NATURE COURSES AND SCIENCE COURSES 



By W. F. GANONG 

 Professor of Botany, Smith College 



Among the many who are watching the progress of the nature- 

 study movement represented by the American Nature-Study 

 Society and The Nature-Study Review, there is no person who 

 views it with greater sympathy and appreciation than the writer 

 of these lines. Accordingly it is with very deep regret that I 

 observe among some of its advocates a tendency not only to 

 disparage but even to condemn the elementary science courses 

 as given by our colleges and high schools. Were the criticism 

 specific and well-grounded it would be welcome ; but in fact it is 

 vague, uncharitable and unjust, and I desire to enter an emphatic 

 protest against it. 



The disparagement of which I speak seems to have been grow- 

 ing of late, and it has reached its extreme in the paper by Profes- 

 sor Hodge in the September number of this journal. But Pro- 

 fessor Hodge's article has this marked merit, that it is not simply 

 destructive, but is also constructive, for he outlines a substitute 

 for the scientific courses which he condemns. Now, I maintain 

 that the usual scientific courses, where even only passably given, 

 are vastly superior to his proposed substitute in three of the most 

 fundamental features. First, they are practicable of educational 

 administration, while his is impossible of such administration; 

 second, the information they impart is worth far more to the 

 great majority of students than that involved in his course; 

 third, they give an intellectual training far superior. 



I can assume, I think, that Professor Hodge's suggested elemen- 

 tary biological course for colleges and high schools is accessible 

 to my readers in their copies of the September Review, and I 

 need only recall that he groups the subjects under some four 

 heads thus: — "a few things of vital import to the life of the child 

 and the home" ; a few things that every decent member of a com- 

 munity ought to know about the forces of living nature ;" "health, 

 individual and civic, is the paramount interest;" "conservation 

 of natural resources." Professor Hodge then proceeds to give 

 certain illustrative problems of the field, which are as follows: 



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