1 1 8 THE NA TL 'RE-STUD Y RE VIE W U^-apr., 190S 



their natural environment. 5. The avoidance of material in the 

 upper grades which has been worn threadbare in the lower grades. 

 For example, children have been "caterpillared" to death, as one 

 teacher puts it. 6. A definite time for the work apart from 

 geography. 7. Principals are not in sympathy with the work. 

 8. Parents object. 



The replies require little comment. The teachers plainly need 

 further instruction in both subject-matter and method. There is 

 a clear demand for a svstematized course of study with definite 

 allotments to each grade. The committee of the school-board in 

 charge of buildings needs to be awakened to the fact that the 

 best work can not be done unless proper provisions are made for 

 taking care of material, as for instance, keeping it from freezing 

 over Saturday and Sunday. Finally, judging from replies seven 

 and eight, it would seem that some further propaganda is 

 necessary. 



The writer believes that it would be feasible to have in each 

 building some teacher, who has shown special aptitude for nature- 

 study, to act as a supervisor of the nature-work of the entire 

 school. He could confer with each teacher about specific 

 materials, methods and apparatus, see that duplications in the 

 grades were avoided, and act as a general advisor for teachers 

 who were less well prepared. Some such plan, it would seem, is 

 at least well worth trying. 



By way of summary it may be said that, as far as the writer 

 can see, the nature-study movement is at a critical point in its 

 development. There is a pressing need for teachers who are in 

 sympathv with the work and who have been adequately trained 

 for it. We can look upon the present attempts to make over 

 mature, conventionally trained teachers into teachers of nature- 

 study as at best but a temporary makeshift to tide us over until 

 the work can be put into the hands of the recruits from our higher 

 schools, and these new teachers will be successful largely in pro- 

 portion as they themselves have been doers rather than hearers. 

 The responsibility for their kind of training rests largely upon 

 their instructors in these higher institutions of learning. There 

 is need of a definitely svstematized and graded course of study, 

 as we now have in geography, for example, which at the conclus- 

 ion of the sixth or eighth grade, as the case mav be, will have un- 

 folded before the pupil and made him conscious to some extent of 



