SOME CAUSES OF DEFECTIVE METHODS IN TEACHING 



NATURE-STUDY 



By FANNIE M. PERKINS 

 Principal of Glenwood School, Toledo, O. 



Nature-study forms a part of our school-curriculum whether it 

 appears under that title or one more or less formal. That our 

 present system of presentation is defective is a fact so evident as 

 to need no proving. To find the cause or causes for these defects 

 is necessary, since causes must be known before difficulties can be 

 overcome and a failure in efficiency is far less dangerous to us as, 

 teachers than a failure to frankly acknowledge and bravely face 

 facts. 



We may perhaps glean some comfort from Professor John M. 

 Coulter's statement that "Perfect adaptation means stagnation," 

 and rejoice that our work is not stagnant since it falls so far short 

 of adaptation to the recognized needs of modern life. 



That we are not teaching children to look upon life with "see- 

 ing eyes" is one root of the evil, though it may be possible, by 

 digging deeper, to discover that we ourselves were not taught 

 to see, intelligently, this "great wide wonderful world" or even a 

 very small part of it. We look but we do not see. We hear, but 

 seldom listen. Life moves in panoramic pictures before our 

 eyes, and, beyond a passing thought, the beauty and infinite 

 wonder of it all is not realized. The Japanese conception of the 

 spirit of life, abounding in flower, tree, rippling stream, bird and 

 bee w r ould seem much more refining and civilizing in its influence 

 than is our appalling twentieth-century indifference, more 

 dangerous by far than ignorance. 



Another cause for defective nature work may be found in the 

 fact that we seem to be living in a "taking things for granted age." 

 Miracles of science have become so common as to pass almost 

 unnoticed. Miracles of nature are plainly sharing the same fate. 

 In our efforts to remove all possible obstacles from the road to 

 knowledge, we seem to have allowed the pendulum to swing too 

 far. Our children are becoming so blase that it really seems as 

 if nothing astonishes them. If in place of the almost perfect 

 modern school-building, a palace of marble could spring up in a 

 single night, children would walk in through bronze doors, up 



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