250 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [4:8- nov., 1908 



The agricultural colleges are issuing publications on agricul- 

 ture in the schools. The state syllabii are requiring agriculture. 

 Where are the teachers in cities and villages to get their material 

 for nature-study work on subjects of direct interest to the pupils. 

 Would we not have better agricultural education if we had more 

 nature-study in the earlier grades? The great aim of nature- 

 study is to give the child or the man a simple observational 

 knowledge of the objects with which his daily life is surrounded 

 in order to put his life in harmony with the forces at work around 

 him. This is best accomplished by using subjects near at hand 

 in which the child has a natural interest. If he is forced to study 

 something in which he has no spontaneous interest, the object of 

 nature-study will be defeated. 



I believe that all our schools, both rural and urban, should 

 teach nature-study in the first five or six grades with freedom 

 enough so that any subject to which the different children are 

 attracted may be used. The work for the more advanced 

 grades should be divided so that the rural school may teach 

 agriculture, dairying or whatever it needs and the city school 

 may teach elementary natural sciences, school gardening, or any 

 subject which may be of direct interest to the students. If the 

 same subjects are used for both in the higher grades, neither one 

 can attain to the fullest success. It seems to me to be time that 

 we had better nature-study materials for the city schools. 



In the conference on Agricultural Education this morning, 

 Dean Williams, of the State Normal College at Athens, Ohio, 

 made the statement that every graduate of that institution is 

 required to teach nature-study. The point appears to be that 

 method in successful nature-study, involving outdoor work, 

 garden studies, etc., is sufficiently a method of its own to justify 

 such requirement. It would be difficult to find a teacher of 

 nature-study in disagreement with this proposition, but I know 

 of no other normal school which, under the pressure of other 

 demands upon the student within the two-year course, has 

 found it practicable to make this work required of all graduates. 



