bigblow] TRA INING OF TEA CHERS OF NA TUR E- S TUD Y 179 



The subject of this conference today, as announced in the 

 official journal of this Society, is the training of teachers of 

 nature-study and elementary-school science. I take it that that 

 last phrase, "elementary-school science," was tacked on in order 

 to catch the attention of that almost extinct species of science 

 teacher who fails to understand by nature-study anything more 

 than some simple observations of plants and animals by children 

 of the primary school, everything else being "science." For- 

 tunately we have almost forgotten that narrow interpretation of 

 nature-study and the A. N. S. S., true to the broad working defini- 

 tion involved in the first section of the constitution, stands for 

 nature-study dealing with any phase of nature which touches 

 every-day life closely enough to justify attention in elementary 

 education. 



I understand, then, that in the discussions of this Society we 

 are using the term nature-study as a convenient general designa- 

 tion for all elementary-school studies of any objects or processes 

 in nature which deserve attention in elementary schools, and I 

 am not forgetting that even the human body is a part of nature. 

 It is obvious, then, that in considering nature-study, and especial- 

 ly the preparation of teachers of the subject, we must keep in 

 mind the fact that nature-study may in its subject-matter have 

 close relations to what, in higher schools, we classify as biology, 

 physics and chemistry, geography, physiology and agriculture. 



I have already pointed to the fact that a great work to be done 

 by this Society is the determining of what is the best nature-study. 

 It may be urged that until this is done, and well done, we can 

 make little real progress in the training of teachers. My answer 

 to this is that already we have reached great agreement on the 

 most vital problems, the fundamentals ; and now we need teach- 

 ers trained in the light which we now have, in order that, true to 

 the scientific instincts, we may subject our present-day hypotheses 

 to careful critical experimentation, and thus slowly but surely 

 build upward the superstructure of nature studies on the founda- 

 tions of principles well laid today. We have agreed that nature- 

 study should not be limited to any particular phase of nature- 

 study, that it should deal with the common things of nature, that 

 direct observational study is the essential method, that the study 

 should be made from the standpoint of nature as it touches our 

 daily lives directly, and that close imitation of the technical 



