dellingbr] TRAINING TEA CHERS FOR NA TURE-STUD Y 177 



themselves. If nature-study is to receive universal respect and 

 approval among educators and teachers it must have a character 

 of its own. It can have this character only when it becomes 

 divorced from the subjects so nearly related to it and stands out 

 with its own aims, purposes, and materials. 



Teachers who take the work in nature-study should feel the 

 same confidence in their ability to plan a course for this subject 

 that they feel in the older and better established ones. To give 

 them this confidence the nature-study course should do the fol- 

 lowing things : 



First, it should indicate the nature of the materials. Teachers 

 need some standard by which to determine what is nature-study 

 and what is not. Until they have this standard they will never 

 take up the subject. Many good teachers have failed when they 

 attempted to teach nature-study because they had no basis for 

 selection. They had somewhere received the impression that 

 any common object, just any thing, would do. Such teachers 

 know from experience that other qualifications need to be added. 

 Of course the materials for one community will be different from 

 those for another and they must be different for country and 

 city. Yet the teacher who has selected materials for one place 

 has received a training that will help him wherever he goes. He 

 has the habit of selection. 



Second, it should make clear the purpose and aim of nature- 

 study which sets it off from other related subjects. It is 

 very essential that the teacher get early in the course some defi- 

 nite point of view. Many teachers have enough knowledge of 

 the materials to be used if they only had some point of view 

 around which to organize them. Bailey and Hodge, the leaders 

 of the nature-study movement in this country, agree that the 

 purpose of nature-study is to teach those things in nature which 

 best adapt the individual to live in "effective harmony with his 

 environment." That people are out of harmony with their en- 

 vironment is shown by the prevalence of unkept and unbeautified 

 homes, the enormous leaks in our natural resources, the rav- 

 ages of disease, the flow of the country people into the city, and 

 the ever increasing artificiality in our city life. If the teacher 

 understands the purpose of nature-study as stated above he will 

 have no hesitation in rejecting much of the material advocated 

 today for nature-study. 



