joys of 

 discovery which are reckoned so highly by the advocates of 

 nature-study, and yet in the end he will get a cumulative effect 

 of evidence which will be of the greatest value to him. Further- 

 more, by properly restricting the work, he will have time to grasp 

 something of the significance of a given field, since he is not con- 

 fused by a mass of totally unrelated phenomena. Moreover, 

 the busy teacher will be benefited in that she has to become 

 familiar with a more limited field and make preparations for 

 handling or supplying a less varied range of material. 



As an example of some of the difficulties with which the 

 teachers of city schools are struggling, the replies enumerated 

 below are interesting. They are arranged in order of their 

 frequency and are responses of a large number of city public- 

 school teachers to an inquiry by the writer as to what their main 

 difficulties in teaching nature-study are and why in their opinion 

 it is not more successful. 



1. Want of proper material and apparatus; the difficulty of 

 getting material. 2. Taking care of material. Most teachers 

 do not know how to care for material. 3. Lack of specific direc- 

 tions concerning the work for each grade and insufficiency of 

 detail as to what to teach under each subject. 4. How to manage 

 a class of forty or fifty so as to have all of the children, (a) study 

 the various materials individually and, (b) observe objects in 



