NATURE-STUDY IN THE SAN DIEGO STATE NORMAL 



SCHOOL 



By WM. T. SKILLING 

 Supervisor of Nature-Study and Geography, 



In this school the two subjects, nature-study and geography, 

 are in the training department given equal time and emphasis 

 throughout the course. Both are begun in the third year and 

 both are continued through the eighth year. One period of 

 forty-five minutes is devoted daily to the two subjects, half the 

 period to one and half to the other. In the seventh and eighth 

 grades alternate days are given to one or the other, instead of 

 dividing the period, in order that the work may be more thorough. 



There is no special effort to have the work of the two subjects 

 closely correlated throughout the whole course, but in the lower 

 grades especially, the nature-study work greatly strengthens 

 that of geography. There is, however, complete divergence in 

 the eighth grade where physiology and hygiene furnish the sub- 

 ject-matter for nature-study. 



The object of nature teaching is to give children the seeing eye 

 and the hearing ear, so that the child will not be blind to the 

 fleecy cloud and the spring violets, nor pass by the cricket's call 

 and the thunder clap without the mind being stirred to some 

 thought as to the cause of each. 



In the mind of the infant and of the savage there is little won- 

 der or admiration evoked by witnessing the most intricate and 

 delicate mechanism or the most marvelous phenomenon. Every- 

 thing in nature is taken for granted by the immature or untutored 

 mind, and nothing, be it ever so strange and interesting, calls 

 forth much intellectual activity. Well is it for the infant that 

 this is so, for otherwise it would die from nervous prostration 

 before arriving at school age. 



It is the province of the school, and especially of the nature- 

 study class, to prevent this state of mental lethargy from ex- 

 tending into adult life as it does in the savage. 



Nature-study, then, is fundamentally a training of the ob- 

 servant powers of the mind so that sense stimuli becomes trans- 

 formed into mental stimuli ; so that when any of the five senses 

 receive an impression the mind receives an impression; so that 



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