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THE GUIDE T< ) X \Tl'RE 



EDAGOGICAL 



Nature Study in the Connecticut 

 Schools. 



BY FREEMAN FOSTER BURR, DEPARTMENT 

 OF SCIENCE, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, 

 NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT. 



( Extracts from a reply to a personal 

 letter of inquiry regarding the in- 

 terest of Connecticut teachers 

 in "nature study.") 

 With regard to Connecticut teach- 

 ers it must be pointed out that there 

 are strong reasons for marked differ- 

 ences between our State and some 

 others with respect to school condi- 

 tions, particularly in those schools 

 which are below the High School 

 grade. 



Our State is, as everybody knows, 

 a manufacturing state, with popula- 

 tion concentrated in cities and large, 

 busy towns ; the predominance of the 

 manufacturing and commercial inter- 

 ests must of course have a very strong 

 effect on the trend of education. Our 

 two largest Normal Schools, the one 

 at New Britain and this one, draw 

 the majority of their pupils from such 

 communities (in our own case, only 

 about fourteen per cent can be said 

 to have received any considerable part 

 of their early training on farms or in 

 country places), and most of these 

 pupils ( in our case over sixty per 

 cent at least) go to teach in the large 

 places after graduation. So large is 

 the demand for teachers, and so strong 

 is the desire of the average trained 

 teachers to get into a town or city 

 school, that even in small places bor- 

 dering on a city like New Haven 

 superintendents are obliged to hire 

 many teachers who have not, at the 

 most, gone beyond the High School, 

 and who are absolutely without special 

 training (and it might be added, in a 

 great many cases, without special apti- 



tude). Throughout the rural parts of 

 Connecticut, it is easy to find plenty 

 of schools taught by teachers of just 

 this sort. The difficulties in the way 

 of reaching such teachers in connec- 

 tion with such a thing as nature study 

 must be apparent. It must also be ap- 

 parent that such teachers will not com- 

 pare favorably, on the whole, with 

 teachers who have had some training 

 in doing things of the schoolroom, even 

 though special aptitude may be lack- 

 ing in the cases of the latter. 



It is hard to get satisfactory nature 

 study work even from those who have 

 the advantages of training, because of 

 the prevalent lack of outdoor obser- 

 vational experience in the early years 

 when such experience would sink deep 

 and form a basis for future tastes and 

 habits. Among all the girls who come 

 to this school, it is a rare thing to find 

 one who has any real, deep, lasting 

 fondness for things of the woods and 

 fields. We are told that we need only 

 to send enthusiastic teachers into the 

 schools to have nature study taught, 

 and taught well. And many of us 

 fail to realize that it is just this obvious 

 key to the situation that is hard to at- 

 tain ; we do merely need enthusiastic 

 teachers, but true enthusiasm is possi- 

 ble on no other basis than that of 

 knowledge. And the hard part of it 

 is, the time when knowledge of this 

 sort might have been easily and 

 pleasantly obtained is long past when 

 those who are to be teachers have 

 come under our control. It is hard 

 to get good nature study teachers be- 

 cause we cannot begin early enough 

 with their training ; when we get hold 

 of them, in the High schools and the 

 Normal Schools, there are so many 

 other things to be done that it is only 

 incidentally that a pupil becomes in- 



